From ai at kk.iij4u.or.jp  Sun Jan  1 12:24:23 2006
From: ai at kk.iij4u.or.jp (Akira Imada)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 02:24:23 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: CFP of a conference in Belarus --- ICNNAI-2006
Message-ID: <004e01c60ef8$f3d5ef40$6f03667d@usen.ad.jp>

                       CALL FOR PAPERS

                          ICNNAI'2006

        4th International Conference on Neural Networks 
                 and Artificial Intelligence

             31 May - 2 June, 2006, Brest, Belarus

              http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/cfp.html

                  OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: English

           PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 8 March 2006


SCOPE AND AIM:
A realization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Neural Networks (NN)
might sound somehow old but will be an ever lasting research area.

This conference intends to provide an interactive forum for discussions, 
debates and brainstorms among researchers interested in combining these 
two fields, in a creative, exciting, and free atmosphere. In the process, 
we expect collaborations among those who have complementary ideas.

The conference will feature (1) two plenary talks by

  - Heinz Muhlenbein ... Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) 
  - Robert Hiromoto  ... University of Idaho (US)

(2) oral sessions with accepted papers. (3) A couple of panel discussions 
are also planned.

We solicit papers of the latest techniques and achievements from 
theoretical, experimental, as well as engineering aspect in all areas of 
Neural Networks aiming Artificial Intelligence.


TOPICS:
The conference covers all topics in Artificial Intelligence by Neural Networks. 
Or far beyond, though we dare not to use a cliche like "including but not limited to" 
such as

   -  Brain-Inspired Information Technology;
   -  Modeling Learning and Memory;
   -  Robotics and Sensory Systems and Motor Controls; 
   -  Robotics and Cognition, Emotion and Behavior;
   -  Brain-like Knowledge Extraction or Recovery in Databases;
   -  Evolving brain-like structure; and
   -  Artificial Life.

Or their fusion. Note again that the list is far from exhaustive nor 
exclusive, which are also cliche though.


SUBMISSIONS:
The papers must be in English with the maximum length of 8 pages, following
the guidelines in the authors instructions which can be downloaded at
     http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/authkit.html
where you can find a Style-file for LaTeX, as well as a skeleton for MS-WORD.

All submissions will be reviewed by the respective international program committees.

Papers will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, 
relevance and clarity of presentation (forgive me a cliche again).

Please, however, do not expect reviewers to be a proof-reader.
High quality submission is the author's responsibility and 
inadequately prepared papers may be rejected.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format 

   (1) via the ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM linked in the page to 
          http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/lite/prs.php 
      (still it's under construction in a last ditch at this moment, 
       you might explore it though), 
or 
   (2) by attaching it to an e-mail to icnnai at bstu.by with the subject 
       ICNNAI SUBMISSION and with the attached file-name being 
       <author-full-name>.pdf.

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE AT MOST 5 KEY-WORDS WHICH APPROPRIATELY 
REPRESENT WHAT TOPICS YOUR PAPER EXPLORES. (if you submit the paper 
by email these key wards should be in the text of e-mail , and if you 
submit it via the web-page simply fill in the box. This is for the purpose 
of efficiency in reviewing process.)

Receipt of submitted paper will be notified within a couple of working days 
after the deadline.

After review process of all submissions, you will be notified by 29 March
whether your contribution is accepted or not.

Please notice that at least one of the authors of an accepted paper must
register for the conference and present the paper.

The final program of the conference will be appeared on the conference 
web-page http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/cfp.html with the other up-to-date 
information.


KEY DATES:
The time schedule for the publication of the proceedings is as follows:

  - Submission deadline:        08 March    2006
  - Notification of acceptance: 29 March    2006
  - Camera ready copy due:      19 April    2006

Please notice that we have prolonged these schedule from the ones 
in the preliminary Call for Paper. Please do not expect the schedule 
to be extended any more. Reviewers will have three weeks to review:
accepted author will have three weeks to improve the paper, and we have 
six weeks to print the proceedings. Each of these three due dates 
will be a MUST.


PRESENTATION:
To keep the workshop lively we intend to keep the time of individual 
presentations efficiently. We plan a 20 minutes of oral presentation 
for all accepted papers.

Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings which will be 
available at the conference.


REGISTRATION FEE:
Registration fee is 125 USD for early registration which is to be done
before by 19 April, after the date, including registration on site,
the fee will be 175 USD.

The fee includes: 
   - proceedings;
   - one welcome cocktail party (planned on 30 May in the evening); 
   - one reception party (planned on 31 May in the evening); and
   - snacks, soft drinks at coffee-breaks between the sessions.

A limited number of the support to students from CIS countries will 
be also considered. Feel free to contact us. 

We now are preparing for the bank-account for early registration.
Please check it out later in up-to-date information at the conference web page.


VENUE:
The city of Brest is in a stone throw away from the border to Poland, 
and situated 200km from Warsaw and 300km from Minsk. From either of 
these cities we can access to the city by train quite easily.

Brest is a wonderful place to live, along with historical places which are 
outstanding for a city with medium size. It is a terrific place, 
personally speaking though, if you are interested in great nature.

We have the Brest fortress which is the main attraction of the city. 
The fortress made a prolonged defence against Germans in 1941 and 
was ruined in the result of severe battles. After the war the remains 
of the fortress were turned into a grandiose memorial to its defenders. 
(From the web-site bellow. Sorry for that but without a permission though.)

We have what they call largest forest in Europe in which we might visit 
the gorgeous Summer-House once presidents of former Soviet Union stayed 
during the summer holiday. 

We have other Historical places as well as fancy Museums. 

If you find time to walk to a big open market which is located in 
a walking distance from the conference site, you will enjoy various kinds of
real fresh vegetables and fruits grown in Brest region. 
Life in Brest is wonderful.  We hope to see you in Brest.

More about City Brest at http://brestonline.com/en/info/index.html, 
Also enjoy http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Brest%2C_Belarus.


HOTEL INFORMATION:
We have a couple of good Hotels. See, for example, 
http://www.belarustravel.by/en/Brest/.

We also have a limited number of nice facilities for lodging 
in the campus of the Brest State Technical University where
the conference will be held.

Later the more detailed list for the hotel accommodation
will be appeared in the conference web-page.

Looking forward to receiving your paper(s) and meeting you 
at the conference in Brest.


HONORARY CHAIR:
Petr Poyta (Belarus)


CNFERENCE CHAIR:
Vladimir Golovko (Belarus)


CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS:
Rauf Sadykhov (Belarus)
Akira Imada (Belarus)


INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Juan Miguel Santos (Argentina)
Helmut Mayer (Austria)
Alexander Doudkin (Belarus)
Vladimir Golenkov (Belarus)
Vladimir Ptichkin (Belarus)
Vladimir Rubanov (Belarus)
Andres Perez-Uribe (Chile)
Xu Lisheng (China)
Kurosh Madani (France)
Jean-Jacques Mariage (France)
Hubert Roth (Germany)
Vincenzo Piuri (Italy)
Pasqual Daponte (Italy)
Hitoshi Hemmi (JAPAN)
Qiangfu Zhao (Japan)
Sung-Bae Cho (Korea)
Irina Bausova (Latvia)
Saulius Maskeliunas (Lithuania)
Khalid Saeed (Poland)
Vladimir Redko (Russia)
Alexander Galushkin (Russia)
Lipo Wang (Singapore)
Emin German (Turkey)
Bora Kumova (Turkey)
Anatoly Sachenko (Ukraine)
Mykola Dyvak (Ukraine)
Voloddymyr Turchenko (Ukraine)
Bogdan Gabrys (UK)
Robert Hiromoto (USA)


LOCAL COMMITTEE:
Yury Savitsky  (Belarus)
Sergei Besobrasov (Belarus)
Svetlana Besobrasova (Belarus)
Andrew Dunets (Belarus)
Larisa Gorbashko (Belarus)
Pavel Kochurko (Belarus)
Yury Kozurko (Belarus)
Leonid Machnist (Belarus)
Nikolay Maniakov (Belarus)
Piotr Selezniov (Belarus)


CONTACT ADDRESS:
Conference e-mail: iccnai at bstu.by

Conference Chair: Prof. Vladimir Golovko
Co-chair: Prof. Akira Imada

Intelligent Information Technologies Dept.
Brest State Technical University
Moskowskaja 267, Brest, Belarus
phone: +375-162-42-6321
fax:   +375-162-42-2127






From cns at cnsorg.org  Tue Jan  3 14:40:20 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 12:40:20 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: CNS 2006 Call for Papers
Message-ID: <20060103194020.M76360@cnsorg.org>


CALL FOR PAPERS, CNS*2006
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 6, 2006 midnight; submission open
January 15, 2006 
NOTE:  Meeting dates have changed since the announcement at CNS*2005

Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006 
July 16 - July 20, 2006 
Edinburgh, UK 
http://www.cnsorg.org 

CNS*2006 will be held in Edinburgh, UK from Sunday, July 16 to Thursday, July 
20, 2006. The main meeting will be July 16-18 followed by two days of 
workshops on July 19 and 20. The meeting will take place in the heart of 
medieval 'Old Town' close to plenty of arts and entertainment.  Edinburgh can 
be reached from Edinburgh or Glasgow International Airports.

Submissions can include experimental, model-based, as well as more abstract 
theoretical approaches to understanding neurobiological computation.  We 
especially encourage research that mixes experimental and theoretical studies.
We also accept papers that describe new technical approaches to theoretical 
and experimental issues in computational neuroscience or relevant software 
packages. 

INVITED SPEAKERS: 
Michael Hausser (University College London) 
Fred Wolf (University of Gottingen) 
Sophie Deneve (CNRS Institute for Cognitive Science) 

Banquet Speaker: 
James Bower (University of Texas San Antonio)

WORKSHOPS PLANNED TO DATE (Organizers):
Cortical map development (J. Bednar)
Cortical microcircuitry (T. Wennekers)
Interoperability of neural simulators (E. De Schutter)
Oscillations (H. Rotstein)
Plasticity and stability (M. van Rossum)

 

PAPER SUBMISSION

Submissions to the meeting will take the form of a 3-page summary describing 
the nature and scope of the work, and outlining the main results.  Details 
regarding formatting of submissions will be posted at www.cnsorg.org. These 
summaries will be reviewed by the program committee and used to determine 
acceptance for presentation at the meeting as well as to construct the oral 
program.  Authors will also be asked to submit a standard abstract for 
printing in the program book.  All submissions will be acknowledged by email. 

THE REVIEW PROCESS 
Summaries will be judged and accepted for the meeting based on the clarity 
with which the work is described and the biological relevance of the 
research. For this reason authors should be careful to make the connection to 
biology clear.  CNS strongly believes in the open exchange of ideas and we 
reject only a small fraction of submissions  (~5%). Rejections are usually 
based on absence of biological relevance (e.g. pure machine learning). We 
will notify authors of meeting acceptance by April 1. 

All acceptable summaries will be reviewed by two independent referees, and 
the oral program of the meeting will constructed based on these reviews.  
Most oral presentations will be 20 minutes in length, but several papers will 
be selected for longer "featured oral" presentations.  In addition to 
perceived quality as an oral presentation, the novelty of the research and 
the diversity and coherence of the overall program will be considered.  To 
ensure diversity, those who have given talks in the recent past will not be 
selected and multiple oral presentations from the same lab will be 
discouraged. All accepted papers not selected for oral talks may be presented 
during the poster sessions.  Authors will be notified of the presentation 
format of their papers by the end of April.  

PROCEEDINGS AND PUBLICATION 

The proceedings of the meeting will be published as a special supplement to 
the journal Neurocomputing.  Space in the proceedings volume is more limited  
than in previous years and if the number of submitted papers exceeds the  
number that can be published (~100), which seems likely, rankings from the 
review process will be used to select the top 100 papers.  Only papers 
actually presented at the meeting (oral or poster format) are eligible for 
publication in the proceedings.  Each presenting author can publish at most 
one paper in the proceedings volume.
Authors wishing to submit their work for peer-reviewed publication in 
Neurocomputing will be required to submit complete papers (max 6 typeset 
pages) by May 1. Manuscripts will be reviewed according to the usual 
standards for journal publication.  Authors will receive notification of 
submission status (accept, reject, revise) and receive reviewer comments 
before the meeting.  Paper rejection at this stage does not preclude 
presentation at the meeting itself.  Authors will then have until September 
15 to submit revised manuscripts.  Final notification of acceptance based on 
these revisions will be sent by October 15. Detailed instructions to authors 
will be posted at www.cnsorg.org. 
 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
The CNS meeting is organized by the CNS Organization (http://www.cnsorg.org) 
Christiane Linster (Cornell University, USA), President.
Program chair: Erik De Schutter (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Program chair-elect:  Bill Holmes (Ohio University, USA)
Local organizer: Mark van Rossum (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Workshop organizer: Mark van Rossum (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Government Liaison: Dennis Glanzman (NIMH/NIH, USA) and Yuan Liu (NINDS/NIH, 
USA)
Program Committee :
   Steve Bressler (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
   Nicolas Brunel (Universite Paris Rene Descartes, France)
   Frances Chance (University of California, Irvine, USA)
   Sharon Crook (University of Maine, USA)
   Sonja Gruen (Free University Berlin, Germany)
   Ken Harris (Rutgers University, USA)
   Don H. Johnson (Rice University, USA)
   Leslie M. Kay (University of Chicago, USA)
   Theoden Netoff (Boston University, USA)
   Hiroshi Okamato (RIKEN, Japan)
   Mike Paulin (University of Otago, New Zealand)
   


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From A.Cangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk  Wed Jan  4 09:59:24 2006
From: A.Cangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk (Angelo Cangelosi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 14:59:24 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: CFP - IJCNN06 Special Session on Modeling the
	Evolution and Acquisition of Language
Message-ID: <64997DB783F0FD4EB5550AD0D550E2290501DDF6@03-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk>

IJCNN06 (WCCI 2006 - IEEE Congress on Computational Intelligence,
Vancouver, July 16-21 2006)

http://www.wcci2006.org/

Special Session on "Modeling the Evolution and Acquisition of Language"

Call for Papers

 

Scope of Special Session: 

This special session has the scope of providing a forum for the
presentation of the latest models and finding on language evolution and
acquisition models and the discussion and identification of the most
promising future research directions. The special session invites
submissions in any of the following areas:

*	Neural network models of language evolution and acquisition
*	Biological evolution of communication and language
*	Cultural evolution of language
*	Robotics and agent models of linguistic interaction
*	Cognitive models of pre-linguistic abilities (imitation,
attention, categorization etc.)
*	Emergence of language
*	Models of animal communication
*	Interaction between language and cognition
*	Action models of language
*	Grounding of language
*	Evolutionary computation applications to language studies

 

Submission

 

All special session papers must be submitted through the WCCI submission
webpage, where Instructions for Authors are also available. 

http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html

Note that the space limit is now 8 pages. Please choose "S. Modeling the
Evolution and Acquisition of Language"" as your main research topic.
Please notify me beforehand if you are interested in submitting a paper
to the Special Session, by sending me an email to
acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

 

      Important dates:

          o Submission: January 31, 2006

          o Notification: March 15, 2006

          o Camera ready: April 15, 2006

 

Organizers

Angelo Cangelosi (University of Plymouth), Leonid Perlovsky (Air Force
Research Lab, Hanscom AFB), Jose Fernando Fontanari (Universidade de Sao
Paulo, Sao Carlos) 

 

 

---------------- Angelo Cangelosi, PhD ----------------

 

Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognition

Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition Research Group

School of Computing, Communications & Electronics

University of Plymouth

Portland Square Building (A316)

Plymouth PL4 8AA (UK)

E-mail: acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo
<http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo> 

(tel) +44 1752 232559 (fax) +44 1752 232540

 

 

 

---------------- Angelo Cangelosi, PhD ----------------

 

Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognition

Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition Research Group

School of Computing, Communications & Electronics

University of Plymouth

Portland Square Building (A316)

Plymouth PL4 8AA (UK)

E-mail: acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo
<http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo> 

(tel) +44 1752 232559 (fax) +44 1752 232540

 



From bower at uthscsa.edu  Wed Jan  4 12:58:22 2006
From: bower at uthscsa.edu (james Bower)
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:58:22 -0600
Subject: Connectionists: Invited speakers, tutorials,
	and deadlines for WAM-BAMM*06
Message-ID: <p062309debfe1bb5aa61f@[129.111.247.61]>

****************   Deadline for paper submission:  Jan 15th.  *****************
                     (Student travel grants available)



                           http://wam-bamm.org


                           The Second Annual
                  World Association of Modelers (WAM)
            Biologically Accurate Modeling Meeting (BAMM)


                             Wam-bamm *06


                      March 23rd - March 25th
                          San Antonio, Texas


                            http://wam-bamm.org



The paper submission deadline for WAM-BAMM*06 is Jan. 15th.

This is the second annual meeting devoted to the promotion and extension of
biologically accurate modeling and simulation.  This year's meeting 
will  start with a pre-meeting on computational olfaction (March 
22nd) which will include a special tribute to Wil Rall and Gordon 
Shepherd on the 40th anniversary of the original publication of their 
modeling work on dendro-dendritic inhibition in the olfactory bulb.

March 23rd will be devoted to tutorials built around issues in 
realistic modeling.  Currently scheduled tutorials include:

David Beeman, University of Colorado Boulder: Introduction to realistic
neural modeling

Michael Hines, Yale University: Large scale parallel network simulations
using NEURON

Dieter Jaeger, Emory University: How to make the best hand-tuned
single-cell model you can

Sharon Crook, Arizona State University, and others to be announced:
Workshop on XML standards for model specification

Upinder S. Bhalla, NCBS, Bangalore: Biochemical kinetics modeling with
Kinetikit and MOOSE.

Hugo Cornelis, UTHSCA: GENESIS simulations with hsolve


The main meeting will take place on March 24th and 25th.  Currently 
scheduled invited speakers include:

Gordon Shepherd (Yale University)
Wil Rall (NIH - retired)
Mike Hasselmo (Boston University)
Phil Ulinski (University of Chicago)
Upinder Bhalla (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore India)
John Rinzel (New York University)



The meeting's primary objective is to promote communication and
collaboration between users and others involved in realistic biological
modeling and to also provide an introduction to other scientists interested
in realistic biological modeling.  This year's meeting will feature a
pre-meeting (on March 22nd) focused on computation in the olfactory 
system.   (see www.wam-bamm.org for additional details).

Supplementary Travel Funds are available for students presenting 
papers at the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you in old San 'antone.


Jim Bower
Dave Beeman

-- 
                       James M. Bower Ph.D.

                      Research Imaging Center
    University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
                        7703 Floyd Curl Drive
                     San Antonio, TX  78284-6240

                  Cajal Neuroscience Center
                University of Texas San Antonio

                      Phone: 210 567 8080
                         Fax: 210 567 8152


From isabelle at clopinet.com  Mon Jan  9 06:38:24 2006
From: isabelle at clopinet.com (Isabelle Guyon)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:38:24 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: WCCI Model Selection Workshop
Message-ID: <43C24B30.50806@clopinet.com>

DEADLINE == January 31st, 2006 ==

Dear Colleague,

We are organizing a workshop on the topic of
            MODEL SELECTION
a the WCCI conference, July 18, 2006, Vancouver, Canada. See:
http://clopinet.com/isabelle/Projects/modelselect/

To contribute a paper to be included in the proceedings
January 31st, 2006, Submission deadline.
March 15th, 2006, notification of acceptance.
April 15th, 2006, camera ready copy due.

Instructions:
1) Follow the instructions 
http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html. Page limit = 8pages.
2) Submit your paper. IMPORTANT: On the IJCNN 2006 submit page 
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2006/upload.php, under "Main 
research topic", select "S. SPECIAL SESSIONS -> S4. Model selection 
(Guyon)". Do not add other topics.
3) Send email to modelselect at clopinet.com to notify us of you submission.

We are looking forward to receiving your contribution.
Happy New Year!

The organizers

  



From jonas at buchli.org  Mon Jan  9 12:43:57 2006
From: jonas at buchli.org (Jonas Buchli)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:43:57 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CfP: EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 & Call for
	Participation
Message-ID: <1136828637.6858.33.camel@moria.buchli.org>

Dear Connectionists,

Please find below the 2nd call for poster abstracts for the EPFL-LATSIS
Symposium 2006 - Dynamical Principles for Neuroscience and Intelligent
Biomimetic Devices.
Furthermore, the registration is open now, and we are looking forward to
seeing many connectionists in Lausanne.  

Best regards
Jonas Buchli

------------------------------------------------------------------------

<<Please post/forward as you see fit>>

====================================================
* EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 
* --------------------------
* 2nd Call for Poster Abstracts 
* 1st Call for Participation
====================================================

We invite the submission of poster abstracts and the participation for
the 

EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006  
Dynamical Principles for Neuroscience and Intelligent Biomimetic Devices
http://latsis2006.epfl.ch

March, 8-10, 2006
Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland


Aim of the Conference 
---------------------

The goal of the conference is to bring together scientists and engineers
interested in understanding the dynamical properties of the nervous
system, and in taking inspiration from those properties for the design
of prosthetic and robotic devices. The conference is interdisciplinary
in nature, and aims at bringing together researchers working on similar
topics and phenomena but from different backgrounds. 

The conference is made possible thanks to the generous support of the
Latsis Foundation. The presentations will consists of a series of
invited talks (see below) and of poster presentations (with short poster
spotlights).

For more background on the aim of the conference, please visit
http://latsis2006.epfl.ch


Important Dates
---------------

Deadline of abstract submission: January 27, 2006
Notification of acceptance: February 3, 2006

Registration deadline: February 13, 2006

Conference dates: March 8-10, 2006


Abstract submission
-------------------

Please send a two-page abstract (including figures and references as
needed) to jonas.buchli -at- epfl.ch . 


Note that we will not have a full peer review process, the number of
posters that we can accept is however limited. Thus, we will accept the
contributions depending on relevance to the conference topics, quality,
and available place. Once accepted, presenters will have the opportunity
to present their work with a poster, as well as a short poster spotlight
(a 2-minute presentation) in the conference theatre.

Templates as well as additional information on the format of abstracts
and posters is available on the following website:

http://latsis2006.epfl.ch/page14710.html


Proceedings
-----------

The poster abstracts will be published in a booklet with ISBN number
distributed at the conference. 

Registration
------------

Registration for the EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 is now open. Please
visit the following website for information and registration form:

http://latsis2006.epfl.ch/page14478.html

Speakers
--------

Dynamics of brain function and behavior

    * Avis Cohen (University of Maryland)
    * Sten Grillner (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm)
    * Serge Rossignol (Universit? de Montr?al)
    * Carmen Sandi (EPFL)
    * Allen Selverston (UC San Diego) 

Nonlinear Dynamics and neural computation

    * Bard Ermentrout (University of Pittsburgh)
    * Wulfram Gerstner (EPFL)
    * Martin Hasler (EPFL)
    * Wolfgang Maass (TU Graz)
    * Misha Rabinovich (UC San Diego)
    * Misha Tsodyks (Weizmann Institute of Science) 

Neuroprosthetics

    * Maria Chiara Carrozza (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa)
    * Miguel Nicolelis (EPFL/Duke University)
    * Philippe Renaud (EPFL)
    * Andrew Schwartz (University of Pittsburgh) 

Hybrid circuits and electronic neurons

    * Thierry Bal (Unic / CNRS)
    * Rodney Douglas (ETHZ, Zurich)
    * Peter Fromherz (Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry,
Martinsried)
    * Gwendal Le Masson (University of Bordeaux) 

Biomimetic Robotics and Control

    * Jean-Louis Deneubourg (Univ. libre de Bruxelles)
    * Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL)
    * Yasuo Kuniyoshi (University of Tokyo)
    * Jean-Jacques Slotine (MIT)
    * Barbara Webb (University of Edinburgh) 



Organizing Committee
--------------------

Main organizer:

Auke Ijspeert, EPFL 

Co-organizers:

Aude Billard, EPFL 
Dario Floreano, EPFL
Wulfram Gerstner, EPFL 
Martin Hasler, EPFL 
Henry Markram, EPFL 
Misha Rabinovich, UCSD
Al Selverston, UCSD 

Local chair:
Jonas Buchli, EPFL

Email contacts: Auke.Ijspeert -at- epfl.ch   and   Jonas.Buchli -at-
epfl.ch




From osporns at indiana.edu  Mon Jan  9 10:03:47 2006
From: osporns at indiana.edu (Olaf Sporns)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 10:03:47 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: ICDL 2006 Second Call
Message-ID: <43C27B53.3090903@indiana.edu>

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

ICDL 2006
International Conference on Development and Learning
- Dynamics of Development and Learning -
http://www.icdl06.org
Indiana University Bloomington, May 31- June 3, 2006

SPECIAL SESSIONS: http://www.icdl06.org/workshops.html
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: http://www.icdl06.org/speakers.html
PAPER SUBMISSION: http://www.icdl06.org/submissions.html

CALL FOR PAPERS: http://www.icdl06.org/CFP_ICDL2006.pdf
Paper Submission Deadline: FEBRUARY 6, 2006

Recent years have seen a convergence of research in artificial 
intelligence, developmental psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience 
and robotics, aimed at identifying common computational principles of 
development and learning in artificial and natural systems. The theme of 
this year's conference centers on development as a process of dynamic 
change that occurs within a complex and embodied system. The dynamics of 
development extend across multiple levels, from neural circuits, to 
changes in body morphology, sensors, movement, behavior, and 
inter-personal and social patterns. The goal of the conference is to 
present state-of-the-art research on autonomous development in humans, 
animals and robots, and to continue to identify new interdisciplinary 
research directions for the future of the field.

The 5th International Conference on Development and Learning 2006 
(ICDL06) will be held on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, 
May 31- June 3, 2006. The conference is organized with the technical 
co-sponsorship of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. The 
conference will feature plenary talks by invited keynote speakers, 
invited sessions (workshops) organized around a central topic, a panel 
discussion and poster sessions.

Paper submissions (for details regarding format and submission/review 
process see our website at http://www.icdl06.org) are invited in these 
areas:

. General Principles of Development and Learning in Humans and Robots
. Neural, Behavioral and Computational Plasticity
. Embodied Cognition: Foundations and Applications
. Social Development in Humans and Robots
. Language Development and Learning
. Dynamic Systems Approaches
. Emergence of Structures through Development
. Development of Perceptual and Motor Systems
. Models of Developmental Disorders

Authors may specify preferences for oral or poster presentations. All 
submissions will be peer-reviewed and accepted papers will be published 
in a conference proceedings volume. Selected conference presenters will 
be invited to update and expand their papers for publication in a 
special issue on "Dynamics of Development and Learning" of the journal 
Adaptive Behavior (http://adb.sagepub.com/).

ICDL precedes the conference "Artificial Life X", June 3-7, 2006, also 
held on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington 
(http://alifex.org). ICDL and ALIFE will share one day of overlapping 
workshops and tutorials on June 3.

Organizing Committee:
Linda Smith (Chair), Olaf Sporns, Chen Yu, Mike Gasser, Cynthia 
Breazeal, Gideon Deak, John Weng.

-- 
Olaf Sporns, PhD
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Programs in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405



From mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk  Tue Jan 10 07:40:12 2006
From: mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk (Mark van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:40:12 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: 4 Year PhD in neuroinformatics Edinburgh
Message-ID: <1136896812.12770.31.camel@localhost>

4 YEAR PhD IN NEUROINFORMATICS, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

We invite applications for the EPSRC/MRC funded PhD programme in 
Neuroinformatics at the University of Edinburgh. 

This is a 4 year programme with a strongly interdisciplinary character
and is ideal for students who want to apply their computational and
analytical skills to problems in neuroscience and related fields. The
first year consists of courses in neuroscience and informatics, as
well as projects based in experimental labs. The first year is
followed by a 3 year PhD project. The PhD project is commonly done in
collaboration with one of the many departments and institutes
affiliated with the DTC.
The DTC programme is made up of 3 themes:

1) Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience.
Computational, mathematical, and experimental studies of information
processing in the nervous system.

2) Neuromorphic Engineering and Robotics.
Artificial sensor perception, neuromorphic modelling, spiking
computation, and neurorobotics.

3) Data Analysis and Data Handling.
Visualization, data analysis using machine learning, and simulation.

Edinburgh has a strong research community in these areas and leads
the UK in creating a coherent programme in neuroinformatics. Edinburgh
has been voted as 'best place to live in Britain', and has many exciting
cultural and student activities.

Students with a strong background in either computer science,
mathematics, physics or engineering are particularly welcome to apply.
Motivated students with other backgrounds will also be considered.

About 10 full studentships are available to UK students and a small
number of other EU students. The stipend is about 12,000 GB pounds per
annum. Non-EU/non-UK applicants will need to provide their own funding
and evidence thereof.

Full info and application forms can be obtained from:
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/neuroinformatics
Applications received by March 30th will receive priority treatment.



From mfrank at u.arizona.edu  Tue Jan 10 18:29:06 2006
From: mfrank at u.arizona.edu (Michael J Frank)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:29:06 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Model of Orbitofrontal and Basal Ganglia
	Contributions to Decision Making
Message-ID: <101380f60601101529g2562da9em818edd356058bd4e@mail.gmail.com>

The following paper is available for download from
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mfrank/pubs-online.html

Frank, M.J. & Claus, E.D. (in press). Anatomy of a decision:
Striato-orbitofrontal interactions in reinforcement learning, decision
making and reversal. Psychological Review.

Abstract:
We explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia (BG) /
dopamine (DA) system and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in reinforcement
learning and decision making. We show that a "primitive" neural
network model of the BG/DA system learns to make decisions based on
their relative likelihood of reinforcement, but that the same model
fails when the magnitude of gains and losses is more relevant than
their frequency of occurence. An augmented model including OFC and
amygdalar interactions with the BG system is more successful at
estimating the true expected value of decisions, and is faster at
learning to switch behavior when decision-outcome contingencies
change. In our combined model, "Go" and "NoGo" BG pathways modulate
the selection of premotor responses based on their probability of
reinforcement, whereas medial and lateral OFC areas exert top-down
control by representing reinforcement magnitudes in working memory.
The model successfully captures patterns of behavior resulting from
OFC damage in decision making, reversal learning, and devaluation
paradigms, and makes additional predictions for the underlying source
of these deficits.

Michael J Frank, PhD
Assistant Professor
Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition
University of Arizona
1503 E University Blvd, Bldg#68, Tucson, AZ 85721
mfrank at u.arizona.edu
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mfrank/


From masulli at disi.unige.it  Tue Jan 10 10:58:04 2006
From: masulli at disi.unige.it (Francesco Masulli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:58:04 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics
	- Special Session at IJCNN-WCCI 2006
Message-ID: <200601101658.05497.masulli@disi.unige.it>


                                        CALL FOR PAPERS

                                        Special session on
              Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics (Sg)

                                                      at 

IEEE 2006 World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006) -
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2006)
        
Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 16-21, 2006
             http://www.wcci2006.org/home.html

Description and Scope:
Bioinformatics is a fast growing scientific area aimed at managing, 
analyzing and interpreting information from biological data, sequences 
and structures. In the past few years, many Computational 
Intelligence and  Machine Learning algorithms have been successfully 
applied to the solution of complex problems typical of this field, 
including signal and image processing, clustering, feature selection, 
data visualization, and data mining. 

This session aims at highlighting recent advances in the applications 
of Neural Networks techniques to Bioinformatics, from improving 
protein-protein  interaction  to pharmacogenomic systems, from clustering 
to data visualization and mining.


Organizers:
Francesco Masulli (1) and Roberto Tagliaferri (2)

(1)  Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione,
Universita' di Genova and CNISM, Via Dodecaneso 35, 16146 Genova, Italy
email: masulli at disi.unige.it

(2) Dipartimento di Matematica ed Applicazioni,
Universit? di Salerno, Via Ponte don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano (Sa), Italy
email:rtagliaferri at unisa.it


Important deadlines:
January 31   2006  Paper submission deadline
March   15   2006  Author notification of acceptance or rejection
April   15   2006  Deadline for receipt of final manuscript

Paper submission:

At http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html
you'll find the Instruction for Authors and the link to the IJCNN submission
site.  While submitting, at "Main research topic" select 
"Sg. Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics (Masulli, Tagliaferri)"


From sunny at sunnybains.com  Thu Jan 12 10:45:58 2006
From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:45:58 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: The Neuromorphic Engineer: now available for
	download
Message-ID: <0B8394AD-3A66-4988-91B5-B8C66A93DF12@sunnybains.com>

The latest issue of The Neuromorphic Engineer (Volume 2, Number 2),  
published by the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, came out in  
December.

This issue contains article on
?	A neuromorphic robot vision with a mixed analog- digital architecture
?	Telluride Workshop highlights
?	The Telluride ?Grand Challenge? Robot Race
?	The Audiosapiana robot contender
?	 A high-speed/precision winner-take-all circuit
?	 Bio-inspired	robot vision for a grasping task
?	 Wide-dynamic-range imaging
?	 A cortically-inspired active binocular vision system
?	 The USB Revolution

While the Institute's website is being re-designed, the issue can be  
downloaded from:

http://www.sunnybains.com/NME/NME22.pdf

If this link doesn't work, then it means the website is now ready. In  
this case, please go to:

http://www.sunnybains.com/NME

where I will put a re-direct.


Dr Sunny Bains
Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer
EEE Department
Imperial College London




From Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp  Mon Jan 16 00:47:44 2006
From: Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp (Luc Berthouze)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:47:44 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: Deadline extension - Workshop on Motor Development
	(Bristol, UK, 3-6 April 2006)
Message-ID: <980335C2-DD26-40DC-8DDC-162748800D17@aist.go.jp>


Please note that the deadline for submission to the AISB workshop on  
Motor Development has been extended to the 6th of February.

----------

Call for Papers: Motor Development
http://www.neurosci.aist.go.jp/~berthouz/MotDev.html

April 5th-6th 2006

A symposium part of the AISB 2006 conference
University of Bristol, Bristol, England

Call for Papers

The motor activity of an organism is one of its primary means of  
interacting with, and operating on, its environment. As such, its  
development is key to its cognitive development and, indeed,  
developmental psychology has shown both processes to be tightly coupled.
In embodied robotics and cognitive modeling, however, these processes  
have been mostly treated in isolation with systems either evolving  
higher cognitive processes, or acquiring new motor skills. The  
motivation of this symposium is that understanding, and simulating,  
the mechanisms underlying motor development is necessary to implement  
an ecologically-balanced development of the system.
This interdisciplinary symposium aims to bring together researchers  
from neuroscience, developmental psychology, computer science and  
robotics to examine the latest advances in the area, and delineate  
new strategies.

Submissions

We invite abstracts on any subject within the area of motor  
development. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
- Motor development in animals and humans: studies, models and theories
- Motor development in robots: issues, models, experiments or  
simulations
- Evolutionary developmental biology and motor development
- Critical periods of motor development
- Pathologies of motor development
- Interplay between motor and cognitive development
- Degree of freedom problem
- U-shape development
- Emergence of new skills
- Role of caregiver in skill acquisition

Accepted abstracts will be presented orally on the day and appear in  
the published workshop proceedings.
Extended abstracts of between 1 and 2 pages should be submitted as  
PDF files to Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp by 6th February 2006.
Selected papers will be invited for publication in a special issue of  
a journal. Further details will be available soon.

Organiser

             Luc Berthouze, AIST Neuroscience Research Institute, Japan

Programme Committee (confirmed members)

	    Christian Balkenius, Lund University, Sweden
             Luc Berthouze, AIST Neuroscience Research Institute, Japan
             Yiannis Demiris, Imperial College, UK
             Eugene Goldfield, Children's Hospital Boston, USA
             Brian Hopkins, Lancaster University, UK
             Giorgio Metta, Genoa University, Italy
             Claes Van Hofsten, Uppsala University, Sweden

Important dates

             Submissions of papers by :     06 Feb 06
             Notification of decision:            20 Feb 06
             Camera ready copies by:        06 Mar 06

Up-to-date information at: http://www.neurosci.aist.go.jp/~berthouz/ 
MotDev.html

-------------------

Dr. Luc Berthouze, Senior Research Scientist,
Neuroscience Research Institute (AIST 2)
Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan
Tel: +81-298-61-5369 Fax: +81-298-61-5841
Email: Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp





From b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk  Fri Jan 13 11:01:35 2006
From: b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk (b.graham@cs.stir.ac.uk)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:01:35 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc & PhD posts in computational neuroscience
Message-ID: <1062.213.78.119.61.1137168095.squirrel@www.cs.stir.ac.uk>

Postdoctoral Research Fellow and PhD Studentship in Computational
Neuroscience.

Computational Intelligence research group, Department of Computing Science
and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Scotland. A 36-month Research
Assistant post (salary range: ?20,044 - ?30,002p.a.; appointment up to
spine point 6: a maximum of ?22,289 p.a.) and a PhD studentship (stipend
?12,000p.a. plus UK/EU fees) to work on an EPSRC funded project concerning
?Dynamical information processing in a neuronal microcircuit?.

The project will investigate the dynamics of information storage and
recall in neural microcircuits via computer simulation of neural network
models based on the known cell types and network architecture of the
mammalian hippocampus. Of crucial importance is how plasticity (learning)
is dynamically controlled so that new information can be encoded without
disrupting existing memory traces and how information recall occurs either
interleaved or in parallel with storage of new memories. The network
models will include a far more detailed microcircuit than has been
attempted before in studies of neural information processing. The aim is
to investigate hypotheses concerning the functional roles within the
neural microcircuitry of four major classes of inhibitory interneurons.

The posts will be held in the laboratory of Dr Bruce Graham within the
Computational Intelligence research group in the Department of Computing
Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling. The project is in
collaboration with the experimental laboratory of Dr Stuart Cobb in the
Division of Neuroscience and Biomedical Systems at the University of
Glasgow. There will be significant interaction with Dr Cobb?s laboratory,
allowing direct access to the latest experimental knowledge and results.
There is funding for conference attendance and for a small parallel
processing computer simulation facility.

The postdoctoral fellow will have, or be shortly about to complete, a PhD
in computational neuroscience or biologically-related neural networks. You
will be familiar with the mathematical and computational techniques
involved in modelling biologically-realistic neurons and cortical neural
circuits. Experience with either the NEURON or GENESIS simulation packages
and the parallel implementation of neural network simulations will be
highly regarded.

Applicants for the PhD studentship may have either a numerate background
(mathematics, physics, computing science) with an interest in
computational neuroscience, or a biological/neuroscience background with
good quantitative skills and an interest in computer modelling.

Informal enquiries, ideally including a CV, may be made to Dr Bruce
Graham: Tel: 01786 467432, Fax: 01786 464551 or e-mail:
b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk, from whom further details of the project and how
to apply can be obtained. The positions are available from July 2006.
Applications should be received by 31st March 2006.


-- 
Dr Bruce Graham, Reader (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk)
Dept. of Computing Science and Mathematics,
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA
phone: +44 1786 467 432   fax: +44 1786 464 551

-- 
The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA.  Privileged/Confidential Information may
be contained in this message.  If you are not the addressee indicated
in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such
person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone
and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is
prohibited and may be unlawful.  In such case, you should destroy this
message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.  Please advise
immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email
for messages of this kind.



From cns at cnsorg.org  Sun Jan 15 15:55:20 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:55:20 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Submissions for CNS 2006 open
Message-ID: <20060115205520.M90404@cnsorg.org>


Contributions to CNS 2006 can now be submitted. 

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 6, 2006 midnight; submission open
January 15, 2006

Submissions should be prepared as a three page extended summary (including
figures and references) in PDF format. To submit your paper, follow the
www.cns.confmaster.net to the submission server. Click on the link register as
new author and edit your userdata. Your password will be emailed to you to the
email address indicated. Once you have registered as an author, you can log
on, change your password and follow the link register paper to submit your
contribution to CNS *2006. Please note that a short abstract (< 400 words) for
the meeting program should also be submitted at this time. At submission,
please indicate if you would prefer an oral or poster presentation (drop down
menue paper type) and choose one Systems and between one and three Field of
study keywords in the keywords drop down menus.
Please check www.cnsorg.org for more detail. 

Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006
July 16 - July 20, 2006
Edinburgh, UK
http://www.cnsorg.org 


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk  Fri Jan 13 04:49:00 2006
From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:49:00 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2006
Message-ID: <20060113094900.GC23422@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk>

	    ADVANCED COURSE IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE
		     (A PENS NEUROSCIENCE SCHOOL)

	  August 7th - September 1st  2006, ARCACHON, FRANCE

		APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 10th, 2006

DIRECTORS:	  Ad Aertsen (BCCN, Freiburg, Germany)
		  Peter Dayan (UCL, London, UK)
    	          Nicolas Brunel (CNRS, Paris, France)
                  Israel Nelken, (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel)
LOCAL ORGANIZER:  Gwendal Le Masson (INSERM, Bordeaux, France)

The Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience is for advanced
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are interested in
learning the essentials of the field. 
 
We seek students of any nationality from a variety of disciplines,
including neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, computer
science, mathematics and psychology. Students are expected to have a
keen interest and basic background in neurobiology as well as some
computer experience.

The course has two complementary parts. Mornings are devoted to
lectures given by distinguished international faculty on topics across
the breadth of experimental and computational neuroscience. During the
rest of the day, students are given practical training in the art and
practice of neural modelling, largely through the medium of their
individual choice of model systems. 

The first week of the course introduces students to essential
neurobiological concepts and to the most important techniques in
modelling single cells, networks and neural systems. Students learn
how to solve their research problems using software packages such as
MATLAB, NEST, NEURON, XPP, etc. During the following three weeks the
lectures cover specific brain areas and functions. Topics range from
modelling single cells and subcellular processes through the
simulation of simple circuits, large neuronal networks and system
level models of the brain. The course ends with project presentations
by the students.

A maximum of 30 students will be accepted. There will be a minimum fee
of EUR 500 per student (depending on the course's funding) covering
costs for lodging, meals and other course expenses. Also depending on
funding, there will be a limited number of tuition fee waivers and
travel stipends available for students who need financial help for
attending the course. We specifically encourage applications from
researchers who work in the developing world. These students will be
selected following the normal submission procedure.

Applications, including a description of the target project must be
submitted electronically (see below) and should be accompanied by the
names and email details of two referees who have agreed to furnish
references. Applications will be assessed by a committee, with
selection being based on the scientific quality of the candidate and
of the project, the recommendation letters, and evidence that the
course may afford substantial benefit.
 
More information and the application process is available at:

http://www.neuroinf.org/courses/EUCOURSE/EU06         

Please apply electronically using a web browser. The deadline for
applications is April 10th, 2006.

Contact address:

Camilla Bruns,
Berlin University of Technology
Neural Information Processing Group
Franklinstr. 28/29
10587 Berlin, Germany

bruns at cs.tu-berlin.de
  



From ecuadros at spc.org.pe  Thu Jan 12 12:34:21 2006
From: ecuadros at spc.org.pe (Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:34:21 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: CFP IJCNN06 Special Session
 "Constructive/Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps"
Message-ID: <43C6931D.2080700@spc.org.pe>

Dear colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Session about "Constructive/Hierarchical 
Self-Organizing Maps"
at the International Joint INNS-IEEE Conference on Neural Networks 
(IJCNN) 2006 in Vancouver, Canada

Please send this message to your colleagues working on this topic.

Best regards
ernesto

*Call for Papers for a Special Session
"Constructive/Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps"*
** 
International Joint INNS-IEEE Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2006
as part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligenc (WCCI2006)
Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
July 16- 21, 2006, IJCNN 2006,
(http://www.wcci2006.org/)

The aims of this session is to bring together researchers working on novel
constructive models based on Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). This area brings
together knowledge from Hierarchical SOMs, Information Retrieval, Access 
Methods
such as Spatial and Metric Access Methods, Constructive Techniques, etc.

Topics include but are not restricted to:
* Hierarchical SOM
* Constructive SOM
* Self-evolving architectures
* Evolving and Evolutionary Self-Organizing Maps,
* Incorporating Access Methods on Self-Orgainzing Maps
* Techniques to find an appropriate SOM architecture
* Similarity Information Retrieval
* Bayesian Approaches

Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas - ecuadros at spc.org.pe 
<mailto:ecuadros at spc.org.pe>
and Prof. Dra. Roseli Ap. Francelin Romero - rafrance at icmc.usp.br 
<mailto:rafrance at icmc.usp.br>

Submissions and deadlines:
Paper Submission: January 31, 2006
Decision Notification: March 15, 2006
Camera-Ready Submission: April 15, 2006

All accepted papers will be published in the IJCNN 2006 Proceedings.

Each paper must have the title, authors with e-mails/web sites, and
a detailed abstract as possible.  All accepted papers must be
presented at the conference.

Please be sure to choose this special session as the MAIN RESEARCH TOPIC 
when submit a paper through respective Paper Submission System.

We encourage contributing authors to take a prompt action to avoid 
last-minute traffic.

Best regards
**************************************************************
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas. PhD
Head of School of Computer Science (Informatica)
Universidad Catolica San Pablo
Arequipa-Peru
Peruvian Computer Society, President
http://socios.spc.org.pe/ecuadros
+51-54-934-1932 (mobile) +51-54-400416 (home)
+51-54-281517 (Fax)
**************************************************************





-- 
**************************************************************
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas. PhD
Head of School of Computer Science (Informatica)
Universidad Catolica San Pablo
Arequipa-Peru
Peruvian Computer Society, President
http://socios.spc.org.pe/ecuadros
+51-54-934-1932 (mobile) +51-54-400416 (home)
+51-54-281517 (Fax)
**************************************************************



From fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de  Mon Jan 16 06:59:44 2006
From: fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de (Friedhelm Schwenker)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:59:44 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: ANNPR 2006 Call for papers
Message-ID: <43CB8AB0.60803@neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de>

** apologies if you receive multiple copies of this document **

====================================================
              2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

                  ANNPR 2006

    2nd IAPR TC3 International Workshop on
Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition

        August 31 - September 2 2006
University of Ulm, Reisensburg Castle (Germany)
 (http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/ANNPR06)


The workshop proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag (LNAI).

Aim of the workshop:
ANNPR 2006 follows the success of the first workshop ANNPR 2003
held at the University of Florence, Italy, in September 2003.
This 2nd ANNPR workshop will act as a major forum for international
researchers and practitioners working in all areas of neural network based
pattern recognition to present and discuss the latest research, results,
and ideas in these areas.
The TC3 "Neural Networks & Computational Intelligence" is
one of the 20 technical committees of the International Association
on Pattern Recognition (IAPR). The scope of this TC is on all
kinds of Computational Intelligence approaches, including artificial
neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computing, with focus
on pattern recognition applications.

Papers are solicited dealing with neural networks and pattern
recognition which emphasize methodological issues arising in
applications.
They should be related but not limited to the following topics.

Methodological issues:
-    Supervised learning.
-    Unsupervised learning.
-    Combination of supervized and unsupervized learning.
-    Feedforward networks and kernel machines
-    Recurrent and competitive neural networks.
-    Hierarchical modular architectures and hybrid systems.
-    Combination of neural networks and Hidden Markov models.
-    Multiple classifier systems and ensemble methods.

Applications in Pattern Recognition
-    Image processing and segmentation.
-    Sensorfusion and multimodal processing.
-    Feature extraction, dimension reduction.
-    Clustering and vector quantisation.
-    Speech and speaker recognition.
-    Data, text, and web mining.
-    Bioinformatics.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original and unpublished contributions are solicited which include
regular papers and extended abstracts.
Potential participants should submit a paper describing their work
in one of the areas described above. Each regular paper must be
accompanied by an abstract summarizing the contribution it makes
to the field.
Maximum paper length for regular papers is 12 pages in LNCS format.
Extended abstracts can have at most four pages. Submission of a paper
constitutes a commitment that, if accepted, one or more authors will
attend and participate in the workshop. The workshop
proceedings will be published in the Springer LNAI series.
Electronic submission in camera-ready format is required.

Papers must be sent to:
Friedhelm Schwenker, Department of Neural Information Processing,
University of Ulm (Email:  friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Sessions:
Persons wishing to organise a special session should submit a proposal
to the workshop chairs: (Email: annpr2006 at uni-ulm.de).
Proposals should include a session title, a list of topics covered by the
session and a list of 3-5 papers for possible presentation in the session.
Proposals must be received by February 1, 2006.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Dates:
Proposals for special sessions: February 1, 2006
Paper submission: March 1, 2006
Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2006
Camera ready copies: May 15, 2006

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further information:
Contact Simone Marinai or Friedhelm Schwenker (Email: annpr2006 at uni-ulm.de)
or visit the Workshop web page 
(http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/ANNPR06/).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Chair

Simone Marinai (University of Florence, Italy)

Program Chair

Friedhelm Schwenker (University of Ulm, Germany)


Program Committee (confirmed members):

Shigeo Abe (Kobe University, Japan)
Herve Bourlard (IDIAP, Martigny, Switzerland)
Horst Bunke (University of Bern, Switzerland)
Neamat El Gayar(Cairo University, Egypt)
Patrick Gallinari (University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France)
Marco Gori (University of Siena, Italy)
Barbara Hammer (Technical University of Clausthal, Germany)
Tom Heskes (University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
Jose Manuel Inesta (University of Alicante, Spain)
Rudolph Kruse (Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany)
Cheng-Lin Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
Marco Maggini (University of Siena, Italy)
Erkki Oja (Helsinky University of Technology, Finland)
Guenther Palm (University of Ulm, Germany)
Marcello Pelillo (University Ca Foscari, Venezia, Italy)
Raul Rojas (Freie University of Berlin, Germany)
Fabio Roli (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Ah Chung Tsoi (University of Wollongong, Australia)
Michel Verleysen (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK)

-----------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Friedhelm Schwenker
University of Ulm      | email:  fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de
Department of Neural   | fax:    +49-731-50-24156
Information Processing | phone:  +49-731-50-24159
D-89069 Ulm (Germany)  | www:    http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/mitarbeiter/FSchwenker.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------




From s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk  Thu Jan 12 19:27:34 2006
From: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk (Crone, Sven)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:27:34 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: CfP - ISF 2006 - Forecasting with Neural Networks
Message-ID: <7F332A8009EE5D4CB62C87717A3498A111B4C424@exchange-be1.lancs.ac.uk>

=================================================
CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Track & Forecasting Competition on 
"FORECASTING WITH ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS"
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF_2006.htm

@ The 26th International Symposium on Forecasting 2006
June 11-14, 2006, Santander, Spain
http://www.isf2006.org 

=================================================

Dear Researchers and Practitioners!
You are invited to submit an abstract related to the theory and practice
of forecasting with artificial neural networks to the special track at
the 2006 International Symposium of Forecasting. All accepted and
presented abstracts will be invited to submit full papers to be
considered for post conference publication. Please find instructions
below or visit the special session website at
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF_2006.htm 

To participate & receive updates, please indicate your interest by
sending an empty email to s.crone at neural-forecasting.com with "ISF2006
info" in the subject line.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
General CfP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
We invite abstracts related to the theory and practice of forecasting
with neural networks, describing new techniques, methods and models and
novel applications. Particular emphasis is given to submissions related
to the use of NN in changing environments, the 2006 ISF theme. We
strongly encourage submissions from practitioners documenting successful
AND unsuccessful novel applications of NN in practice. A list of topics
of interest is given below:

Methods (include but are not limited to):
- artificial neural networks (all paradigms)
- feedforward & recurrent
- single methods & ensembles
- support vector machines & regression
- NN related & hybrid soft computing methods
- etc.

Applications (include but are not limited to):
- business forecasting & demand planning
- time series prediction & analysis 
- predictive classification & data mining
- etc.

Theory
- Use of NN in changing environments
- Stability & retraining of networks
- Principles of modelling NN for forecasting
- Data-preprocessing for NN forecasting 
- Model selection of NN candidates
- etc.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Forecasting Competition CfP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to the general track, we invite submissions to a
"forecasting competition". As in the previous year, we invite research
and practitioner teams to participate in a forecasting competition open
to neural networks and methods from computational intelligence. The 2006
competition will focus on river flood forecasting and will be organised
by Chris Dawson. To present results each participant must also submit an
abstract and register at the conference. More information and datasets
may be found at
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF06_Neural_forecasting_competition.h
tm 


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Submission of Abstracts / Papers 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Prospective authors are invited to submit their abstract (limit of 300
words, Arial, 10pt, no mathematics, no references, a blank line between
paragraphs) electronically on the conference website www.isf2006.org
following the guidelines posted there. The review process will contain
at least two independent reviewers. For the forecasting competition, the
abstract should describe the NN model and modelling process applied.
Full submissions in a Springer publication on "Advances in Forecasting
with Neural Networks" will be encouraged after the conference. All
submissions must be received by February 28th 2006. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference Information 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The 26th International Symposium on Forecasting, organised annually by
the International Institute of Forecasting, is the premier conference
for researchers and practitioners in forecasting. The 2005 conference in
San Antonio attracted over 200 presentations in all areas of
forecasting, with 31 presentations dedicated to neural networks for
forecasting in 7 sessions, spread across 3 tracks of NN theory, NN
applications and a NN forecasting competition. It comprised one of the
largest gatherings focussed on neural forecasting in 2006 and provided a
premier opportunity for networking within the field. All recent ISF
conferences have hosted a dedicated track on NN in addition to various
submissions to alternative tracks of nonlinear methods, and application
focused tracks such as financial forecasting, forecasting in sports etc 

The Symposium will be held at the Magdalena Palace, the former summer
residence of the Kings of Spain, in Santander's historic peninsula which
boasts superb views of Santander's famous harbour. The organisers are
looking forward to giving you a taste of Spanish hospitality and special
impressions of their splendid city and exciting country! For Information
on Santander please follow the links from the conference website at
www.isf2006.org 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Dates 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
February 28th, 2006 Abstracts due
March 27th, 2006 Notification of acceptance
April 17th, 2006 Registration deadline
June 11-14, 2006 25th International Symposium on Forecasting 2006
August 2006 Call for Post-conference publications

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Information 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Track Chair
Sven F. Crone

Lancaster University
Research Centre for Forecasting
Dept. of Management Science
Centre for Forecasting

s.crone at neural-forecasting.com



From sunny at sunnybains.com  Thu Jan 19 09:34:08 2006
From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:34:08 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Call for articles for The Neuromorphic Engineer
Message-ID: <F9C8512D-448E-46D8-898F-C589147F0010@sunnybains.com>

The Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering is currently working on the  
next issue of our newsletter, The Neuromorphic Engineer (see link at  
the end of this message for the last issue).

If you are working on a project that you think would be interesting  
to our audience (either on research that is neuromorphic in its own  
right or on a tool that would be useful to the neuromorphic  
community) please get in touch with us about writing an article. All  
we need is a brief paragraph, ideally with a link to your website or  
that of your group/company.

If you're not sure whether your work falls into the neuromorphic  
category, please look at the Wikipedia entry for the subject, added  
by one of our Editorial Board:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromorphic

If you're still not sure, just go ahead and send the idea in anyway  
and we'll let you know.

If your suggestion is accepted by our Board, we'll be looking for an  
800-1200 word article including captions and references that would be  
due on 24 February (and should be published in early April).

I look forward to hearing from you and, hopefully, to reading about  
your work.

Very best,

Dr Sunny Bains
Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer

Last issue at:
http://www.sunnybains.com/NME/NME22.pdf


From sylee at kaist.ac.kr  Tue Jan 17 23:12:43 2006
From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:12:43 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: Volume 9 (October-December 2005) of Neural
	Information processing - Letters and Reviews
In-Reply-To: <20041009180525143664167a9d5c1346@kaist.ac.kr>
Message-ID: <1137557459572110.30198@webmail>

I would like to inform you that the Volume 9 of the NIP-LR, Neural
Information Processing - Letters and Reviews, 
the Online/Offline Journal with high-quality timely-publication with
double-blind reviews, will be available
as a printed book on January 2006. A free copy will be mailed upon e-mail
request to nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr.
Also, the online version has been online at www.nip-lr.info.

The Table of Contents is attached.

Soo-Young Lee
Editor-in-Chief, NIP-LR
Professor, Department of BioSystems
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Director,
Brain Science Research center Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology
373-1 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu
Daejeon 305-701
Korea
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Neural Information Processing - Letters and Reviews, 
Vol.9, Numbers1-3, October-December 2005

Review

pp. 1-13 
Gradients on Matrix Manifolds and their Chain Rule
Fabian J. Theis

Letters

pp. 15-22 
Modular Network SOM: Self-Organizing Maps in Function Space
Kazuhiro Tokunaga, Tetsuo Furukawa, and Syozo Yasui

pp. 23-29 
An Improved Neural Network Algorithm for Broadcast Scheduling Problem in
Packet Radio
Weixing Bi, Zheng Tang, Jiahai Wang, and Qiping Cao

pp. 31-40 
Active Learning in Recurrent Neural Networks Facilitated by a Hebb-like
Learning Rule with Memory
Frank Emmert-Streib

pp. 41-51 
Levenberg-Marquardt Learning Algorithm for Integrate-and-Fire Neuron Model
Deepak Mishra, Abhishek Yadav, Sudipta Ray, and Prem K. Kalra

pp. 53-58 
Bacteria Classification on Power Spectrums of Complete DNA Sequences by
Self-Organizing Map
Cheng-Chang Jeng, I-Ching Yang, Kun-Lin Hsieh, and Chun-Nan Lin

pp. 59-67 
Connectionist Selectionism: A Case Study of Parity
Rio B. T. Lowry and Michael R. W. Dawson



From Ben.Vincent at bristol.ac.uk  Tue Jan 17 05:23:13 2006
From: Ben.Vincent at bristol.ac.uk (Ben.Vincent@bristol.ac.uk)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:23:13 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Two papers available
Message-ID: <1137493393.43ccc592014dd@webmail.bris.ac.uk>

Two papers are available for download from
http://ben.psy.bris.ac.uk/#publications


Vincent B. T, Baddeley R. J, Troscianko T, Gilchrist I. D, 2005, Is the
early visual system optimised to be energy efficient?, Network:
Computation in Neural Systems, special issue on Sensory Coding and the
Natural Environment, 16(2/3): 175-190

Abstract
This paper demonstrates that a representation which balances natural
image encoding with metabolic energy efficiency shows many similarities
to the neural organisation observed in the early visual system. A simple
linear model was constructed that learned receptive fields by optimally
balancing information coding with metabolic expense for an entire visual
field in a 2-stage visual system. The input to the model consists of a
space variant retinal array of photoreceptors. Natural images were then
encoded through a bottleneck such as the retinal ganglion cells that
form the optic nerve. The natural images represented by the activity of
retinal ganglion cells was then encoded by many more cortical cells in a
divergent representation. Qualitatively, the system learnt by optimising
information coding and energy expenditure and matched 1) The centre
surround organisation of retinal ganglion cells; 2) The gabor-like
organisation of cortical simple cells; 3) Higher densities of receptive
fields in the fovea decreasing in the periphery; 4) Smaller receptive
fields in the fovea increasing in size in the periphery; 5) Spacing
ratios of retinal cells and 6) Aspect ratios of cortical receptive
fields. Quantitatively however there are small but significant
discrepancies between density slopes which may be accounted for by
taking optic blur and fixation induced image statistics into account. In
addition, the model cortical receptive fields are more broadly tuned
than biological cortical neurons, this may be accounted for by the
computational limitation of modelling a relatively low number of
neurons. This paper shows that retinal receptive field properties can be
understood in terms of balancing coding with synaptic energy expenditure
and cortical receptive fields with firing rate energy expenditure and
provides a sound biological explanation of why sparse distributions are
beneficial.



Vincent B. T, Baddeley R. J, 2003, Synaptic energy efficiency in retinal
processing, Vision Research 43, 12831290

Abstract
Recent work suggests that the visual system may represent early visual
information in an energy efficient manner [Nature 381 (1996);Nature, 381
(1996) 607;Neural Comput. 3 (2001) 799;Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 11 (2001)
475]. This paper applies the idea of energy efficient representations to
understand retinal processing, and provides evidence that centre
surround processing observed is efficient in terms of minimizing
synaptic activity. In particular, it is shown that receptive fields at
different retinal eccentricities and at different levels of noise, can
be understood in terms of maximizing the transmission of visual
information given a constraint on total synaptic strengths and hence
energy consumption.



Ben Vincent, DPhil
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland
Road, Bristol, BS8 1TN, UK
http://ben.psy.bris.ac.uk/


From n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk  Mon Jan 23 05:59:17 2006
From: n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk (Neil Burgess)
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:59:17 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: Post-doc postion on the neural basis of human
	spatial memory at UCL
In-Reply-To: <006501c46041$a3ab74c0$4afe2880@Kinkajou>
Message-ID: <01b901c6200c$0f1ca630$4afe2880@Kinkajou>

Postdoc research position on the neural basis of human spatial memory, 
at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept. of Anatomy,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON.
(apologies for multiple posting)

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the 
neural representations spatial locations in virtual environments, with a 
particular focus on perspective taking. Work will include the use of virtual 
reality combined with fMRI in healthy volunteers and computational modelling. 
This research is part of the 'Wayfinding' project of the European Union. The 
post at UCL will involve development of spatial tasks and performance 
of fMRI experiments, and possible analysis of electrophysiological (EEG/MEG) 
data, cognitive psychology or computational modelling according to the 
development of the project and the interests of the research fellow. Relevant 
research experience and knowledge of spatial memory, and experience of MatLab 
or virtual reality programming would be desirable. The position is available 
from 1 April 2006 for 2 years, starting salary ?27,286 (inc. London Allowance). 

The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience houses several world-class research 
groups and is located close to the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience 
and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience unit.

Informal enquiries should be addressed to Professor Neil Burgess (email: 
n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk). For an outline of the lab?s research interests see: 
http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/groups/space_memory

The full application form can be found on 
http://www.anat.ucl.ac.uk/vacancy/0601_burgess41917.doc
The closing date for applications is 20th February 2006



From B.Kappen at science.ru.nl  Tue Jan 24 11:14:44 2006
From: B.Kappen at science.ru.nl (Bert Kappen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:14:44 +0100 (CET)
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position at SNN Nijmegen
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0601241710290.21782@m50-041.azn.nl>

Postdoc position available at SNN Nijmegen.

SNN Nijmegen is a research group dedicated to fundamental research in
the areas of machine learning and computational neuroscience. Specific
topics are Bayesian networks, approximate inference methods, time-series
modeling, bio-informatics, expert systems, stochastic control and
collaborative decision making. The group consists currently of 8
researchers and one programmer.

In our group, we have a postdoc position available in a project on
genetic linkage analysis, which concerns the problem of finding the
genetic correlates of diseases or phenotypes in pedigrees of humans or
animals. The required computation is intractable and has recently been
succesfully improved using belief propagation (CVM). The research is
carried out in close collaboration with experimental research groups on
human genetics and animal breeding.

The requirement for the postdoc position is a PhD degree and publications
in the area of machine learning and/or genetics. The postdoc position
is full-time for a period of 3 years.

For more information contact Bert Kappen (b.kappen at science.ru.nl, +31
24 3614241).

Applications should be sent by email before March 1 2006 to
b.kappen at science.ru.nl.  Applications should contain a complete CV, a brief
description of his or her research interests.


Bert Kappen             SNN           Radboud University Nijmegen
URL: www.snn.kun.nl/~bert             The Netherlands			
tel: +31 24 3614241                   fax: +31 24 3541435
B.Kappen at science.ru.nl





From psollich at mth.kcl.ac.uk  Tue Jan 24 11:30:55 2006
From: psollich at mth.kcl.ac.uk (Peter Sollich)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:30:55 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Connectionists: Two Ph.D. studentships in statistical machine
 learning and speech recognition
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0601241630300.3890@otto.mth.kcl.ac.uk>

Dear colleagues,

I would be grateful if you could pass on the advert below to any potential
candidates, or colleagues in relevant areas.

Many thanks and best wishes,
Peter Sollich

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         Two Ph.D. Studentships
                        at King's College London

        Robust syllable recognition in the acoustic waveform domain

                        Start date: 1 April 2006
                  (or as soon as possible thereafter)

Two fully funded three-year Ph.D. studentships are available on an EPSRC
research grant for study under the supervision of Dr Zoran Cvetkovic
(Electronic Engineering) and Prof Peter Sollich (Mathematics) at King's
College London. The aim of the research project is to investigate whether
automatic speech recognition can be made more robust against noise by
working directly in the high-dimensional space of acoustic waveforms
rather than with more standard low-dimensional feature vectors. Further
details on the project and the relevant background can be found at
http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~psollich/speech.html

Applications are now invited from suitably qualified candidates with an
excellent first degree in electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics,
computer science, or theoretical physics. The project will involve
research at the interface of signal processing, information theory, and
machine learning (pattern recognition, statistical inference). Experience
in one of these areas, preferably at Master's level, will be an advantage.
Interested candidates should contact Dr Cvetkovic or Prof Sollich directly
and as soon as possible (contact details below), preferably by email.

The grant provides payment of full university fees (at the rate for
European Union students), a maintenance grant of around 13,600 pounds per
year, as well as provision for travel to conferences and dedicated
computing equipment. The successful applicants will be based at King's
College's Strand Campus. This is the most central of all the London
colleges, situated midway between the Houses of Parliament and St Paul's
Cathedral and close to Covent Garden, Soho, and Trafalgar Square.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Zoran Cvetkovic
Director, Centre for Digital Signal Processing Research
Division of Engineering
Email: zoran.cvetkovic at kcl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 - (0)20 - 7848 2858
Web:   http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/pse/diveng/research/cdspr/zor/

Prof Peter Sollich
Department of Mathematics
Email: peter.sollich at kcl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 - (0)20 - 7848 2875
Web:   http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~psollich/

King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------




From hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de  Tue Jan 24 18:40:34 2006
From: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de (Pascal Hitzler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:40:34 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: CfP: ECAI06 Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and
	Reasoning, NeSy'06
Message-ID: <43D6BAF2.10500@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Call for Papers
---------------

Second International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning

***NeSy'06***

A Workshop at ECAI2006, Riva del Garda, Italy, August 2006
Website http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy06/
Deadline for submission: 15th of April, 2006
NeSy'05 took place at IJCAI-05, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2005.


Scope
-----

Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in 
their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent 
developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an 
opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence 
with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these 
challenges.

The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to 
create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the 
presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic 
integration. Topics of interest include:

     * The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems;
     * Learning in neural-symbolic systems;
     * Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks;
     * Reasoning in neural-symbolic systems;
     * Biological inspiration for neural-symbolic integration;
     * Applications in robotics, semantic web, engineering, 
bioinformatics, etc.


Submission
----------

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that 
have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere. Submitted 
papers must be written in English and should not exceed 6 pages in the 
case of research and experience papers, and 2 pages in the case of 
position papers (including figures, bibliography and appendices) in ECAI 
format. All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality, 
relevance, originality, significance, and soundness. Papers must be 
submitted directly by email in PDF format to nesy at soi.city.ac.uk


Presentation
------------

Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will 
include extra time for audience discussion of the presentation allowing 
the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and 
ideas being presented.


Publication
-----------

Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings, 
which will be distributed during the workshop. Authors of the best 
papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their 
papers to the journal of logic and computation, OUP.


Important Dates
---------------

Deadline for submission: 15th of April, 2006
Notification of acceptance: 10th of May, 2006
Camera-ready paper due: 17th of May, 2006
Workshop date: 28 or 29 Aug
ECAI 2006 main conference dates:
	28th of August to 1st of September, 2006.


Workshop Organisers
-------------------

Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK)
Pascal Hitzler (University Karlsruhe, Germany)
Guglielmo Tamburrini (Universit di Napoli, Italy)


Programme Committee (preliminary)
---------------------------------

Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK)
Sebastian Bader (TU Dresden, Germany)
Howard Blair (Syracuse University, USA)
Dov Gabbay (Kings College London, UK)
Marco Gori (Univeristy of Siena, Italy)
Barbara Hammer (TU Clausthal, Germany)
Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis (University of Patras, Greece)
Pascal Hitzler (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
Luis Lamb (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Vasile Palade (Oxford University, UK)
Antony K. Seda (University College Cork, Ireland)
Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Guglielmo Tamburrini (Universit di Napoli Feredico II, Italy)
Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK)
Gerson Zaverucha (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)


Keynote speaker
---------------

Stefan Wermter, University of Sunderland, UK


Additional Information
----------------------

Up-to-date information can be obtained from 
http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy06/

General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to 
nesy at soi.city.ac.uk.

You are also invited to subscribe to the neural-symbolic integration 
mailing list at http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/mailman/listinfo/nesy


-- 
Dr. Pascal Hitzler
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe
email: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de    fax: +49 721 608 6580
web:   http://www.pascal-hitzler.de   phone: +49 721 608 4751
        http://www.neural-symbolic.org


From sylee at kaist.ac.kr  Tue Jan 24 07:18:05 2006
From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:18:05 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: CFPs on ISABEL2006 - International Symposium on
	Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning
Message-ID: <113810497591695.25877@webmail>

Call for Papers

ISABEL 2006
International Symposium on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning
- Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware
for Brain-like Intelligent Functions -

August 24-25, 2006
Seoul, Korea

1. Topic and Goals

This symposium aims to bring together international researchers from the
cognitive neuroscience and engineering communities for biologically-inspired
models and system implementations with human-like intelligent functions. The
previous meeting was held as a post-IJCNN Symposium on Bio-Inspired Models
and Hardware (BIMH2005) at Montreal, Canada, on August 5, 2005.

Although artificial neural networks are based on information processing
mechanisms in our brain, there still exists a big gap between the biological
neural networks and artificial neural networks. 
The more intelligence we would like to incorporate into artificial
intelligent systems, the more biologically-inspired models and hardware are
required. Fortunately the cognitive neuroscience has been developed
enormously during the last decade, and engineers now have more to learn from
the science.  

In this symposium we will discuss what engineers want to learn from the
science and how the scientists may be able to provide the knowledge. 
Then, mathematical models will be presented with more biological
plausibility. 
The hardware and system implementation will also be reported with the
performance comparison with conventional methods for real-world complex
applications. A panel will be organized for the future research directions
at the end.

This symposium will promote synergetic interaction among cognitive
neuroscientists, neural networks and robotics engineers, and result in more
biologically-plausible mathematical models and hardware systems with more
human-like intelligent performance in real-world applications.

Topics include, but are not limited to,
.	Models of auditory pathway 
.	Models of visual pathway
.	Models of cognition, learning, and inference
.	Models of attention, emotion, and consciousness
.	Models of autonomous behavior
.	Hardware implementation of bio-inspired models
.	Engineering applications of bio-inspired models 

 
2. Organizers

Symposium Chair
Soo-Young Lee
Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST
373-1 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea
	Phone: +82-42-869-4311
	E-mail: sylee at kaist.ac.kr
	Web: http://bsrc.kaist.ac.kr/sylee.htm

3. Intended Audience

The symposium is aimed to be a high communicative forum for researchers from
the cognitive neuroscience, artificial neural networks, and robotics
communities. 

The presentation papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience,
neural networks, and robotics communities. The members of the International
Advisory Board and Program Committee had already agreed to submit their
papers for the presentation. However, the submitted papers will be fully
refereed by the Program Committee and accepted based on the quality of the
papers. 

4. Format

The symposium will go on two full days with oral session with invited and
contributed presentations, and one panel discussion session. To encourage
exchange of ideas at least 20 minutes will be allocated for each talk with
additional 10 minutes. The balance between the science and engineering will
be made for the speakers and panelists.

5. Publicity

The contributed papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience,
neural networks, and robotics communities though public list servers. 
Also, a dedicated homepage (www.isabel2006.org,
cnsl.kaist.ac.kr/isabel2006.htm) will be maintained, and several top
researchers will be cordially invited through personal e-mails.

The prospective authors are invited to submit one page summary by e-mail to
isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr. Also, after acceptance, the presentation
materials will be collected and made available to the attendees as a
booklet.

The extended version of the presented papers will be published as a special
issue of the new online/offline journal, Neural Information Processing -
Letters and Reviews (www.nip-lr.info), of which the Editor-in-Chief is the
Symposium Chair..

6. Important Dates

February 5, 2006 	Homepage Start and Official CFPs
April 30, 2006		Deadline for Summary (1 page)
June 20, 2006		Acceptance Notification
July 20, 2006		Camera-ready notes due 

* It may be better to inform us your intention to join at your earliest
convenience.
especially, when you need some financial supports, please let us know by
February 15th, 2006.



From cns at cnsorg.org  Wed Jan 25 10:27:22 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 08:27:22 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Call for workshop proposals CNS *2006
Message-ID: <20060125152723.M64439@cnsorg.org>

The Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006
will be held July 16 - July 20, 2006
in Edinburgh, UK
http://www.cnsorg.org 

The main meeting (July 16, 17 and 18th) will be followed by two days of 
workshops (July 19th and 20th). Workshops can be organized in a variety of 
formats, ranging from very informal discussion groups to highly structured 
mini-symposia. Tutorials on topics of interest to the Computational 
Neuroscience community are also welcome. 
Workshops on the following topics have been proposed so far: 

Cortical map development (J. Bednar)
Cortical microcircuitry (T. Wennekers)
Interoperability of neural simulators (E. De Schutter)
Oscillations (H. Rotstein)
Plasticity and stability (M. van Rossum)
Functional Models of the Hippocampal Formation (Laurenz Wiskott) 
Terminology and Metadata for Modeling and Computational
Neuroscience (Daniel Gardner) 

To propose a workshop, please email the name(s) of the organizer(s), workshop 
title and a short description to the CNS 2006 organizers at cns at cnsorg.org. 


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From miguel at csee.ogi.edu  Sat Jan 28 19:03:54 2006
From: miguel at csee.ogi.edu (Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:03:54 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: PhD research assistantships in machine learning at
	OGI
Message-ID: <17372.1642.858718.643822@downey.csee.ogi.edu>

           PHD RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS IN ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
         AT THE OGI SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT OHSU

*** Please forward this message to students who may be interested ***


Individuals interested in pursuing a PhD in Machine Learning or
Computational Neuroscience at OGI are eligible for research
assistantships in the Adaptive Systems Laboratory
(http://adsyl.csee.ogi.edu) at the OGI School of Science &
Engineering. The Laboratory does research in the areas of machine
learning, adaptive signal processing and computational neuroscience. 
The group currently consists of 6 core faculty, 1 postdoc, 10 PhD
students, and several MS students and technicians. The research
interests of the core faculty are as follows:

  Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan: machine learning, computational
  neuroscience, applications to speech processing and computer vision.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~miguel

  Deniz Erdogmus: adaptive, nonlinear, and statistical signal
  processing, information theory, applications to biomedical
  engineering, communications, and control systems. 
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz

  Todd Leen: machine learning with applications to fault detection,
  sensor fusion, and data assimilation; stochastic learning,
  computational neuroscience.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~tleen

  Pat Roberts (NSI): computational neuroscience. 
  http://www.ohsu.edu/nsi/faculty/robertpa

  Xubo Song: image processing and analysis, statistical pattern
  recognition, machine learning.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~xubosong

  Eric Wan: neural networks, adaptive signal processing and control.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~ericwan

The Adaptive Systems Laboratory is part of the Department of Computer
Science & Electrical Engineering. Close ties also exist with the
Center for Spoken Language Understanding and the Department of
Biomedical Engineering at OGI, and the Neurological Sciences Institute
and the medical school at OHSU.

OGI is one of the four schools of Oregon Health & Science University
(OHSU). OGI is located 12 miles west of Portland, Oregon, in the heart
of the Silicon Forest. Portland's extensive high-tech community,
diverse cultural amenities and spectacular natural surroundings
combine to make the quality of life here extraordinary. To learn more
about the department, OGI, OHSU and Portland, please visit
http://www.csee.ogi.edu.

Applicants should have a university degree in an area such as computer
science, electrical engineering, physics or mathematics, and solid
mathematical and programming skills. Background in machine learning,
image/speech processing or computer vision is highly desirable. The
assistantships cover tuition, a competitive stipend, and travel to
research conferences. Students of any nationality may apply.

Informal inquiries can be made by sending email (with supporting CV
and a statement of research interests) to adsyl-inquiry at csee.ogi.edu
or to the appropriate faculty member. For information on submitting a
full application to the PhD program in Computer Science, see the OGI
admissions information at http://www.ogi.edu/admissions.


From zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk  Thu Jan 26 08:35:38 2006
From: zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk (Zoubin Ghahramani)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:35:38 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Two faculty positions at Cambridge University
Message-ID: <10521445-DC33-40BB-AD55-3713AE79C547@eng.cam.ac.uk>


                          University of Cambridge
                       Department of Engineering
                      Two University Lectureships

Cambridge University Engineering Department is hiring two junior  
faculty in
its Information Engineering Division.

The Department has recently formed a new group led by Profs Ghahramani &
Wolpert in Computational and Biological Learning. We are particularly  
keen
to attract world-class researchers in Computational Neuroscience,  
Machine
Learning, and Communications.

The positions are University Lectureships (roughly equivalent to  
Assistant
Professorships in the US) and the advertisement is available at:

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/admin/jobs.shtml

and further details of the posts on

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~dw304/fp06.pdf

Please note that the final closing deadline is April 7th, 2006 but  
that we
encourage earlier submission of applications.

Please feel free to contact us informally about these positions.

Prof. Zoubin Ghahramani				Prof. Daniel Wolpert

Department of Engineering			Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge                 		University of Cambridge
zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk                     		wolpert at eng.cam.ac.uk
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~zoubin     	http://www.wolpertlab.com






From sabes at phy.ucsf.edu  Mon Jan 30 23:08:28 2006
From: sabes at phy.ucsf.edu (Philip N. Sabes)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:08:28 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Positions Available,
 UCSF Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology
Message-ID: <43DEE2BC.2060908@phy.ucsf.edu>

SLOAN-SWARTZ CENTER FOR THEORETICAL NEUROBIOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO

Postdoctoral Positions

We are soliciting applications for post-doctoral fellowships, with the 
goal of bringing theoretical approaches to bear on neuroscience. 
Applicants should have a strong background and education in mathematics, 
theoretical or experimental physics, computer science, or engineering, 
and a commitment to a future research career in neuroscience.  Prior 
biological or neuroscience training is not required.  The Center offers 
the opportunity to combine theoretical and experimental approaches to 
understanding the operation of the intact brain.  The research 
undertaken by the trainees may be theoretical, experimental, or a 
combination.

More information on the UCSF Sloan-Swartz Center and Faculty is 
available at: http://www.sloan.ucsf.edu/sloan.

To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, a statement of previous 
research and research goals, and up to three relevant publications, and 
have two letters of recommendation sent.

Applications should be sent electronically to
   Ned Molyneaux <molyneau at phy.ucsf.edu>

or by mail to
   Sloan-Swartz Center Admissions
   Department of Physiology, University of California
   513 Parnassus Ave., Room HSE-800
   San Francisco, CA  94143-0444


UC San Francisco is an Equal Opportunity Employer.


From tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp  Wed Jan 25 21:43:39 2006
From: tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp (Tsukada)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:43:39 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: To post a message to all the list members
Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20060126114128.05fdc970@eng.tamagawa.ac.jp>

Dear Mailing list owner:

This is Prof. Dr. Minoru Tsukadab at Tamagawa University Brain Science 
Reserch Center in Japan.
Would you kindly distribute the following Call for Papers for the "10th 
Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum-DBF'07" scheduled for March 5-9, 2007 in 
Japan.

Thank you for your cooperation in advance.
Best regards,

===========================CFP for DBF'07======================

The first Announcement and Call for Papers
10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum-DBF'07

5-9 March 2007
Hakuba Tokyu Hotel in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture, Japan

Conference Framework:
The 10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum (DBF'07) will be held on March 
5-9, 2007 at Hakuba Tokyu Hotel,
URL: http://www.tokyuhotel.co.jp/en/TR/TR_HAKUB/index.html in Hakuba 
Village, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The Dynamic Brain Forum (DBF) is an 
annual international forum organized by the Tamagawa University Brain 
Science Research Center.  In 2007, the DBF will be co-sponsored by Riken 
Brain Institute, Integrative Brain Research Project, Japanese Neural 
Network Society and by the 21st Century COE Programs in Tamagawa 
University, Kyushu Institute of Technology and Hokkaido University.

The theme of DBF'07 is Cortical Dynamics: Physiology, Theory and 
Applications. The forum is organized in several sessions focused on 
different aspects of the theme, with lectures in each session followed by a 
thematic discussion.  In addition, there will be poster
presentations on newest results by the discussants and participants. 
Posters will be up during these three days of meeting, allowing 
comprehensive discussions by participants.

Preceding the forum, there also be two full days of Tutorial Programs, 
primarily oriented toward young researchers and Ph.D. students interested 
in the theory and applications of various kinds of dynamic brain function. 
Tutorial presenters will include,
D.Eng. S. Amari: Mathematical Theories of Dynamics of Neural Information 
Processing,
Prof. I. Tsuda: Chaotic dynamics reality in brain dynamics,
Ph.D. K. Doya: Neural implementation of reinforcement learning,
Prof. W. Freeman: Recent advances in high-resolution analysis of EEG and MEG,
Prof. A. Aertsen:   -informed later-

Application dates and Program schedule
31 Jul., 2006: Deadline for registration to attend Tutorials and/or DBF
31 Aug., 2006: Deadline for electronic submission of abstracts (PDF-format 
with less than 400 words, English)
01 Sep. - 30 Oct., 2006: Oral/poster/acceptance or rejection notification
31 Oct., 2006: Deadline for electronic submission of paper (4 pages on 
A4-size, English)
30 Nov., 2006: Electronic submission of final paper revisions.

04 - 06 Mar., 2007: Reception of Tutorials and/or DBF at Hakuba Tokyu Hotel
05 - 06 Mar., 2007: Tutorials
07 - Mar., 2007: DBF and poster presentations

Registration fee and Financial support
Tutorial: Free of charge
DBF: US$200 or equivalent Japanese Yen include Banquet fee.
Financial support: Max. US$1,500 travel cost is financially supported for 
excellent papers
approved by Program Committee, submitted by Graduate students and Post-docs.

Registration and further information
For registration, inquiries and further information, please send e-mail to 
Secretary of
the Organizing Committee.
Secretary: S. Nagayama: nagayama at lab.tamagawa.ac.jp
Address: Department of Intelligent Information Systems, Faculty of 
Engineering, Tamagawa University,
             6-1 Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo, 194-8160, Japan
And, also visit our web-site: "10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum - DBF'07"
URL:  http://www.tamagawa.ac.jp/sisetu/gakujutu/brain/dbf2007/index.html

Committee:
Advisory Committee,
Chairman: Shun-ichi Amari: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.
-Jun Tanji: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Mitsuo Kawato: ATR, Japan.
-Takeshi Yamakawa: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-Walter Freeman, University of California at Berkeley, USA.

Organizing Committee,
Chairman: Minoru Tsukada: Tamagawa University, Japan.
Vice-Chairman: Ichiro Tsuda: Hokkaido University, Japan.
-Keiji Tanaka: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.
-Ad Aertsen: University of Freiburg, Germany.
-Aike Guo: Chinese Academy of Science, China.
- Fanji Gu: Fudan University, China.
-Gert Hauske: Munich University of Technology, Germany.
-Antonio Roque: University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
-Edger Koemer: HONDA R&D Europe, Germany.

Executive Committee,
Chairman: Masamichi Sakagami: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Christph Schreiner: University of California, San Francisco, USA.
-Hiroshi Fujii: Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan.
-Kenji Doya: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
-Hiroshi Kojima: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Takeshi Aihara: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Yutaka Sakai: Tamagawa University, Japan.

Program Committee,
Chairman: Shigetoshi Nara: Okayama University, Japan
-Kazuyuki Aihara: University of Tokyo, Japan.
-Shozo Yasui: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-:Hatsuo Hayashi: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-Hiroyuki Ito: Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan.
-Tomoki Fukai: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.

====================================================================



M.Tsukada/Tamagawa Univ.
--------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Minoru Tsukada
Tamagawa University Brain Science Reserch Center /
Department of Information & Communication Engineering,
Faculty of Engneering, Tamagawa University
6-1-1, Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, JAPAN
Phone : +81-427-39-8430 , Fax : +81-427-39-8858
E-mail : tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp
-------------------------------------------------------




From derdogmus at ieee.org  Sat Jan 28 18:49:54 2006
From: derdogmus at ieee.org (Deniz Erdogmus)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:49:54 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: MLSP 2006 Data Analysis Competition Reminder
Message-ID: <43DC0322.1070905@ieee.org>

Dear Colleague,

We would like to remind you the March 1st deadline for the submission of 
entries to the Machine Learning for Signal Processing 2006 Data Analysis 
Competition (http://mlsp2006.conwiz.dk/index.php?id=18). The competition 
features 3 independent challenge problems:
1) Evaluation of ICA algorithms for large-scale, ill-conditioned, and 
noisy mixtures
2) Processing of fMRI data for an oddball task
3) Denoising MEG measurements
The entries for each problem will be evaluated separately and the 
winners will be invited to submit papers to the conference and to the 
follow-up journal special issue.
The paper submission deadline for MLSP 2006 is March 31st.

Sincerely,
Deniz Erdogmus and Vince Calhoun
MLSP 2006 Competition Chairs

-- 
Deniz Erdogmus
Assistant Professor
Departments of CSEE and BME
Oregon Health & Science University			
20000 NW Walker Road, Beaverton, OR 97006
(Tel) 1-503-7482007, (Fax) 1-503-7481548
http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz				
derdogmus at ieee.org








From nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr  Mon Jan 30 05:53:19 2006
From: nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr (Nicolas Brunel)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:53:19 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in cerebellar modelling at the
 Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), Paris
Message-ID: <43DDF01F.6010703@univ-paris5.fr>

Postdoctoral position in cerebellar modelling at the Ecole Normale
Superieure (ENS), Paris
 
Applications are invited for a post-doctoral position to carry out
theoretical and modelling studies of network activity in the
cerebellum.  The position is funded for 2 years as part of a joint
experimental (Barbour and Dieudonn? groups at the ENS) and theoretical
(Hakim and Nadal at the ENS, Brunel at CNRS/Paris 5) project.
 
Applicants should have a strong background in theoretical
neuroscience, applied mathematics, or physics. Prior biological or
neuroscience training is preferred, but not required. Applicants
should send a curriculum vitae and have two or three letters of
recommendation sent by email to Nicolas Brunel (brunel at univ-paris5.fr)
before March 31st. The fellowship is planned to start in September 2006.
 
http://www.neurophys.biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr/~brunel
http://www.biologie.ens.fr/neuronsr/cerebellum.html
http://www.lps.ens.fr/~hakim
http://www.lps.ens.fr/~nadal

Nicolas Brunel

-- 
Laboratory of Neurophysics and Physiology
UMR 8119 CNRS-Universite Rene Descartes
45 rue des Saints Peres 75270 Paris Cedex 06
Tel (33).1.42.86.20.58 - Fax (33).1.49.27.90.62
nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr
www.neurophys.biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr/~brunel



From retienne at jhu.edu  Tue Jan 31 21:11:08 2006
From: retienne at jhu.edu (Ralph Etienne-Cummings)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:11:08 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop 2006 Announcement
Message-ID: <43E018BC.3010904@jhu.edu>

========================================================================
Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop
Call for Applications
Sunday, JUNE 25 - Saturday, JULY 15, 2006
TELLURIDE, COLORADO

Avis COHEN (University of Maryland)
Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Ralph ETIENNE-CUMMINGS (Johns Hopkins University)
Paul HASLER (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Timmer HORIUCHI (University of Maryland)
Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, 
Switzerland)
Christof KOCH (California Institute of Technology)- Past Organization 
Board Member
Terrence SEJNOWSKI (Salk Institute and UCSD)
Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland)
Andre van SCHAIK(University of Sydney)

We invite applications for a three week summer workshop that will be 
held in Telluride, Colorado from Sunday, June 25 to Saturday, July 15, 
2006. The application deadline is Friday, March 24, and application 
instructions are described at the bottom of this document.

The 2005 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is 
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic 
Engineering, Wow Wee Toys, Airforce Research Office, Eglin Airforce 
Research Lab, Nova Sensors, Institute for NeuroInfomatics - ETHZ, Geogia 
Institute of Technology, University of Maryland - College Park, Johns 
Hopkins University, The Salk Institute, and by the Center for 
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

Last year's workshop was an exciting event and a great success. We 
strongly encourage interested parties to browse through the previous 
workshop web pages at: http://ine-web.org/workshops/past-workshops

GOALS:

Carver Mead introduced the term "Neuromorphic Engineering" for a new 
field based on the design and fabrication of artificial neural systems, 
such as vision systems, head-eye systems, and roving robots, whose 
architecture and design principles are based on those of biological 
nervous systems. The goal of this workshop is to bring together young 
investigators and more established researchers from academia with their 
counterparts in industry and national laboratories, working on both 
neurobiological as well as engineering aspects of sensory systems and 
sensory-motor integration. The focus of the workshop will be on active 
participation, with demonstration systems and hands on experience for 
all participants. Neuromorphic engineering has a wide range of 
applications from nonlinear adaptive control of complex systems to the 
design of smart sensors. Many of the fundamental principles in this 
field, such as the use of learning methods and the design of parallel 
hardware (with an emphasis on analog and asynchronous digital VLSI), are 
inspired by biological systems. However, existing applications are 
modest and the challenge of scaling up from small artificial neural 
networks and designing completely autonomous systems at the levels 
achieved by biological systems lies ahead. The assumption underlying 
this three week workshop is that the next generation of neuromorphic 
systems would benefit from closer attention to the principles found 
through experimental and theoretical studies of real biological nervous 
systems as whole systems.

FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on 
systems neuroscience (in particular learning, oculo-motor and other 
motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on analog VLSI design, 
small mobile robots (Koalas, Kheperas, LEGO robots), hands-on projects, 
and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and 
possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are 
furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other 
activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two 
lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the 
community in general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among 
the participants, the majority of these lectures will be tutorials, 
rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be 
given by invited speakers. Participants will be free to explore and play 
with whatever they choose in the afternoon. Projects and interest groups 
meet in the late afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon 
there will be tutorial on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog 
VLSI, mobile robotics, auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, 
selective attention mechanisms, etc.
Projects that are carried out during the workshop will be centered in a 
number of working groups, including:

* active vision
* audition
* motor control
* central pattern generator and locomotion
* robotics
* multichip communication
* analog VLSI
* learning
* neuroprosthetic systems

The active perception project group will emphasize vision and human 
sensory-motor coordination. Issues to be covered will include spatial 
localization and constancy, attention, motor planning, eye movements, 
and the use of visual motion information for motor control.

The central pattern generator group will focus on small walking and 
undulating robots. It will look at characteristics and sources of parts 
for building robots, play with working examples of legged and segmented 
robots, and discuss CPG's and theories of nonlinear oscillators for 
locomotion. It will also explore the use of simple analog VLSI sensors 
for autonomous robots.

The robotics group will use rovers and working digital vision boards as 
well as other possible sensors to investigate issues of sensorimotor 
integration, navigation and learning.

The audition group aims to develop biologically plausible algorithms and 
aVLSI implementations of specific auditory tasks such as source 
localization and tracking, and sound pattern recognition. Projects will 
be integrated with visual and motor tasks in the context of a robot 
platform.

The multichip communication project group will use existing interchip 
communication interfaces to program small networks of artificial neurons 
to exhibit particular behaviors such as amplification, oscillation, and 
associative memory. Issues in multichip communicationwill be discussed.

LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 
feet high in Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver 
(350miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines 
provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the 
beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to 
participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski 
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are 
expected to share condominiums.

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants 
are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit 
design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology 
or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly 
encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, 
industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are 
prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or 
bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). 
Internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the 
workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will have a 
network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for the workshop 
projects. We also plan to provide wireless internet access and encourage 
participants to bring along their personal laptop.

No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend 
that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, 
and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains. 
Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect 
participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT:

Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around mid April 2006. 
Participants are expected to pay a $800.00 workshop fee at that time in 
order to reserve a place in the workshop. The cost of a shared 
condominium will be covered for all academic participants but upgrades 
to a private room will cost extra. Participants from National 
Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums. 
Travel reimbursement of up to $500 for US domestic travel and up to $800 
for overseas travel will be possible if financial help is needed (please 
specify on the application).


HOW TO APPLY:

Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above 
(i.e.postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and 
the equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We 
actively encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

The application website is: 
http://ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2006/apply/

Application will include:

* First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.
* Curriculum Vitae.
* One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop.
* Two letters of recommendation (to be sent by references directly to 
"Alice W. Mobaidin" <mobaidin at isr.umd.edu>).

The application deadline is Friday, March 24, 2006.
Applicants will be notified by e-mail by the end of April.



From casutton at cs.umass.edu  Tue Jan 31 23:25:47 2006
From: casutton at cs.umass.edu (Charles Sutton)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:25:47 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: HLT-NAACL 2006 Workshop on Joint Inference for
	NLP
Message-ID: <02AE6FC0-604C-43FF-9D04-7B758B013F54@cs.umass.edu>

Call for Papers: Extended Deadline!
======================================================================
JOINT INFERENCE FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Workshop at HLT/NAACL 2006, in New York City
June 8, 2006
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/workshops/jinlp2006/

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 8, 2006
======================================================================


In NLP there has been increasing interest in moving away from systems
that make chains of local decisions independently, and instead toward
systems that make multiple decisions jointly using global information.
For example, NLP tasks are often solved by a pipeline of processing
steps (from speech, to translation, to entity extraction, relation
extraction, coreference and summarization)---each of which locally
chooses its output to be passed to the next step.  However, we can
avoid accumulating cascading errors by joint decoding across the
pipeline---capturing uncertainty and multiple hypotheses throughout.
The use of lattices in speech recognition is well-established, but
recently there has been more interest in larger, more complex joint
inference, such as joint ASR and MT, and joint extraction and
coreference.

The trend toward joint decisions using global information also appears
at a smaller scale.  For example, the benefit of discriminative
reranking is that it can efficiently exploit global features of the
output space.  Also, recent sequence models, such as CRFs and
Maximum-margin Markov networks, are trained to optimize a global
objective function over the space of all sequences, leveraging global
features of the input.

The main challenge in applying joint methods more widely throughout
NLP is that they are more complex and more expensive than local
approaches.  Various models and approximate inference algorithms have
been used to maintain efficiency, such as beam search, reranking,
simulated annealing, and belief propagation, but much work remains in
understanding which methods are best for particular applications, or
which new techniques could be brought to bear.

The goal of this workshop is to explore techniques for joint
processing for NLP tasks that involve multiple, interrelated
decisions.  Themes of the workshop include:

* Practical examples of joint models in NLP.  Applications to
    traditionally hard NLP problems, including speech and machine
    translation, are encouraged.

* Inference methods for joint approaches, including message-passing
    algorithms, discriminative reranking, sampling methods, propagation
    of n-best lattices, and linear programming.

* What kinds of global features tend to have the most impact in joint
    approaches?

* An intriguing property of joint models is that they have the
    potential to integrate information from multiple sources,
    (e.g. top-down information helping low-level processing).  What
    kinds of higher-level information are useful in NLP tasks?

* Comparison of local methods for training and inference, such as
    those based on local classifiers, and global approaches such as CRFs
    and Maximum-margin Markov Networks.

* When is it appropriate to use a joint model, and when do simpler,
    more independent approaches suffice?

* Training techniques for joint approaches. Training local classifiers
    is often more efficient training global approaches, and sometimes it
    is possible to use local training, but joint decision-making at test
    time.  When are such hybrid techniques expected work well?  What are
    the trade-offs between accuracy and training time?

Potential participants are encouraged to submit papers on these  
topics, and
on others related to joint decision-making in NLP.


IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper submissions due:  Wednesday, March 8
* Notification of accepted papers: Thursday, April 21
* Camera ready papers due: Wednesday, May 3
* Workshop: June 8, 2006


FORMAT OF PAPERS

If you wish to present at the workshop, submit a paper of no more than
8 pages in two column format, following the HLT/NAACL style (see
http://nlp.cs.nyu.edu/hlt-naacl06/cfp.html).  Proceedings will be
published in conjunction with the main HLT/NAACL proceedings.
The web site for workshop submissions is
http://www.softconf.com/start/HLT-WS06-JINLP/submit.html
Authors who cannot submit a PDF file electronically should contact the
organizers.


ORGANIZERS

Charles Sutton, University of Massachusetts
Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts
Jeff Bilmes, University of Washington


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Razvan Bunescu, University of Texas
Bill Byrne, University of Cambridge
Xavier Carreras,  Technical University of Catalonia
Ozgur Cetin, University of California
David Chiang, University of Maryland
Michael Collins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hal Daume, University of Southern California
Eric Fosler-Lussier, The Ohio State University
Dan Gildea, University of Rochester
Ralph Grishman, New York University
Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research
Katrin Kirchhoff, University of Washington
Philipp Koehn, University of Edinburgh
Shankar Kumar, Google
Chris Manning, Stanford University
Llu?s M?rquez,  Technical University of Catalonia
Gideon Mann, University of Massachusetts
Erik McDermott,  NTT Communication Science Laboratories
Ray Mooney, University of Texas
Franz Och, Google
Kishore Papineni, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Brian Roark, Oregon Graduate Institute
Dan Roth, University of Illinois
Salim Roukos, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Koichi Shinoda, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Noah Smith, Johns Hopkins University
Andreas Stolcke, SRI International
Ben Taskar, Unversity of California





From R.Borisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk  Tue Jan 31 04:17:54 2006
From: R.Borisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk (Roman Borisyuk)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:17:54 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position at Plymouth University
Message-ID: <52A8091888A23F47A013223014B6E9FE0557158C@03-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk>

Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, University of Plymouth, UK 

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (starting salary ?24,450 GB Pounds per annum)

 

Applications are invited for a post of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Plymouth, UK. The position has been made available through the award of a research grant from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for a project entitled "Brain-Inspired Neuronal Model of Attention and Memory"

 

Applicants must have a PhD in the area of Applied Mathematics or Physics (ideally in Computational Neuroscience), experience of research work in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (or other closely related areas of sciences), and possess a good knowledge and understanding of the mathematical methods and computational tools for modelling neural networks at a biologically realistic level. The work of the Research Fellow will be specifically concerned with the development and investigation of new spiking neuron models of attention and memory. The project will draw on neurobiological experimental and modelling results from several neuroscience research labs in Europe.

 

The research fellow post is available from the 1st of April 2006 and an appointment will be made as soon as possible. The appointment is for a fixed term of three years, and will be subject to a probationary period of six months.

 

Informal enquiries, ideally including a CV/resum?, should be made in the first instance by email to Professor Roman Borisyuk: rborisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk 

 

The Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience is one of the main UK labs specialising in theoretical and modelling approaches to understanding brain function (visit www.plymneuro.org.uk). It has research groups in vision, audition, sensorimotor control, mathematical neuroscience, biophysics of temporal brain dynamics, and neural computation. It is actively collaborating with several UK, US and European labs and participates in a number of major UK research council and EU funded research projects.

 

 



From derdogmus at ieee.org  Tue Jan 31 18:05:07 2006
From: derdogmus at ieee.org (Deniz Erdogmus)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:05:07 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postoctoral Research Associate Position at OHSU
Message-ID: <43DFED23.6050803@ieee.org>

Postdoctoral Research Associate Position at OHSU:

A postdoctoral research associate position is available for a highly 
qualified candidate starting as early as April 1st, 2006 at the 
Point-of-Care Laboratory (PoCL) of the Oregon Health and Science 
University, Portland, Oregon, USA. The PoCL is directed by Prof. Misha 
Pavel and also includes Assistant Professors Tamara Hayes and Deniz 
Erdogmus as participating faculty.

The PoCL focuses on developing theoretical approaches and novel 
techniques for assistive technologies. Unobtrusive monitoring of elderly 
to help them remain independent and amplifying attention through 
cognitive augmentation with a closed loop brain computer interface are 
sample projects that are currently underway at the PoCL. More PoCL 
Information is available at:
http://www.ogi.edu/research/dsp_group.cfm?research_group_id=453B5CAC-F103-E870-96AE2D69186F334F 


The sucessful candidate will exhibit superior theoretical skills in 
machine learning and signal processing as well as technical skills to 
install, maintain, and operate sensor suites and sensor networks 
necessary for data collection in relevant projects. Strong background in 
Bayesian reasoning and sequential state estimation are also of primary 
importance to this position. This associate is expected to comunicate 
and collaborate with our industry partners including Intel and Honeywell 
on a regular basis. Other duties of the postdoctoral associate include 
assisting with the advising of graduate students, preparation of 
scientific papers, and submission of grant proposals.

It is expected that the initial term of the position will be for one 
year with competitive compensation. The extension of the contract is 
contingent on continued satisfactory performance as determined by 
regular performance evaluations, as well as the availability of funds 
from externally funded research projects.

Portland is an excellent metropolitan city (repeatedly rated at the top 
within US cities) with a wide range of cultural activities and easy 
access to numerous outdoor activities.

Interested candidates should send their application materials - cover 
letter, CV, statement of research interests and research experience 
(concatenated in one big pdf file, please) - to Deniz Erdogmus at 
derdogmus at ieee.org by email.

-- 
Deniz Erdogmus
Assistant Professor
Departments of CSEE and BME
Oregon Health & Science University			
20000 NW Walker Road, Beaverton, OR 97006
(Tel) 1-503-7482007, (Fax) 1-503-7481548
http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz				
derdogmus at ieee.org








From d.cornford at aston.ac.uk  Tue Jan 31 09:57:11 2006
From: d.cornford at aston.ac.uk (Dan Cornford)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:57:11 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Research Jobs in Bayesian Inference and Gaussian
	Processes
Message-ID: <43DF7AC7.2020802@aston.ac.uk>

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS - 7 POSTS
POSTGRADUATE RESEARCHERS - 4 PhD STUDENTSHIPS
PROJECT MANAGER (part-time)

Applications are invited for these positions, to work on an
exciting and innovative 2 million research project

MANAGING UNCERTAINTY IN COMPLEX MODELS

The MUCM project, funded by Research Councils UK, is a
collaboration between five universities: Sheffield, Aston,
Southampton, Durham, and the London School of Economics.
It is concerned with quantifying and reducing uncertainty in the
predictions of complex models across a wide range of
application areas, including basic science, environmental
science, engineering, technology, biosciences, and economics.
The project is multi-disciplinary, and the unifying theme is a
Bayesian statistical approach to inference.  Applicants are
invited from a wide range of backgrounds, including application
areas, subject to having appropriate statistical skills.

An outline description of the MUCM project, plus further
information about all of these jobs and the application
procedure, can be found at http://mucm.group.shef.ac.uk.

These positions, including the PhD studentships, are available
to candidates of any nationality, to start on 1 June 2006 (or at
an agreed later date).

The postdoctoral research posts are offered for 3 years, but
with the possibility of extension for up to 4 years.  Applicants
should have (or expect to have) a PhD in Statistics or a related
discipline (including Machine Learning), or in a relevant area in
which complex process models are used, but in any case
should have substantial skills in Statistics.  We wish to recruit
researchers of high ability and promise, and can offer very
competitive salaries.

The PhD studentships are for three and a half years.  The
studentships pay tuition fees at home/EU rates plus an
enhanced stipend for living expenses.

The Project Manager post is available for up to 4 years.  The
Project Manager will be a vital part of the team, and will need to
have a university degree, preferably in Statistics or another
numerate field, as well as strong organisational and IT skills.

The closing date for applications for all of these posts is 28
February 2006.





From ai at kk.iij4u.or.jp  Sun Jan  1 12:24:23 2006
From: ai at kk.iij4u.or.jp (Akira Imada)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 02:24:23 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: CFP of a conference in Belarus --- ICNNAI-2006
Message-ID: <004e01c60ef8$f3d5ef40$6f03667d@usen.ad.jp>

                       CALL FOR PAPERS

                          ICNNAI'2006

        4th International Conference on Neural Networks 
                 and Artificial Intelligence

             31 May - 2 June, 2006, Brest, Belarus

              http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/cfp.html

                  OFFICIAL LANGUAGE: English

           PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 8 March 2006


SCOPE AND AIM:
A realization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Neural Networks (NN)
might sound somehow old but will be an ever lasting research area.

This conference intends to provide an interactive forum for discussions, 
debates and brainstorms among researchers interested in combining these 
two fields, in a creative, exciting, and free atmosphere. In the process, 
we expect collaborations among those who have complementary ideas.

The conference will feature (1) two plenary talks by

  - Heinz Muhlenbein ... Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) 
  - Robert Hiromoto  ... University of Idaho (US)

(2) oral sessions with accepted papers. (3) A couple of panel discussions 
are also planned.

We solicit papers of the latest techniques and achievements from 
theoretical, experimental, as well as engineering aspect in all areas of 
Neural Networks aiming Artificial Intelligence.


TOPICS:
The conference covers all topics in Artificial Intelligence by Neural Networks. 
Or far beyond, though we dare not to use a cliche like "including but not limited to" 
such as

   -  Brain-Inspired Information Technology;
   -  Modeling Learning and Memory;
   -  Robotics and Sensory Systems and Motor Controls; 
   -  Robotics and Cognition, Emotion and Behavior;
   -  Brain-like Knowledge Extraction or Recovery in Databases;
   -  Evolving brain-like structure; and
   -  Artificial Life.

Or their fusion. Note again that the list is far from exhaustive nor 
exclusive, which are also cliche though.


SUBMISSIONS:
The papers must be in English with the maximum length of 8 pages, following
the guidelines in the authors instructions which can be downloaded at
     http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/authkit.html
where you can find a Style-file for LaTeX, as well as a skeleton for MS-WORD.

All submissions will be reviewed by the respective international program committees.

Papers will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, 
relevance and clarity of presentation (forgive me a cliche again).

Please, however, do not expect reviewers to be a proof-reader.
High quality submission is the author's responsibility and 
inadequately prepared papers may be rejected.

Papers should be submitted in PDF format 

   (1) via the ONLINE SUBMISSION SYSTEM linked in the page to 
          http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/lite/prs.php 
      (still it's under construction in a last ditch at this moment, 
       you might explore it though), 
or 
   (2) by attaching it to an e-mail to icnnai at bstu.by with the subject 
       ICNNAI SUBMISSION and with the attached file-name being 
       <author-full-name>.pdf.

PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO INCLUDE AT MOST 5 KEY-WORDS WHICH APPROPRIATELY 
REPRESENT WHAT TOPICS YOUR PAPER EXPLORES. (if you submit the paper 
by email these key wards should be in the text of e-mail , and if you 
submit it via the web-page simply fill in the box. This is for the purpose 
of efficiency in reviewing process.)

Receipt of submitted paper will be notified within a couple of working days 
after the deadline.

After review process of all submissions, you will be notified by 29 March
whether your contribution is accepted or not.

Please notice that at least one of the authors of an accepted paper must
register for the conference and present the paper.

The final program of the conference will be appeared on the conference 
web-page http://neuro.bstu.by/icnnai2006/cfp.html with the other up-to-date 
information.


KEY DATES:
The time schedule for the publication of the proceedings is as follows:

  - Submission deadline:        08 March    2006
  - Notification of acceptance: 29 March    2006
  - Camera ready copy due:      19 April    2006

Please notice that we have prolonged these schedule from the ones 
in the preliminary Call for Paper. Please do not expect the schedule 
to be extended any more. Reviewers will have three weeks to review:
accepted author will have three weeks to improve the paper, and we have 
six weeks to print the proceedings. Each of these three due dates 
will be a MUST.


PRESENTATION:
To keep the workshop lively we intend to keep the time of individual 
presentations efficiently. We plan a 20 minutes of oral presentation 
for all accepted papers.

Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings which will be 
available at the conference.


REGISTRATION FEE:
Registration fee is 125 USD for early registration which is to be done
before by 19 April, after the date, including registration on site,
the fee will be 175 USD.

The fee includes: 
   - proceedings;
   - one welcome cocktail party (planned on 30 May in the evening); 
   - one reception party (planned on 31 May in the evening); and
   - snacks, soft drinks at coffee-breaks between the sessions.

A limited number of the support to students from CIS countries will 
be also considered. Feel free to contact us. 

We now are preparing for the bank-account for early registration.
Please check it out later in up-to-date information at the conference web page.


VENUE:
The city of Brest is in a stone throw away from the border to Poland, 
and situated 200km from Warsaw and 300km from Minsk. From either of 
these cities we can access to the city by train quite easily.

Brest is a wonderful place to live, along with historical places which are 
outstanding for a city with medium size. It is a terrific place, 
personally speaking though, if you are interested in great nature.

We have the Brest fortress which is the main attraction of the city. 
The fortress made a prolonged defence against Germans in 1941 and 
was ruined in the result of severe battles. After the war the remains 
of the fortress were turned into a grandiose memorial to its defenders. 
(From the web-site bellow. Sorry for that but without a permission though.)

We have what they call largest forest in Europe in which we might visit 
the gorgeous Summer-House once presidents of former Soviet Union stayed 
during the summer holiday. 

We have other Historical places as well as fancy Museums. 

If you find time to walk to a big open market which is located in 
a walking distance from the conference site, you will enjoy various kinds of
real fresh vegetables and fruits grown in Brest region. 
Life in Brest is wonderful.  We hope to see you in Brest.

More about City Brest at http://brestonline.com/en/info/index.html, 
Also enjoy http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Brest%2C_Belarus.


HOTEL INFORMATION:
We have a couple of good Hotels. See, for example, 
http://www.belarustravel.by/en/Brest/.

We also have a limited number of nice facilities for lodging 
in the campus of the Brest State Technical University where
the conference will be held.

Later the more detailed list for the hotel accommodation
will be appeared in the conference web-page.

Looking forward to receiving your paper(s) and meeting you 
at the conference in Brest.


HONORARY CHAIR:
Petr Poyta (Belarus)


CNFERENCE CHAIR:
Vladimir Golovko (Belarus)


CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS:
Rauf Sadykhov (Belarus)
Akira Imada (Belarus)


INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Juan Miguel Santos (Argentina)
Helmut Mayer (Austria)
Alexander Doudkin (Belarus)
Vladimir Golenkov (Belarus)
Vladimir Ptichkin (Belarus)
Vladimir Rubanov (Belarus)
Andres Perez-Uribe (Chile)
Xu Lisheng (China)
Kurosh Madani (France)
Jean-Jacques Mariage (France)
Hubert Roth (Germany)
Vincenzo Piuri (Italy)
Pasqual Daponte (Italy)
Hitoshi Hemmi (JAPAN)
Qiangfu Zhao (Japan)
Sung-Bae Cho (Korea)
Irina Bausova (Latvia)
Saulius Maskeliunas (Lithuania)
Khalid Saeed (Poland)
Vladimir Redko (Russia)
Alexander Galushkin (Russia)
Lipo Wang (Singapore)
Emin German (Turkey)
Bora Kumova (Turkey)
Anatoly Sachenko (Ukraine)
Mykola Dyvak (Ukraine)
Voloddymyr Turchenko (Ukraine)
Bogdan Gabrys (UK)
Robert Hiromoto (USA)


LOCAL COMMITTEE:
Yury Savitsky  (Belarus)
Sergei Besobrasov (Belarus)
Svetlana Besobrasova (Belarus)
Andrew Dunets (Belarus)
Larisa Gorbashko (Belarus)
Pavel Kochurko (Belarus)
Yury Kozurko (Belarus)
Leonid Machnist (Belarus)
Nikolay Maniakov (Belarus)
Piotr Selezniov (Belarus)


CONTACT ADDRESS:
Conference e-mail: iccnai at bstu.by

Conference Chair: Prof. Vladimir Golovko
Co-chair: Prof. Akira Imada

Intelligent Information Technologies Dept.
Brest State Technical University
Moskowskaja 267, Brest, Belarus
phone: +375-162-42-6321
fax:   +375-162-42-2127






From cns at cnsorg.org  Tue Jan  3 14:40:20 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2006 12:40:20 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: CNS 2006 Call for Papers
Message-ID: <20060103194020.M76360@cnsorg.org>


CALL FOR PAPERS, CNS*2006
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 6, 2006 midnight; submission open
January 15, 2006 
NOTE:  Meeting dates have changed since the announcement at CNS*2005

Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006 
July 16 - July 20, 2006 
Edinburgh, UK 
http://www.cnsorg.org 

CNS*2006 will be held in Edinburgh, UK from Sunday, July 16 to Thursday, July 
20, 2006. The main meeting will be July 16-18 followed by two days of 
workshops on July 19 and 20. The meeting will take place in the heart of 
medieval 'Old Town' close to plenty of arts and entertainment.  Edinburgh can 
be reached from Edinburgh or Glasgow International Airports.

Submissions can include experimental, model-based, as well as more abstract 
theoretical approaches to understanding neurobiological computation.  We 
especially encourage research that mixes experimental and theoretical studies.
We also accept papers that describe new technical approaches to theoretical 
and experimental issues in computational neuroscience or relevant software 
packages. 

INVITED SPEAKERS: 
Michael Hausser (University College London) 
Fred Wolf (University of Gottingen) 
Sophie Deneve (CNRS Institute for Cognitive Science) 

Banquet Speaker: 
James Bower (University of Texas San Antonio)

WORKSHOPS PLANNED TO DATE (Organizers):
Cortical map development (J. Bednar)
Cortical microcircuitry (T. Wennekers)
Interoperability of neural simulators (E. De Schutter)
Oscillations (H. Rotstein)
Plasticity and stability (M. van Rossum)

 

PAPER SUBMISSION

Submissions to the meeting will take the form of a 3-page summary describing 
the nature and scope of the work, and outlining the main results.  Details 
regarding formatting of submissions will be posted at www.cnsorg.org. These 
summaries will be reviewed by the program committee and used to determine 
acceptance for presentation at the meeting as well as to construct the oral 
program.  Authors will also be asked to submit a standard abstract for 
printing in the program book.  All submissions will be acknowledged by email. 

THE REVIEW PROCESS 
Summaries will be judged and accepted for the meeting based on the clarity 
with which the work is described and the biological relevance of the 
research. For this reason authors should be careful to make the connection to 
biology clear.  CNS strongly believes in the open exchange of ideas and we 
reject only a small fraction of submissions  (~5%). Rejections are usually 
based on absence of biological relevance (e.g. pure machine learning). We 
will notify authors of meeting acceptance by April 1. 

All acceptable summaries will be reviewed by two independent referees, and 
the oral program of the meeting will constructed based on these reviews.  
Most oral presentations will be 20 minutes in length, but several papers will 
be selected for longer "featured oral" presentations.  In addition to 
perceived quality as an oral presentation, the novelty of the research and 
the diversity and coherence of the overall program will be considered.  To 
ensure diversity, those who have given talks in the recent past will not be 
selected and multiple oral presentations from the same lab will be 
discouraged. All accepted papers not selected for oral talks may be presented 
during the poster sessions.  Authors will be notified of the presentation 
format of their papers by the end of April.  

PROCEEDINGS AND PUBLICATION 

The proceedings of the meeting will be published as a special supplement to 
the journal Neurocomputing.  Space in the proceedings volume is more limited  
than in previous years and if the number of submitted papers exceeds the  
number that can be published (~100), which seems likely, rankings from the 
review process will be used to select the top 100 papers.  Only papers 
actually presented at the meeting (oral or poster format) are eligible for 
publication in the proceedings.  Each presenting author can publish at most 
one paper in the proceedings volume.
Authors wishing to submit their work for peer-reviewed publication in 
Neurocomputing will be required to submit complete papers (max 6 typeset 
pages) by May 1. Manuscripts will be reviewed according to the usual 
standards for journal publication.  Authors will receive notification of 
submission status (accept, reject, revise) and receive reviewer comments 
before the meeting.  Paper rejection at this stage does not preclude 
presentation at the meeting itself.  Authors will then have until September 
15 to submit revised manuscripts.  Final notification of acceptance based on 
these revisions will be sent by October 15. Detailed instructions to authors 
will be posted at www.cnsorg.org. 
 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
The CNS meeting is organized by the CNS Organization (http://www.cnsorg.org) 
Christiane Linster (Cornell University, USA), President.
Program chair: Erik De Schutter (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Program chair-elect:  Bill Holmes (Ohio University, USA)
Local organizer: Mark van Rossum (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Workshop organizer: Mark van Rossum (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Government Liaison: Dennis Glanzman (NIMH/NIH, USA) and Yuan Liu (NINDS/NIH, 
USA)
Program Committee :
   Steve Bressler (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
   Nicolas Brunel (Universite Paris Rene Descartes, France)
   Frances Chance (University of California, Irvine, USA)
   Sharon Crook (University of Maine, USA)
   Sonja Gruen (Free University Berlin, Germany)
   Ken Harris (Rutgers University, USA)
   Don H. Johnson (Rice University, USA)
   Leslie M. Kay (University of Chicago, USA)
   Theoden Netoff (Boston University, USA)
   Hiroshi Okamato (RIKEN, Japan)
   Mike Paulin (University of Otago, New Zealand)
   


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From A.Cangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk  Wed Jan  4 09:59:24 2006
From: A.Cangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk (Angelo Cangelosi)
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 14:59:24 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: CFP - IJCNN06 Special Session on Modeling the
	Evolution and Acquisition of Language
Message-ID: <64997DB783F0FD4EB5550AD0D550E2290501DDF6@03-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk>

IJCNN06 (WCCI 2006 - IEEE Congress on Computational Intelligence,
Vancouver, July 16-21 2006)

http://www.wcci2006.org/

Special Session on "Modeling the Evolution and Acquisition of Language"

Call for Papers

 

Scope of Special Session: 

This special session has the scope of providing a forum for the
presentation of the latest models and finding on language evolution and
acquisition models and the discussion and identification of the most
promising future research directions. The special session invites
submissions in any of the following areas:

*	Neural network models of language evolution and acquisition
*	Biological evolution of communication and language
*	Cultural evolution of language
*	Robotics and agent models of linguistic interaction
*	Cognitive models of pre-linguistic abilities (imitation,
attention, categorization etc.)
*	Emergence of language
*	Models of animal communication
*	Interaction between language and cognition
*	Action models of language
*	Grounding of language
*	Evolutionary computation applications to language studies

 

Submission

 

All special session papers must be submitted through the WCCI submission
webpage, where Instructions for Authors are also available. 

http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html

Note that the space limit is now 8 pages. Please choose "S. Modeling the
Evolution and Acquisition of Language"" as your main research topic.
Please notify me beforehand if you are interested in submitting a paper
to the Special Session, by sending me an email to
acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

 

      Important dates:

          o Submission: January 31, 2006

          o Notification: March 15, 2006

          o Camera ready: April 15, 2006

 

Organizers

Angelo Cangelosi (University of Plymouth), Leonid Perlovsky (Air Force
Research Lab, Hanscom AFB), Jose Fernando Fontanari (Universidade de Sao
Paulo, Sao Carlos) 

 

 

---------------- Angelo Cangelosi, PhD ----------------

 

Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognition

Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition Research Group

School of Computing, Communications & Electronics

University of Plymouth

Portland Square Building (A316)

Plymouth PL4 8AA (UK)

E-mail: acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo
<http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo> 

(tel) +44 1752 232559 (fax) +44 1752 232540

 

 

 

---------------- Angelo Cangelosi, PhD ----------------

 

Reader in Artificial Intelligence and Cognition

Adaptive Behaviour and Cognition Research Group

School of Computing, Communications & Electronics

University of Plymouth

Portland Square Building (A316)

Plymouth PL4 8AA (UK)

E-mail: acangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk 

http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo
<http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/staff/angelo> 

(tel) +44 1752 232559 (fax) +44 1752 232540

 



From bower at uthscsa.edu  Wed Jan  4 12:58:22 2006
From: bower at uthscsa.edu (james Bower)
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:58:22 -0600
Subject: Connectionists: Invited speakers, tutorials,
	and deadlines for WAM-BAMM*06
Message-ID: <p062309debfe1bb5aa61f@[129.111.247.61]>

****************   Deadline for paper submission:  Jan 15th.  *****************
                     (Student travel grants available)



                           http://wam-bamm.org


                           The Second Annual
                  World Association of Modelers (WAM)
            Biologically Accurate Modeling Meeting (BAMM)


                             Wam-bamm *06


                      March 23rd - March 25th
                          San Antonio, Texas


                            http://wam-bamm.org



The paper submission deadline for WAM-BAMM*06 is Jan. 15th.

This is the second annual meeting devoted to the promotion and extension of
biologically accurate modeling and simulation.  This year's meeting 
will  start with a pre-meeting on computational olfaction (March 
22nd) which will include a special tribute to Wil Rall and Gordon 
Shepherd on the 40th anniversary of the original publication of their 
modeling work on dendro-dendritic inhibition in the olfactory bulb.

March 23rd will be devoted to tutorials built around issues in 
realistic modeling.  Currently scheduled tutorials include:

David Beeman, University of Colorado Boulder: Introduction to realistic
neural modeling

Michael Hines, Yale University: Large scale parallel network simulations
using NEURON

Dieter Jaeger, Emory University: How to make the best hand-tuned
single-cell model you can

Sharon Crook, Arizona State University, and others to be announced:
Workshop on XML standards for model specification

Upinder S. Bhalla, NCBS, Bangalore: Biochemical kinetics modeling with
Kinetikit and MOOSE.

Hugo Cornelis, UTHSCA: GENESIS simulations with hsolve


The main meeting will take place on March 24th and 25th.  Currently 
scheduled invited speakers include:

Gordon Shepherd (Yale University)
Wil Rall (NIH - retired)
Mike Hasselmo (Boston University)
Phil Ulinski (University of Chicago)
Upinder Bhalla (National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore India)
John Rinzel (New York University)



The meeting's primary objective is to promote communication and
collaboration between users and others involved in realistic biological
modeling and to also provide an introduction to other scientists interested
in realistic biological modeling.  This year's meeting will feature a
pre-meeting (on March 22nd) focused on computation in the olfactory 
system.   (see www.wam-bamm.org for additional details).

Supplementary Travel Funds are available for students presenting 
papers at the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you in old San 'antone.


Jim Bower
Dave Beeman

-- 
                       James M. Bower Ph.D.

                      Research Imaging Center
    University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
                        7703 Floyd Curl Drive
                     San Antonio, TX  78284-6240

                  Cajal Neuroscience Center
                University of Texas San Antonio

                      Phone: 210 567 8080
                         Fax: 210 567 8152


From isabelle at clopinet.com  Mon Jan  9 06:38:24 2006
From: isabelle at clopinet.com (Isabelle Guyon)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:38:24 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: WCCI Model Selection Workshop
Message-ID: <43C24B30.50806@clopinet.com>

DEADLINE == January 31st, 2006 ==

Dear Colleague,

We are organizing a workshop on the topic of
            MODEL SELECTION
a the WCCI conference, July 18, 2006, Vancouver, Canada. See:
http://clopinet.com/isabelle/Projects/modelselect/

To contribute a paper to be included in the proceedings
January 31st, 2006, Submission deadline.
March 15th, 2006, notification of acceptance.
April 15th, 2006, camera ready copy due.

Instructions:
1) Follow the instructions 
http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html. Page limit = 8pages.
2) Submit your paper. IMPORTANT: On the IJCNN 2006 submit page 
http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2006/upload.php, under "Main 
research topic", select "S. SPECIAL SESSIONS -> S4. Model selection 
(Guyon)". Do not add other topics.
3) Send email to modelselect at clopinet.com to notify us of you submission.

We are looking forward to receiving your contribution.
Happy New Year!

The organizers

  



From jonas at buchli.org  Mon Jan  9 12:43:57 2006
From: jonas at buchli.org (Jonas Buchli)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 18:43:57 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CfP: EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 & Call for
	Participation
Message-ID: <1136828637.6858.33.camel@moria.buchli.org>

Dear Connectionists,

Please find below the 2nd call for poster abstracts for the EPFL-LATSIS
Symposium 2006 - Dynamical Principles for Neuroscience and Intelligent
Biomimetic Devices.
Furthermore, the registration is open now, and we are looking forward to
seeing many connectionists in Lausanne.  

Best regards
Jonas Buchli

------------------------------------------------------------------------

<<Please post/forward as you see fit>>

====================================================
* EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 
* --------------------------
* 2nd Call for Poster Abstracts 
* 1st Call for Participation
====================================================

We invite the submission of poster abstracts and the participation for
the 

EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006  
Dynamical Principles for Neuroscience and Intelligent Biomimetic Devices
http://latsis2006.epfl.ch

March, 8-10, 2006
Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland


Aim of the Conference 
---------------------

The goal of the conference is to bring together scientists and engineers
interested in understanding the dynamical properties of the nervous
system, and in taking inspiration from those properties for the design
of prosthetic and robotic devices. The conference is interdisciplinary
in nature, and aims at bringing together researchers working on similar
topics and phenomena but from different backgrounds. 

The conference is made possible thanks to the generous support of the
Latsis Foundation. The presentations will consists of a series of
invited talks (see below) and of poster presentations (with short poster
spotlights).

For more background on the aim of the conference, please visit
http://latsis2006.epfl.ch


Important Dates
---------------

Deadline of abstract submission: January 27, 2006
Notification of acceptance: February 3, 2006

Registration deadline: February 13, 2006

Conference dates: March 8-10, 2006


Abstract submission
-------------------

Please send a two-page abstract (including figures and references as
needed) to jonas.buchli -at- epfl.ch . 


Note that we will not have a full peer review process, the number of
posters that we can accept is however limited. Thus, we will accept the
contributions depending on relevance to the conference topics, quality,
and available place. Once accepted, presenters will have the opportunity
to present their work with a poster, as well as a short poster spotlight
(a 2-minute presentation) in the conference theatre.

Templates as well as additional information on the format of abstracts
and posters is available on the following website:

http://latsis2006.epfl.ch/page14710.html


Proceedings
-----------

The poster abstracts will be published in a booklet with ISBN number
distributed at the conference. 

Registration
------------

Registration for the EPFL-LATSIS Symposium 2006 is now open. Please
visit the following website for information and registration form:

http://latsis2006.epfl.ch/page14478.html

Speakers
--------

Dynamics of brain function and behavior

    * Avis Cohen (University of Maryland)
    * Sten Grillner (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm)
    * Serge Rossignol (Universit? de Montr?al)
    * Carmen Sandi (EPFL)
    * Allen Selverston (UC San Diego) 

Nonlinear Dynamics and neural computation

    * Bard Ermentrout (University of Pittsburgh)
    * Wulfram Gerstner (EPFL)
    * Martin Hasler (EPFL)
    * Wolfgang Maass (TU Graz)
    * Misha Rabinovich (UC San Diego)
    * Misha Tsodyks (Weizmann Institute of Science) 

Neuroprosthetics

    * Maria Chiara Carrozza (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa)
    * Miguel Nicolelis (EPFL/Duke University)
    * Philippe Renaud (EPFL)
    * Andrew Schwartz (University of Pittsburgh) 

Hybrid circuits and electronic neurons

    * Thierry Bal (Unic / CNRS)
    * Rodney Douglas (ETHZ, Zurich)
    * Peter Fromherz (Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry,
Martinsried)
    * Gwendal Le Masson (University of Bordeaux) 

Biomimetic Robotics and Control

    * Jean-Louis Deneubourg (Univ. libre de Bruxelles)
    * Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL)
    * Yasuo Kuniyoshi (University of Tokyo)
    * Jean-Jacques Slotine (MIT)
    * Barbara Webb (University of Edinburgh) 



Organizing Committee
--------------------

Main organizer:

Auke Ijspeert, EPFL 

Co-organizers:

Aude Billard, EPFL 
Dario Floreano, EPFL
Wulfram Gerstner, EPFL 
Martin Hasler, EPFL 
Henry Markram, EPFL 
Misha Rabinovich, UCSD
Al Selverston, UCSD 

Local chair:
Jonas Buchli, EPFL

Email contacts: Auke.Ijspeert -at- epfl.ch   and   Jonas.Buchli -at-
epfl.ch




From osporns at indiana.edu  Mon Jan  9 10:03:47 2006
From: osporns at indiana.edu (Olaf Sporns)
Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 10:03:47 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: ICDL 2006 Second Call
Message-ID: <43C27B53.3090903@indiana.edu>

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

ICDL 2006
International Conference on Development and Learning
- Dynamics of Development and Learning -
http://www.icdl06.org
Indiana University Bloomington, May 31- June 3, 2006

SPECIAL SESSIONS: http://www.icdl06.org/workshops.html
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: http://www.icdl06.org/speakers.html
PAPER SUBMISSION: http://www.icdl06.org/submissions.html

CALL FOR PAPERS: http://www.icdl06.org/CFP_ICDL2006.pdf
Paper Submission Deadline: FEBRUARY 6, 2006

Recent years have seen a convergence of research in artificial 
intelligence, developmental psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience 
and robotics, aimed at identifying common computational principles of 
development and learning in artificial and natural systems. The theme of 
this year's conference centers on development as a process of dynamic 
change that occurs within a complex and embodied system. The dynamics of 
development extend across multiple levels, from neural circuits, to 
changes in body morphology, sensors, movement, behavior, and 
inter-personal and social patterns. The goal of the conference is to 
present state-of-the-art research on autonomous development in humans, 
animals and robots, and to continue to identify new interdisciplinary 
research directions for the future of the field.

The 5th International Conference on Development and Learning 2006 
(ICDL06) will be held on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington, 
May 31- June 3, 2006. The conference is organized with the technical 
co-sponsorship of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. The 
conference will feature plenary talks by invited keynote speakers, 
invited sessions (workshops) organized around a central topic, a panel 
discussion and poster sessions.

Paper submissions (for details regarding format and submission/review 
process see our website at http://www.icdl06.org) are invited in these 
areas:

. General Principles of Development and Learning in Humans and Robots
. Neural, Behavioral and Computational Plasticity
. Embodied Cognition: Foundations and Applications
. Social Development in Humans and Robots
. Language Development and Learning
. Dynamic Systems Approaches
. Emergence of Structures through Development
. Development of Perceptual and Motor Systems
. Models of Developmental Disorders

Authors may specify preferences for oral or poster presentations. All 
submissions will be peer-reviewed and accepted papers will be published 
in a conference proceedings volume. Selected conference presenters will 
be invited to update and expand their papers for publication in a 
special issue on "Dynamics of Development and Learning" of the journal 
Adaptive Behavior (http://adb.sagepub.com/).

ICDL precedes the conference "Artificial Life X", June 3-7, 2006, also 
held on the campus of Indiana University Bloomington 
(http://alifex.org). ICDL and ALIFE will share one day of overlapping 
workshops and tutorials on June 3.

Organizing Committee:
Linda Smith (Chair), Olaf Sporns, Chen Yu, Mike Gasser, Cynthia 
Breazeal, Gideon Deak, John Weng.

-- 
Olaf Sporns, PhD
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
Programs in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405



From mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk  Tue Jan 10 07:40:12 2006
From: mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk (Mark van Rossum)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:40:12 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: 4 Year PhD in neuroinformatics Edinburgh
Message-ID: <1136896812.12770.31.camel@localhost>

4 YEAR PhD IN NEUROINFORMATICS, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

We invite applications for the EPSRC/MRC funded PhD programme in 
Neuroinformatics at the University of Edinburgh. 

This is a 4 year programme with a strongly interdisciplinary character
and is ideal for students who want to apply their computational and
analytical skills to problems in neuroscience and related fields. The
first year consists of courses in neuroscience and informatics, as
well as projects based in experimental labs. The first year is
followed by a 3 year PhD project. The PhD project is commonly done in
collaboration with one of the many departments and institutes
affiliated with the DTC.
The DTC programme is made up of 3 themes:

1) Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience.
Computational, mathematical, and experimental studies of information
processing in the nervous system.

2) Neuromorphic Engineering and Robotics.
Artificial sensor perception, neuromorphic modelling, spiking
computation, and neurorobotics.

3) Data Analysis and Data Handling.
Visualization, data analysis using machine learning, and simulation.

Edinburgh has a strong research community in these areas and leads
the UK in creating a coherent programme in neuroinformatics. Edinburgh
has been voted as 'best place to live in Britain', and has many exciting
cultural and student activities.

Students with a strong background in either computer science,
mathematics, physics or engineering are particularly welcome to apply.
Motivated students with other backgrounds will also be considered.

About 10 full studentships are available to UK students and a small
number of other EU students. The stipend is about 12,000 GB pounds per
annum. Non-EU/non-UK applicants will need to provide their own funding
and evidence thereof.

Full info and application forms can be obtained from:
http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/neuroinformatics
Applications received by March 30th will receive priority treatment.



From mfrank at u.arizona.edu  Tue Jan 10 18:29:06 2006
From: mfrank at u.arizona.edu (Michael J Frank)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:29:06 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Model of Orbitofrontal and Basal Ganglia
	Contributions to Decision Making
Message-ID: <101380f60601101529g2562da9em818edd356058bd4e@mail.gmail.com>

The following paper is available for download from
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mfrank/pubs-online.html

Frank, M.J. & Claus, E.D. (in press). Anatomy of a decision:
Striato-orbitofrontal interactions in reinforcement learning, decision
making and reversal. Psychological Review.

Abstract:
We explore the division of labor between the basal ganglia (BG) /
dopamine (DA) system and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in reinforcement
learning and decision making. We show that a "primitive" neural
network model of the BG/DA system learns to make decisions based on
their relative likelihood of reinforcement, but that the same model
fails when the magnitude of gains and losses is more relevant than
their frequency of occurence. An augmented model including OFC and
amygdalar interactions with the BG system is more successful at
estimating the true expected value of decisions, and is faster at
learning to switch behavior when decision-outcome contingencies
change. In our combined model, "Go" and "NoGo" BG pathways modulate
the selection of premotor responses based on their probability of
reinforcement, whereas medial and lateral OFC areas exert top-down
control by representing reinforcement magnitudes in working memory.
The model successfully captures patterns of behavior resulting from
OFC damage in decision making, reversal learning, and devaluation
paradigms, and makes additional predictions for the underlying source
of these deficits.

Michael J Frank, PhD
Assistant Professor
Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition
University of Arizona
1503 E University Blvd, Bldg#68, Tucson, AZ 85721
mfrank at u.arizona.edu
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mfrank/


From masulli at disi.unige.it  Tue Jan 10 10:58:04 2006
From: masulli at disi.unige.it (Francesco Masulli)
Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:58:04 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics
	- Special Session at IJCNN-WCCI 2006
Message-ID: <200601101658.05497.masulli@disi.unige.it>


                                        CALL FOR PAPERS

                                        Special session on
              Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics (Sg)

                                                      at 

IEEE 2006 World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2006) -
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2006)
        
Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada, July 16-21, 2006
             http://www.wcci2006.org/home.html

Description and Scope:
Bioinformatics is a fast growing scientific area aimed at managing, 
analyzing and interpreting information from biological data, sequences 
and structures. In the past few years, many Computational 
Intelligence and  Machine Learning algorithms have been successfully 
applied to the solution of complex problems typical of this field, 
including signal and image processing, clustering, feature selection, 
data visualization, and data mining. 

This session aims at highlighting recent advances in the applications 
of Neural Networks techniques to Bioinformatics, from improving 
protein-protein  interaction  to pharmacogenomic systems, from clustering 
to data visualization and mining.


Organizers:
Francesco Masulli (1) and Roberto Tagliaferri (2)

(1)  Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione,
Universita' di Genova and CNISM, Via Dodecaneso 35, 16146 Genova, Italy
email: masulli at disi.unige.it

(2) Dipartimento di Matematica ed Applicazioni,
Universit? di Salerno, Via Ponte don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano (Sa), Italy
email:rtagliaferri at unisa.it


Important deadlines:
January 31   2006  Paper submission deadline
March   15   2006  Author notification of acceptance or rejection
April   15   2006  Deadline for receipt of final manuscript

Paper submission:

At http://www.wcci2006.org/WCCI-Web_paper_submit.html
you'll find the Instruction for Authors and the link to the IJCNN submission
site.  While submitting, at "Main research topic" select 
"Sg. Neural Networks applications to Bioinformatics (Masulli, Tagliaferri)"


From sunny at sunnybains.com  Thu Jan 12 10:45:58 2006
From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 15:45:58 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: The Neuromorphic Engineer: now available for
	download
Message-ID: <0B8394AD-3A66-4988-91B5-B8C66A93DF12@sunnybains.com>

The latest issue of The Neuromorphic Engineer (Volume 2, Number 2),  
published by the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, came out in  
December.

This issue contains article on
?	A neuromorphic robot vision with a mixed analog- digital architecture
?	Telluride Workshop highlights
?	The Telluride ?Grand Challenge? Robot Race
?	The Audiosapiana robot contender
?	 A high-speed/precision winner-take-all circuit
?	 Bio-inspired	robot vision for a grasping task
?	 Wide-dynamic-range imaging
?	 A cortically-inspired active binocular vision system
?	 The USB Revolution

While the Institute's website is being re-designed, the issue can be  
downloaded from:

http://www.sunnybains.com/NME/NME22.pdf

If this link doesn't work, then it means the website is now ready. In  
this case, please go to:

http://www.sunnybains.com/NME

where I will put a re-direct.


Dr Sunny Bains
Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer
EEE Department
Imperial College London




From Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp  Mon Jan 16 00:47:44 2006
From: Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp (Luc Berthouze)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:47:44 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: Deadline extension - Workshop on Motor Development
	(Bristol, UK, 3-6 April 2006)
Message-ID: <980335C2-DD26-40DC-8DDC-162748800D17@aist.go.jp>


Please note that the deadline for submission to the AISB workshop on  
Motor Development has been extended to the 6th of February.

----------

Call for Papers: Motor Development
http://www.neurosci.aist.go.jp/~berthouz/MotDev.html

April 5th-6th 2006

A symposium part of the AISB 2006 conference
University of Bristol, Bristol, England

Call for Papers

The motor activity of an organism is one of its primary means of  
interacting with, and operating on, its environment. As such, its  
development is key to its cognitive development and, indeed,  
developmental psychology has shown both processes to be tightly coupled.
In embodied robotics and cognitive modeling, however, these processes  
have been mostly treated in isolation with systems either evolving  
higher cognitive processes, or acquiring new motor skills. The  
motivation of this symposium is that understanding, and simulating,  
the mechanisms underlying motor development is necessary to implement  
an ecologically-balanced development of the system.
This interdisciplinary symposium aims to bring together researchers  
from neuroscience, developmental psychology, computer science and  
robotics to examine the latest advances in the area, and delineate  
new strategies.

Submissions

We invite abstracts on any subject within the area of motor  
development. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:
- Motor development in animals and humans: studies, models and theories
- Motor development in robots: issues, models, experiments or  
simulations
- Evolutionary developmental biology and motor development
- Critical periods of motor development
- Pathologies of motor development
- Interplay between motor and cognitive development
- Degree of freedom problem
- U-shape development
- Emergence of new skills
- Role of caregiver in skill acquisition

Accepted abstracts will be presented orally on the day and appear in  
the published workshop proceedings.
Extended abstracts of between 1 and 2 pages should be submitted as  
PDF files to Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp by 6th February 2006.
Selected papers will be invited for publication in a special issue of  
a journal. Further details will be available soon.

Organiser

             Luc Berthouze, AIST Neuroscience Research Institute, Japan

Programme Committee (confirmed members)

	    Christian Balkenius, Lund University, Sweden
             Luc Berthouze, AIST Neuroscience Research Institute, Japan
             Yiannis Demiris, Imperial College, UK
             Eugene Goldfield, Children's Hospital Boston, USA
             Brian Hopkins, Lancaster University, UK
             Giorgio Metta, Genoa University, Italy
             Claes Van Hofsten, Uppsala University, Sweden

Important dates

             Submissions of papers by :     06 Feb 06
             Notification of decision:            20 Feb 06
             Camera ready copies by:        06 Mar 06

Up-to-date information at: http://www.neurosci.aist.go.jp/~berthouz/ 
MotDev.html

-------------------

Dr. Luc Berthouze, Senior Research Scientist,
Neuroscience Research Institute (AIST 2)
Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan
Tel: +81-298-61-5369 Fax: +81-298-61-5841
Email: Luc.Berthouze at aist.go.jp





From b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk  Fri Jan 13 11:01:35 2006
From: b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk (b.graham@cs.stir.ac.uk)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:01:35 -0000 (GMT)
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc & PhD posts in computational neuroscience
Message-ID: <1062.213.78.119.61.1137168095.squirrel@www.cs.stir.ac.uk>

Postdoctoral Research Fellow and PhD Studentship in Computational
Neuroscience.

Computational Intelligence research group, Department of Computing Science
and Mathematics, University of Stirling, Scotland. A 36-month Research
Assistant post (salary range: ?20,044 - ?30,002p.a.; appointment up to
spine point 6: a maximum of ?22,289 p.a.) and a PhD studentship (stipend
?12,000p.a. plus UK/EU fees) to work on an EPSRC funded project concerning
?Dynamical information processing in a neuronal microcircuit?.

The project will investigate the dynamics of information storage and
recall in neural microcircuits via computer simulation of neural network
models based on the known cell types and network architecture of the
mammalian hippocampus. Of crucial importance is how plasticity (learning)
is dynamically controlled so that new information can be encoded without
disrupting existing memory traces and how information recall occurs either
interleaved or in parallel with storage of new memories. The network
models will include a far more detailed microcircuit than has been
attempted before in studies of neural information processing. The aim is
to investigate hypotheses concerning the functional roles within the
neural microcircuitry of four major classes of inhibitory interneurons.

The posts will be held in the laboratory of Dr Bruce Graham within the
Computational Intelligence research group in the Department of Computing
Science and Mathematics at the University of Stirling. The project is in
collaboration with the experimental laboratory of Dr Stuart Cobb in the
Division of Neuroscience and Biomedical Systems at the University of
Glasgow. There will be significant interaction with Dr Cobb?s laboratory,
allowing direct access to the latest experimental knowledge and results.
There is funding for conference attendance and for a small parallel
processing computer simulation facility.

The postdoctoral fellow will have, or be shortly about to complete, a PhD
in computational neuroscience or biologically-related neural networks. You
will be familiar with the mathematical and computational techniques
involved in modelling biologically-realistic neurons and cortical neural
circuits. Experience with either the NEURON or GENESIS simulation packages
and the parallel implementation of neural network simulations will be
highly regarded.

Applicants for the PhD studentship may have either a numerate background
(mathematics, physics, computing science) with an interest in
computational neuroscience, or a biological/neuroscience background with
good quantitative skills and an interest in computer modelling.

Informal enquiries, ideally including a CV, may be made to Dr Bruce
Graham: Tel: 01786 467432, Fax: 01786 464551 or e-mail:
b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk, from whom further details of the project and how
to apply can be obtained. The positions are available from July 2006.
Applications should be received by 31st March 2006.


-- 
Dr Bruce Graham, Reader (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk)
Dept. of Computing Science and Mathematics,
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA
phone: +44 1786 467 432   fax: +44 1786 464 551

-- 
The University of Stirling is a university established in Scotland by
charter at Stirling, FK9 4LA.  Privileged/Confidential Information may
be contained in this message.  If you are not the addressee indicated
in this message (or responsible for delivery of the message to such
person), you may not disclose, copy or deliver this message to anyone
and any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is
prohibited and may be unlawful.  In such case, you should destroy this
message and kindly notify the sender by reply email.  Please advise
immediately if you or your employer do not consent to Internet email
for messages of this kind.



From cns at cnsorg.org  Sun Jan 15 15:55:20 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:55:20 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Submissions for CNS 2006 open
Message-ID: <20060115205520.M90404@cnsorg.org>


Contributions to CNS 2006 can now be submitted. 

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 6, 2006 midnight; submission open
January 15, 2006

Submissions should be prepared as a three page extended summary (including
figures and references) in PDF format. To submit your paper, follow the
www.cns.confmaster.net to the submission server. Click on the link register as
new author and edit your userdata. Your password will be emailed to you to the
email address indicated. Once you have registered as an author, you can log
on, change your password and follow the link register paper to submit your
contribution to CNS *2006. Please note that a short abstract (< 400 words) for
the meeting program should also be submitted at this time. At submission,
please indicate if you would prefer an oral or poster presentation (drop down
menue paper type) and choose one Systems and between one and three Field of
study keywords in the keywords drop down menus.
Please check www.cnsorg.org for more detail. 

Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006
July 16 - July 20, 2006
Edinburgh, UK
http://www.cnsorg.org 


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk  Fri Jan 13 04:49:00 2006
From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 09:49:00 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2006
Message-ID: <20060113094900.GC23422@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk>

	    ADVANCED COURSE IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE
		     (A PENS NEUROSCIENCE SCHOOL)

	  August 7th - September 1st  2006, ARCACHON, FRANCE

		APPLICATION DEADLINE: April 10th, 2006

DIRECTORS:	  Ad Aertsen (BCCN, Freiburg, Germany)
		  Peter Dayan (UCL, London, UK)
    	          Nicolas Brunel (CNRS, Paris, France)
                  Israel Nelken, (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel)
LOCAL ORGANIZER:  Gwendal Le Masson (INSERM, Bordeaux, France)

The Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience is for advanced
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are interested in
learning the essentials of the field. 
 
We seek students of any nationality from a variety of disciplines,
including neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, computer
science, mathematics and psychology. Students are expected to have a
keen interest and basic background in neurobiology as well as some
computer experience.

The course has two complementary parts. Mornings are devoted to
lectures given by distinguished international faculty on topics across
the breadth of experimental and computational neuroscience. During the
rest of the day, students are given practical training in the art and
practice of neural modelling, largely through the medium of their
individual choice of model systems. 

The first week of the course introduces students to essential
neurobiological concepts and to the most important techniques in
modelling single cells, networks and neural systems. Students learn
how to solve their research problems using software packages such as
MATLAB, NEST, NEURON, XPP, etc. During the following three weeks the
lectures cover specific brain areas and functions. Topics range from
modelling single cells and subcellular processes through the
simulation of simple circuits, large neuronal networks and system
level models of the brain. The course ends with project presentations
by the students.

A maximum of 30 students will be accepted. There will be a minimum fee
of EUR 500 per student (depending on the course's funding) covering
costs for lodging, meals and other course expenses. Also depending on
funding, there will be a limited number of tuition fee waivers and
travel stipends available for students who need financial help for
attending the course. We specifically encourage applications from
researchers who work in the developing world. These students will be
selected following the normal submission procedure.

Applications, including a description of the target project must be
submitted electronically (see below) and should be accompanied by the
names and email details of two referees who have agreed to furnish
references. Applications will be assessed by a committee, with
selection being based on the scientific quality of the candidate and
of the project, the recommendation letters, and evidence that the
course may afford substantial benefit.
 
More information and the application process is available at:

http://www.neuroinf.org/courses/EUCOURSE/EU06         

Please apply electronically using a web browser. The deadline for
applications is April 10th, 2006.

Contact address:

Camilla Bruns,
Berlin University of Technology
Neural Information Processing Group
Franklinstr. 28/29
10587 Berlin, Germany

bruns at cs.tu-berlin.de
  



From ecuadros at spc.org.pe  Thu Jan 12 12:34:21 2006
From: ecuadros at spc.org.pe (Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas)
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2006 17:34:21 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: CFP IJCNN06 Special Session
 "Constructive/Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps"
Message-ID: <43C6931D.2080700@spc.org.pe>

Dear colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Session about "Constructive/Hierarchical 
Self-Organizing Maps"
at the International Joint INNS-IEEE Conference on Neural Networks 
(IJCNN) 2006 in Vancouver, Canada

Please send this message to your colleagues working on this topic.

Best regards
ernesto

*Call for Papers for a Special Session
"Constructive/Hierarchical Self-Organizing Maps"*
** 
International Joint INNS-IEEE Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2006
as part of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligenc (WCCI2006)
Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel,
Vancouver, BC, Canada
July 16- 21, 2006, IJCNN 2006,
(http://www.wcci2006.org/)

The aims of this session is to bring together researchers working on novel
constructive models based on Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). This area brings
together knowledge from Hierarchical SOMs, Information Retrieval, Access 
Methods
such as Spatial and Metric Access Methods, Constructive Techniques, etc.

Topics include but are not restricted to:
* Hierarchical SOM
* Constructive SOM
* Self-evolving architectures
* Evolving and Evolutionary Self-Organizing Maps,
* Incorporating Access Methods on Self-Orgainzing Maps
* Techniques to find an appropriate SOM architecture
* Similarity Information Retrieval
* Bayesian Approaches

Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas - ecuadros at spc.org.pe 
<mailto:ecuadros at spc.org.pe>
and Prof. Dra. Roseli Ap. Francelin Romero - rafrance at icmc.usp.br 
<mailto:rafrance at icmc.usp.br>

Submissions and deadlines:
Paper Submission: January 31, 2006
Decision Notification: March 15, 2006
Camera-Ready Submission: April 15, 2006

All accepted papers will be published in the IJCNN 2006 Proceedings.

Each paper must have the title, authors with e-mails/web sites, and
a detailed abstract as possible.  All accepted papers must be
presented at the conference.

Please be sure to choose this special session as the MAIN RESEARCH TOPIC 
when submit a paper through respective Paper Submission System.

We encourage contributing authors to take a prompt action to avoid 
last-minute traffic.

Best regards
**************************************************************
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas. PhD
Head of School of Computer Science (Informatica)
Universidad Catolica San Pablo
Arequipa-Peru
Peruvian Computer Society, President
http://socios.spc.org.pe/ecuadros
+51-54-934-1932 (mobile) +51-54-400416 (home)
+51-54-281517 (Fax)
**************************************************************





-- 
**************************************************************
Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas. PhD
Head of School of Computer Science (Informatica)
Universidad Catolica San Pablo
Arequipa-Peru
Peruvian Computer Society, President
http://socios.spc.org.pe/ecuadros
+51-54-934-1932 (mobile) +51-54-400416 (home)
+51-54-281517 (Fax)
**************************************************************



From fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de  Mon Jan 16 06:59:44 2006
From: fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de (Friedhelm Schwenker)
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:59:44 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: ANNPR 2006 Call for papers
Message-ID: <43CB8AB0.60803@neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de>

** apologies if you receive multiple copies of this document **

====================================================
              2nd CALL FOR PAPERS

                  ANNPR 2006

    2nd IAPR TC3 International Workshop on
Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition

        August 31 - September 2 2006
University of Ulm, Reisensburg Castle (Germany)
 (http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/ANNPR06)


The workshop proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag (LNAI).

Aim of the workshop:
ANNPR 2006 follows the success of the first workshop ANNPR 2003
held at the University of Florence, Italy, in September 2003.
This 2nd ANNPR workshop will act as a major forum for international
researchers and practitioners working in all areas of neural network based
pattern recognition to present and discuss the latest research, results,
and ideas in these areas.
The TC3 "Neural Networks & Computational Intelligence" is
one of the 20 technical committees of the International Association
on Pattern Recognition (IAPR). The scope of this TC is on all
kinds of Computational Intelligence approaches, including artificial
neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computing, with focus
on pattern recognition applications.

Papers are solicited dealing with neural networks and pattern
recognition which emphasize methodological issues arising in
applications.
They should be related but not limited to the following topics.

Methodological issues:
-    Supervised learning.
-    Unsupervised learning.
-    Combination of supervized and unsupervized learning.
-    Feedforward networks and kernel machines
-    Recurrent and competitive neural networks.
-    Hierarchical modular architectures and hybrid systems.
-    Combination of neural networks and Hidden Markov models.
-    Multiple classifier systems and ensemble methods.

Applications in Pattern Recognition
-    Image processing and segmentation.
-    Sensorfusion and multimodal processing.
-    Feature extraction, dimension reduction.
-    Clustering and vector quantisation.
-    Speech and speaker recognition.
-    Data, text, and web mining.
-    Bioinformatics.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Original and unpublished contributions are solicited which include
regular papers and extended abstracts.
Potential participants should submit a paper describing their work
in one of the areas described above. Each regular paper must be
accompanied by an abstract summarizing the contribution it makes
to the field.
Maximum paper length for regular papers is 12 pages in LNCS format.
Extended abstracts can have at most four pages. Submission of a paper
constitutes a commitment that, if accepted, one or more authors will
attend and participate in the workshop. The workshop
proceedings will be published in the Springer LNAI series.
Electronic submission in camera-ready format is required.

Papers must be sent to:
Friedhelm Schwenker, Department of Neural Information Processing,
University of Ulm (Email:  friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special Sessions:
Persons wishing to organise a special session should submit a proposal
to the workshop chairs: (Email: annpr2006 at uni-ulm.de).
Proposals should include a session title, a list of topics covered by the
session and a list of 3-5 papers for possible presentation in the session.
Proposals must be received by February 1, 2006.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Dates:
Proposals for special sessions: February 1, 2006
Paper submission: March 1, 2006
Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2006
Camera ready copies: May 15, 2006

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further information:
Contact Simone Marinai or Friedhelm Schwenker (Email: annpr2006 at uni-ulm.de)
or visit the Workshop web page 
(http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/ANNPR06/).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
General Chair

Simone Marinai (University of Florence, Italy)

Program Chair

Friedhelm Schwenker (University of Ulm, Germany)


Program Committee (confirmed members):

Shigeo Abe (Kobe University, Japan)
Herve Bourlard (IDIAP, Martigny, Switzerland)
Horst Bunke (University of Bern, Switzerland)
Neamat El Gayar(Cairo University, Egypt)
Patrick Gallinari (University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France)
Marco Gori (University of Siena, Italy)
Barbara Hammer (Technical University of Clausthal, Germany)
Tom Heskes (University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
Jose Manuel Inesta (University of Alicante, Spain)
Rudolph Kruse (Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg, Germany)
Cheng-Lin Liu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
Marco Maggini (University of Siena, Italy)
Erkki Oja (Helsinky University of Technology, Finland)
Guenther Palm (University of Ulm, Germany)
Marcello Pelillo (University Ca Foscari, Venezia, Italy)
Raul Rojas (Freie University of Berlin, Germany)
Fabio Roli (University of Cagliari, Italy)
Ah Chung Tsoi (University of Wollongong, Australia)
Michel Verleysen (Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium)
Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK)

-----------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Friedhelm Schwenker
University of Ulm      | email:  fschwenker at neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de
Department of Neural   | fax:    +49-731-50-24156
Information Processing | phone:  +49-731-50-24159
D-89069 Ulm (Germany)  | www:    http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ni/mitarbeiter/FSchwenker.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------




From s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk  Thu Jan 12 19:27:34 2006
From: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk (Crone, Sven)
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:27:34 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: CfP - ISF 2006 - Forecasting with Neural Networks
Message-ID: <7F332A8009EE5D4CB62C87717A3498A111B4C424@exchange-be1.lancs.ac.uk>

=================================================
CALL FOR PAPERS

Special Track & Forecasting Competition on 
"FORECASTING WITH ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS"
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF_2006.htm

@ The 26th International Symposium on Forecasting 2006
June 11-14, 2006, Santander, Spain
http://www.isf2006.org 

=================================================

Dear Researchers and Practitioners!
You are invited to submit an abstract related to the theory and practice
of forecasting with artificial neural networks to the special track at
the 2006 International Symposium of Forecasting. All accepted and
presented abstracts will be invited to submit full papers to be
considered for post conference publication. Please find instructions
below or visit the special session website at
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF_2006.htm 

To participate & receive updates, please indicate your interest by
sending an empty email to s.crone at neural-forecasting.com with "ISF2006
info" in the subject line.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
General CfP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
We invite abstracts related to the theory and practice of forecasting
with neural networks, describing new techniques, methods and models and
novel applications. Particular emphasis is given to submissions related
to the use of NN in changing environments, the 2006 ISF theme. We
strongly encourage submissions from practitioners documenting successful
AND unsuccessful novel applications of NN in practice. A list of topics
of interest is given below:

Methods (include but are not limited to):
- artificial neural networks (all paradigms)
- feedforward & recurrent
- single methods & ensembles
- support vector machines & regression
- NN related & hybrid soft computing methods
- etc.

Applications (include but are not limited to):
- business forecasting & demand planning
- time series prediction & analysis 
- predictive classification & data mining
- etc.

Theory
- Use of NN in changing environments
- Stability & retraining of networks
- Principles of modelling NN for forecasting
- Data-preprocessing for NN forecasting 
- Model selection of NN candidates
- etc.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Forecasting Competition CfP
-------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition to the general track, we invite submissions to a
"forecasting competition". As in the previous year, we invite research
and practitioner teams to participate in a forecasting competition open
to neural networks and methods from computational intelligence. The 2006
competition will focus on river flood forecasting and will be organised
by Chris Dawson. To present results each participant must also submit an
abstract and register at the conference. More information and datasets
may be found at
http://www.neural-forecasting.com/ISF06_Neural_forecasting_competition.h
tm 


-------------------------------------------------------------------
Submission of Abstracts / Papers 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Prospective authors are invited to submit their abstract (limit of 300
words, Arial, 10pt, no mathematics, no references, a blank line between
paragraphs) electronically on the conference website www.isf2006.org
following the guidelines posted there. The review process will contain
at least two independent reviewers. For the forecasting competition, the
abstract should describe the NN model and modelling process applied.
Full submissions in a Springer publication on "Advances in Forecasting
with Neural Networks" will be encouraged after the conference. All
submissions must be received by February 28th 2006. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference Information 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The 26th International Symposium on Forecasting, organised annually by
the International Institute of Forecasting, is the premier conference
for researchers and practitioners in forecasting. The 2005 conference in
San Antonio attracted over 200 presentations in all areas of
forecasting, with 31 presentations dedicated to neural networks for
forecasting in 7 sessions, spread across 3 tracks of NN theory, NN
applications and a NN forecasting competition. It comprised one of the
largest gatherings focussed on neural forecasting in 2006 and provided a
premier opportunity for networking within the field. All recent ISF
conferences have hosted a dedicated track on NN in addition to various
submissions to alternative tracks of nonlinear methods, and application
focused tracks such as financial forecasting, forecasting in sports etc 

The Symposium will be held at the Magdalena Palace, the former summer
residence of the Kings of Spain, in Santander's historic peninsula which
boasts superb views of Santander's famous harbour. The organisers are
looking forward to giving you a taste of Spanish hospitality and special
impressions of their splendid city and exciting country! For Information
on Santander please follow the links from the conference website at
www.isf2006.org 

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Dates 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
February 28th, 2006 Abstracts due
March 27th, 2006 Notification of acceptance
April 17th, 2006 Registration deadline
June 11-14, 2006 25th International Symposium on Forecasting 2006
August 2006 Call for Post-conference publications

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Information 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Track Chair
Sven F. Crone

Lancaster University
Research Centre for Forecasting
Dept. of Management Science
Centre for Forecasting

s.crone at neural-forecasting.com



From sunny at sunnybains.com  Thu Jan 19 09:34:08 2006
From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains)
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 14:34:08 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Call for articles for The Neuromorphic Engineer
Message-ID: <F9C8512D-448E-46D8-898F-C589147F0010@sunnybains.com>

The Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering is currently working on the  
next issue of our newsletter, The Neuromorphic Engineer (see link at  
the end of this message for the last issue).

If you are working on a project that you think would be interesting  
to our audience (either on research that is neuromorphic in its own  
right or on a tool that would be useful to the neuromorphic  
community) please get in touch with us about writing an article. All  
we need is a brief paragraph, ideally with a link to your website or  
that of your group/company.

If you're not sure whether your work falls into the neuromorphic  
category, please look at the Wikipedia entry for the subject, added  
by one of our Editorial Board:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromorphic

If you're still not sure, just go ahead and send the idea in anyway  
and we'll let you know.

If your suggestion is accepted by our Board, we'll be looking for an  
800-1200 word article including captions and references that would be  
due on 24 February (and should be published in early April).

I look forward to hearing from you and, hopefully, to reading about  
your work.

Very best,

Dr Sunny Bains
Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer

Last issue at:
http://www.sunnybains.com/NME/NME22.pdf


From sylee at kaist.ac.kr  Tue Jan 17 23:12:43 2006
From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2006 13:12:43 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: Volume 9 (October-December 2005) of Neural
	Information processing - Letters and Reviews
In-Reply-To: <20041009180525143664167a9d5c1346@kaist.ac.kr>
Message-ID: <1137557459572110.30198@webmail>

I would like to inform you that the Volume 9 of the NIP-LR, Neural
Information Processing - Letters and Reviews, 
the Online/Offline Journal with high-quality timely-publication with
double-blind reviews, will be available
as a printed book on January 2006. A free copy will be mailed upon e-mail
request to nip-lr at neuron.kaist.ac.kr.
Also, the online version has been online at www.nip-lr.info.

The Table of Contents is attached.

Soo-Young Lee
Editor-in-Chief, NIP-LR
Professor, Department of BioSystems
Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science Director,
Brain Science Research center Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology
373-1 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu
Daejeon 305-701
Korea
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Neural Information Processing - Letters and Reviews, 
Vol.9, Numbers1-3, October-December 2005

Review

pp. 1-13 
Gradients on Matrix Manifolds and their Chain Rule
Fabian J. Theis

Letters

pp. 15-22 
Modular Network SOM: Self-Organizing Maps in Function Space
Kazuhiro Tokunaga, Tetsuo Furukawa, and Syozo Yasui

pp. 23-29 
An Improved Neural Network Algorithm for Broadcast Scheduling Problem in
Packet Radio
Weixing Bi, Zheng Tang, Jiahai Wang, and Qiping Cao

pp. 31-40 
Active Learning in Recurrent Neural Networks Facilitated by a Hebb-like
Learning Rule with Memory
Frank Emmert-Streib

pp. 41-51 
Levenberg-Marquardt Learning Algorithm for Integrate-and-Fire Neuron Model
Deepak Mishra, Abhishek Yadav, Sudipta Ray, and Prem K. Kalra

pp. 53-58 
Bacteria Classification on Power Spectrums of Complete DNA Sequences by
Self-Organizing Map
Cheng-Chang Jeng, I-Ching Yang, Kun-Lin Hsieh, and Chun-Nan Lin

pp. 59-67 
Connectionist Selectionism: A Case Study of Parity
Rio B. T. Lowry and Michael R. W. Dawson



From Ben.Vincent at bristol.ac.uk  Tue Jan 17 05:23:13 2006
From: Ben.Vincent at bristol.ac.uk (Ben.Vincent@bristol.ac.uk)
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 10:23:13 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Two papers available
Message-ID: <1137493393.43ccc592014dd@webmail.bris.ac.uk>

Two papers are available for download from
http://ben.psy.bris.ac.uk/#publications


Vincent B. T, Baddeley R. J, Troscianko T, Gilchrist I. D, 2005, Is the
early visual system optimised to be energy efficient?, Network:
Computation in Neural Systems, special issue on Sensory Coding and the
Natural Environment, 16(2/3): 175-190

Abstract
This paper demonstrates that a representation which balances natural
image encoding with metabolic energy efficiency shows many similarities
to the neural organisation observed in the early visual system. A simple
linear model was constructed that learned receptive fields by optimally
balancing information coding with metabolic expense for an entire visual
field in a 2-stage visual system. The input to the model consists of a
space variant retinal array of photoreceptors. Natural images were then
encoded through a bottleneck such as the retinal ganglion cells that
form the optic nerve. The natural images represented by the activity of
retinal ganglion cells was then encoded by many more cortical cells in a
divergent representation. Qualitatively, the system learnt by optimising
information coding and energy expenditure and matched 1) The centre
surround organisation of retinal ganglion cells; 2) The gabor-like
organisation of cortical simple cells; 3) Higher densities of receptive
fields in the fovea decreasing in the periphery; 4) Smaller receptive
fields in the fovea increasing in size in the periphery; 5) Spacing
ratios of retinal cells and 6) Aspect ratios of cortical receptive
fields. Quantitatively however there are small but significant
discrepancies between density slopes which may be accounted for by
taking optic blur and fixation induced image statistics into account. In
addition, the model cortical receptive fields are more broadly tuned
than biological cortical neurons, this may be accounted for by the
computational limitation of modelling a relatively low number of
neurons. This paper shows that retinal receptive field properties can be
understood in terms of balancing coding with synaptic energy expenditure
and cortical receptive fields with firing rate energy expenditure and
provides a sound biological explanation of why sparse distributions are
beneficial.



Vincent B. T, Baddeley R. J, 2003, Synaptic energy efficiency in retinal
processing, Vision Research 43, 12831290

Abstract
Recent work suggests that the visual system may represent early visual
information in an energy efficient manner [Nature 381 (1996);Nature, 381
(1996) 607;Neural Comput. 3 (2001) 799;Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 11 (2001)
475]. This paper applies the idea of energy efficient representations to
understand retinal processing, and provides evidence that centre
surround processing observed is efficient in terms of minimizing
synaptic activity. In particular, it is shown that receptive fields at
different retinal eccentricities and at different levels of noise, can
be understood in terms of maximizing the transmission of visual
information given a constraint on total synaptic strengths and hence
energy consumption.



Ben Vincent, DPhil
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 8 Woodland
Road, Bristol, BS8 1TN, UK
http://ben.psy.bris.ac.uk/


From n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk  Mon Jan 23 05:59:17 2006
From: n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk (Neil Burgess)
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:59:17 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: Post-doc postion on the neural basis of human
	spatial memory at UCL
In-Reply-To: <006501c46041$a3ab74c0$4afe2880@Kinkajou>
Message-ID: <01b901c6200c$0f1ca630$4afe2880@Kinkajou>

Postdoc research position on the neural basis of human spatial memory, 
at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept. of Anatomy,
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON.
(apologies for multiple posting)

Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the 
neural representations spatial locations in virtual environments, with a 
particular focus on perspective taking. Work will include the use of virtual 
reality combined with fMRI in healthy volunteers and computational modelling. 
This research is part of the 'Wayfinding' project of the European Union. The 
post at UCL will involve development of spatial tasks and performance 
of fMRI experiments, and possible analysis of electrophysiological (EEG/MEG) 
data, cognitive psychology or computational modelling according to the 
development of the project and the interests of the research fellow. Relevant 
research experience and knowledge of spatial memory, and experience of MatLab 
or virtual reality programming would be desirable. The position is available 
from 1 April 2006 for 2 years, starting salary ?27,286 (inc. London Allowance). 

The Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience houses several world-class research 
groups and is located close to the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience 
and the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience unit.

Informal enquiries should be addressed to Professor Neil Burgess (email: 
n.burgess at ucl.ac.uk). For an outline of the lab?s research interests see: 
http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/groups/space_memory

The full application form can be found on 
http://www.anat.ucl.ac.uk/vacancy/0601_burgess41917.doc
The closing date for applications is 20th February 2006



From B.Kappen at science.ru.nl  Tue Jan 24 11:14:44 2006
From: B.Kappen at science.ru.nl (Bert Kappen)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:14:44 +0100 (CET)
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position at SNN Nijmegen
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0601241710290.21782@m50-041.azn.nl>

Postdoc position available at SNN Nijmegen.

SNN Nijmegen is a research group dedicated to fundamental research in
the areas of machine learning and computational neuroscience. Specific
topics are Bayesian networks, approximate inference methods, time-series
modeling, bio-informatics, expert systems, stochastic control and
collaborative decision making. The group consists currently of 8
researchers and one programmer.

In our group, we have a postdoc position available in a project on
genetic linkage analysis, which concerns the problem of finding the
genetic correlates of diseases or phenotypes in pedigrees of humans or
animals. The required computation is intractable and has recently been
succesfully improved using belief propagation (CVM). The research is
carried out in close collaboration with experimental research groups on
human genetics and animal breeding.

The requirement for the postdoc position is a PhD degree and publications
in the area of machine learning and/or genetics. The postdoc position
is full-time for a period of 3 years.

For more information contact Bert Kappen (b.kappen at science.ru.nl, +31
24 3614241).

Applications should be sent by email before March 1 2006 to
b.kappen at science.ru.nl.  Applications should contain a complete CV, a brief
description of his or her research interests.


Bert Kappen             SNN           Radboud University Nijmegen
URL: www.snn.kun.nl/~bert             The Netherlands			
tel: +31 24 3614241                   fax: +31 24 3541435
B.Kappen at science.ru.nl





From psollich at mth.kcl.ac.uk  Tue Jan 24 11:30:55 2006
From: psollich at mth.kcl.ac.uk (Peter Sollich)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 16:30:55 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Connectionists: Two Ph.D. studentships in statistical machine
 learning and speech recognition
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0601241630300.3890@otto.mth.kcl.ac.uk>

Dear colleagues,

I would be grateful if you could pass on the advert below to any potential
candidates, or colleagues in relevant areas.

Many thanks and best wishes,
Peter Sollich

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         Two Ph.D. Studentships
                        at King's College London

        Robust syllable recognition in the acoustic waveform domain

                        Start date: 1 April 2006
                  (or as soon as possible thereafter)

Two fully funded three-year Ph.D. studentships are available on an EPSRC
research grant for study under the supervision of Dr Zoran Cvetkovic
(Electronic Engineering) and Prof Peter Sollich (Mathematics) at King's
College London. The aim of the research project is to investigate whether
automatic speech recognition can be made more robust against noise by
working directly in the high-dimensional space of acoustic waveforms
rather than with more standard low-dimensional feature vectors. Further
details on the project and the relevant background can be found at
http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~psollich/speech.html

Applications are now invited from suitably qualified candidates with an
excellent first degree in electrical engineering, mathematics, statistics,
computer science, or theoretical physics. The project will involve
research at the interface of signal processing, information theory, and
machine learning (pattern recognition, statistical inference). Experience
in one of these areas, preferably at Master's level, will be an advantage.
Interested candidates should contact Dr Cvetkovic or Prof Sollich directly
and as soon as possible (contact details below), preferably by email.

The grant provides payment of full university fees (at the rate for
European Union students), a maintenance grant of around 13,600 pounds per
year, as well as provision for travel to conferences and dedicated
computing equipment. The successful applicants will be based at King's
College's Strand Campus. This is the most central of all the London
colleges, situated midway between the Houses of Parliament and St Paul's
Cathedral and close to Covent Garden, Soho, and Trafalgar Square.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Zoran Cvetkovic
Director, Centre for Digital Signal Processing Research
Division of Engineering
Email: zoran.cvetkovic at kcl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 - (0)20 - 7848 2858
Web:   http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/pse/diveng/research/cdspr/zor/

Prof Peter Sollich
Department of Mathematics
Email: peter.sollich at kcl.ac.uk
Phone: +44 - (0)20 - 7848 2875
Web:   http://www.mth.kcl.ac.uk/~psollich/

King's College London
Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------




From hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de  Tue Jan 24 18:40:34 2006
From: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de (Pascal Hitzler)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:40:34 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: CfP: ECAI06 Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and
	Reasoning, NeSy'06
Message-ID: <43D6BAF2.10500@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de>

Call for Papers
---------------

Second International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning

***NeSy'06***

A Workshop at ECAI2006, Riva del Garda, Italy, August 2006
Website http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy06/
Deadline for submission: 15th of April, 2006
NeSy'05 took place at IJCAI-05, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2005.


Scope
-----

Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in 
their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent 
developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an 
opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence 
with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these 
challenges.

The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to 
create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the 
presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic 
integration. Topics of interest include:

     * The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems;
     * Learning in neural-symbolic systems;
     * Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks;
     * Reasoning in neural-symbolic systems;
     * Biological inspiration for neural-symbolic integration;
     * Applications in robotics, semantic web, engineering, 
bioinformatics, etc.


Submission
----------

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that 
have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere. Submitted 
papers must be written in English and should not exceed 6 pages in the 
case of research and experience papers, and 2 pages in the case of 
position papers (including figures, bibliography and appendices) in ECAI 
format. All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality, 
relevance, originality, significance, and soundness. Papers must be 
submitted directly by email in PDF format to nesy at soi.city.ac.uk


Presentation
------------

Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will 
include extra time for audience discussion of the presentation allowing 
the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and 
ideas being presented.


Publication
-----------

Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings, 
which will be distributed during the workshop. Authors of the best 
papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their 
papers to the journal of logic and computation, OUP.


Important Dates
---------------

Deadline for submission: 15th of April, 2006
Notification of acceptance: 10th of May, 2006
Camera-ready paper due: 17th of May, 2006
Workshop date: 28 or 29 Aug
ECAI 2006 main conference dates:
	28th of August to 1st of September, 2006.


Workshop Organisers
-------------------

Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK)
Pascal Hitzler (University Karlsruhe, Germany)
Guglielmo Tamburrini (Universit di Napoli, Italy)


Programme Committee (preliminary)
---------------------------------

Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK)
Sebastian Bader (TU Dresden, Germany)
Howard Blair (Syracuse University, USA)
Dov Gabbay (Kings College London, UK)
Marco Gori (Univeristy of Siena, Italy)
Barbara Hammer (TU Clausthal, Germany)
Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis (University of Patras, Greece)
Pascal Hitzler (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
Luis Lamb (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Vasile Palade (Oxford University, UK)
Antony K. Seda (University College Cork, Ireland)
Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Guglielmo Tamburrini (Universit di Napoli Feredico II, Italy)
Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK)
Gerson Zaverucha (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)


Keynote speaker
---------------

Stefan Wermter, University of Sunderland, UK


Additional Information
----------------------

Up-to-date information can be obtained from 
http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy06/

General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to 
nesy at soi.city.ac.uk.

You are also invited to subscribe to the neural-symbolic integration 
mailing list at http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/mailman/listinfo/nesy


-- 
Dr. Pascal Hitzler
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe
email: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de    fax: +49 721 608 6580
web:   http://www.pascal-hitzler.de   phone: +49 721 608 4751
        http://www.neural-symbolic.org


From sylee at kaist.ac.kr  Tue Jan 24 07:18:05 2006
From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (Soo-Young Lee)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:18:05 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: CFPs on ISABEL2006 - International Symposium on
	Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning
Message-ID: <113810497591695.25877@webmail>

Call for Papers

ISABEL 2006
International Symposium on Artificial Brain with Emotion and Learning
- Bio-Inspired Models and Hardware
for Brain-like Intelligent Functions -

August 24-25, 2006
Seoul, Korea

1. Topic and Goals

This symposium aims to bring together international researchers from the
cognitive neuroscience and engineering communities for biologically-inspired
models and system implementations with human-like intelligent functions. The
previous meeting was held as a post-IJCNN Symposium on Bio-Inspired Models
and Hardware (BIMH2005) at Montreal, Canada, on August 5, 2005.

Although artificial neural networks are based on information processing
mechanisms in our brain, there still exists a big gap between the biological
neural networks and artificial neural networks. 
The more intelligence we would like to incorporate into artificial
intelligent systems, the more biologically-inspired models and hardware are
required. Fortunately the cognitive neuroscience has been developed
enormously during the last decade, and engineers now have more to learn from
the science.  

In this symposium we will discuss what engineers want to learn from the
science and how the scientists may be able to provide the knowledge. 
Then, mathematical models will be presented with more biological
plausibility. 
The hardware and system implementation will also be reported with the
performance comparison with conventional methods for real-world complex
applications. A panel will be organized for the future research directions
at the end.

This symposium will promote synergetic interaction among cognitive
neuroscientists, neural networks and robotics engineers, and result in more
biologically-plausible mathematical models and hardware systems with more
human-like intelligent performance in real-world applications.

Topics include, but are not limited to,
.	Models of auditory pathway 
.	Models of visual pathway
.	Models of cognition, learning, and inference
.	Models of attention, emotion, and consciousness
.	Models of autonomous behavior
.	Hardware implementation of bio-inspired models
.	Engineering applications of bio-inspired models 

 
2. Organizers

Symposium Chair
Soo-Young Lee
Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST
373-1 Guseong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Korea
	Phone: +82-42-869-4311
	E-mail: sylee at kaist.ac.kr
	Web: http://bsrc.kaist.ac.kr/sylee.htm

3. Intended Audience

The symposium is aimed to be a high communicative forum for researchers from
the cognitive neuroscience, artificial neural networks, and robotics
communities. 

The presentation papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience,
neural networks, and robotics communities. The members of the International
Advisory Board and Program Committee had already agreed to submit their
papers for the presentation. However, the submitted papers will be fully
refereed by the Program Committee and accepted based on the quality of the
papers. 

4. Format

The symposium will go on two full days with oral session with invited and
contributed presentations, and one panel discussion session. To encourage
exchange of ideas at least 20 minutes will be allocated for each talk with
additional 10 minutes. The balance between the science and engineering will
be made for the speakers and panelists.

5. Publicity

The contributed papers will be solicited from the cognitive neuroscience,
neural networks, and robotics communities though public list servers. 
Also, a dedicated homepage (www.isabel2006.org,
cnsl.kaist.ac.kr/isabel2006.htm) will be maintained, and several top
researchers will be cordially invited through personal e-mails.

The prospective authors are invited to submit one page summary by e-mail to
isabel2006 at neuron.kaist.ac.kr. Also, after acceptance, the presentation
materials will be collected and made available to the attendees as a
booklet.

The extended version of the presented papers will be published as a special
issue of the new online/offline journal, Neural Information Processing -
Letters and Reviews (www.nip-lr.info), of which the Editor-in-Chief is the
Symposium Chair..

6. Important Dates

February 5, 2006 	Homepage Start and Official CFPs
April 30, 2006		Deadline for Summary (1 page)
June 20, 2006		Acceptance Notification
July 20, 2006		Camera-ready notes due 

* It may be better to inform us your intention to join at your earliest
convenience.
especially, when you need some financial supports, please let us know by
February 15th, 2006.



From cns at cnsorg.org  Wed Jan 25 10:27:22 2006
From: cns at cnsorg.org (CNS)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 08:27:22 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Call for workshop proposals CNS *2006
Message-ID: <20060125152723.M64439@cnsorg.org>

The Fifteenth Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2006
will be held July 16 - July 20, 2006
in Edinburgh, UK
http://www.cnsorg.org 

The main meeting (July 16, 17 and 18th) will be followed by two days of 
workshops (July 19th and 20th). Workshops can be organized in a variety of 
formats, ranging from very informal discussion groups to highly structured 
mini-symposia. Tutorials on topics of interest to the Computational 
Neuroscience community are also welcome. 
Workshops on the following topics have been proposed so far: 

Cortical map development (J. Bednar)
Cortical microcircuitry (T. Wennekers)
Interoperability of neural simulators (E. De Schutter)
Oscillations (H. Rotstein)
Plasticity and stability (M. van Rossum)
Functional Models of the Hippocampal Formation (Laurenz Wiskott) 
Terminology and Metadata for Modeling and Computational
Neuroscience (Daniel Gardner) 

To propose a workshop, please email the name(s) of the organizer(s), workshop 
title and a short description to the CNS 2006 organizers at cns at cnsorg.org. 


--
CNS - Organization for Computational Neurosciences



From miguel at csee.ogi.edu  Sat Jan 28 19:03:54 2006
From: miguel at csee.ogi.edu (Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:03:54 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: PhD research assistantships in machine learning at
	OGI
Message-ID: <17372.1642.858718.643822@downey.csee.ogi.edu>

           PHD RESEARCH ASSISTANTSHIPS IN ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
         AT THE OGI SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT OHSU

*** Please forward this message to students who may be interested ***


Individuals interested in pursuing a PhD in Machine Learning or
Computational Neuroscience at OGI are eligible for research
assistantships in the Adaptive Systems Laboratory
(http://adsyl.csee.ogi.edu) at the OGI School of Science &
Engineering. The Laboratory does research in the areas of machine
learning, adaptive signal processing and computational neuroscience. 
The group currently consists of 6 core faculty, 1 postdoc, 10 PhD
students, and several MS students and technicians. The research
interests of the core faculty are as follows:

  Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan: machine learning, computational
  neuroscience, applications to speech processing and computer vision.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~miguel

  Deniz Erdogmus: adaptive, nonlinear, and statistical signal
  processing, information theory, applications to biomedical
  engineering, communications, and control systems. 
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz

  Todd Leen: machine learning with applications to fault detection,
  sensor fusion, and data assimilation; stochastic learning,
  computational neuroscience.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~tleen

  Pat Roberts (NSI): computational neuroscience. 
  http://www.ohsu.edu/nsi/faculty/robertpa

  Xubo Song: image processing and analysis, statistical pattern
  recognition, machine learning.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~xubosong

  Eric Wan: neural networks, adaptive signal processing and control.
  http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~ericwan

The Adaptive Systems Laboratory is part of the Department of Computer
Science & Electrical Engineering. Close ties also exist with the
Center for Spoken Language Understanding and the Department of
Biomedical Engineering at OGI, and the Neurological Sciences Institute
and the medical school at OHSU.

OGI is one of the four schools of Oregon Health & Science University
(OHSU). OGI is located 12 miles west of Portland, Oregon, in the heart
of the Silicon Forest. Portland's extensive high-tech community,
diverse cultural amenities and spectacular natural surroundings
combine to make the quality of life here extraordinary. To learn more
about the department, OGI, OHSU and Portland, please visit
http://www.csee.ogi.edu.

Applicants should have a university degree in an area such as computer
science, electrical engineering, physics or mathematics, and solid
mathematical and programming skills. Background in machine learning,
image/speech processing or computer vision is highly desirable. The
assistantships cover tuition, a competitive stipend, and travel to
research conferences. Students of any nationality may apply.

Informal inquiries can be made by sending email (with supporting CV
and a statement of research interests) to adsyl-inquiry at csee.ogi.edu
or to the appropriate faculty member. For information on submitting a
full application to the PhD program in Computer Science, see the OGI
admissions information at http://www.ogi.edu/admissions.


From zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk  Thu Jan 26 08:35:38 2006
From: zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk (Zoubin Ghahramani)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 13:35:38 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Two faculty positions at Cambridge University
Message-ID: <10521445-DC33-40BB-AD55-3713AE79C547@eng.cam.ac.uk>


                          University of Cambridge
                       Department of Engineering
                      Two University Lectureships

Cambridge University Engineering Department is hiring two junior  
faculty in
its Information Engineering Division.

The Department has recently formed a new group led by Profs Ghahramani &
Wolpert in Computational and Biological Learning. We are particularly  
keen
to attract world-class researchers in Computational Neuroscience,  
Machine
Learning, and Communications.

The positions are University Lectureships (roughly equivalent to  
Assistant
Professorships in the US) and the advertisement is available at:

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/admin/jobs.shtml

and further details of the posts on

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~dw304/fp06.pdf

Please note that the final closing deadline is April 7th, 2006 but  
that we
encourage earlier submission of applications.

Please feel free to contact us informally about these positions.

Prof. Zoubin Ghahramani				Prof. Daniel Wolpert

Department of Engineering			Department of Engineering
University of Cambridge                 		University of Cambridge
zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk                     		wolpert at eng.cam.ac.uk
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~zoubin     	http://www.wolpertlab.com






From sabes at phy.ucsf.edu  Mon Jan 30 23:08:28 2006
From: sabes at phy.ucsf.edu (Philip N. Sabes)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:08:28 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Positions Available,
 UCSF Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neurobiology
Message-ID: <43DEE2BC.2060908@phy.ucsf.edu>

SLOAN-SWARTZ CENTER FOR THEORETICAL NEUROBIOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO

Postdoctoral Positions

We are soliciting applications for post-doctoral fellowships, with the 
goal of bringing theoretical approaches to bear on neuroscience. 
Applicants should have a strong background and education in mathematics, 
theoretical or experimental physics, computer science, or engineering, 
and a commitment to a future research career in neuroscience.  Prior 
biological or neuroscience training is not required.  The Center offers 
the opportunity to combine theoretical and experimental approaches to 
understanding the operation of the intact brain.  The research 
undertaken by the trainees may be theoretical, experimental, or a 
combination.

More information on the UCSF Sloan-Swartz Center and Faculty is 
available at: http://www.sloan.ucsf.edu/sloan.

To apply, please send a curriculum vitae, a statement of previous 
research and research goals, and up to three relevant publications, and 
have two letters of recommendation sent.

Applications should be sent electronically to
   Ned Molyneaux <molyneau at phy.ucsf.edu>

or by mail to
   Sloan-Swartz Center Admissions
   Department of Physiology, University of California
   513 Parnassus Ave., Room HSE-800
   San Francisco, CA  94143-0444


UC San Francisco is an Equal Opportunity Employer.


From tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp  Wed Jan 25 21:43:39 2006
From: tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp (Tsukada)
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:43:39 +0900
Subject: Connectionists: To post a message to all the list members
Message-ID: <6.2.0.14.2.20060126114128.05fdc970@eng.tamagawa.ac.jp>

Dear Mailing list owner:

This is Prof. Dr. Minoru Tsukadab at Tamagawa University Brain Science 
Reserch Center in Japan.
Would you kindly distribute the following Call for Papers for the "10th 
Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum-DBF'07" scheduled for March 5-9, 2007 in 
Japan.

Thank you for your cooperation in advance.
Best regards,

===========================CFP for DBF'07======================

The first Announcement and Call for Papers
10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum-DBF'07

5-9 March 2007
Hakuba Tokyu Hotel in Hakuba Village, Nagano Prefecture, Japan

Conference Framework:
The 10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum (DBF'07) will be held on March 
5-9, 2007 at Hakuba Tokyu Hotel,
URL: http://www.tokyuhotel.co.jp/en/TR/TR_HAKUB/index.html in Hakuba 
Village, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The Dynamic Brain Forum (DBF) is an 
annual international forum organized by the Tamagawa University Brain 
Science Research Center.  In 2007, the DBF will be co-sponsored by Riken 
Brain Institute, Integrative Brain Research Project, Japanese Neural 
Network Society and by the 21st Century COE Programs in Tamagawa 
University, Kyushu Institute of Technology and Hokkaido University.

The theme of DBF'07 is Cortical Dynamics: Physiology, Theory and 
Applications. The forum is organized in several sessions focused on 
different aspects of the theme, with lectures in each session followed by a 
thematic discussion.  In addition, there will be poster
presentations on newest results by the discussants and participants. 
Posters will be up during these three days of meeting, allowing 
comprehensive discussions by participants.

Preceding the forum, there also be two full days of Tutorial Programs, 
primarily oriented toward young researchers and Ph.D. students interested 
in the theory and applications of various kinds of dynamic brain function. 
Tutorial presenters will include,
D.Eng. S. Amari: Mathematical Theories of Dynamics of Neural Information 
Processing,
Prof. I. Tsuda: Chaotic dynamics reality in brain dynamics,
Ph.D. K. Doya: Neural implementation of reinforcement learning,
Prof. W. Freeman: Recent advances in high-resolution analysis of EEG and MEG,
Prof. A. Aertsen:   -informed later-

Application dates and Program schedule
31 Jul., 2006: Deadline for registration to attend Tutorials and/or DBF
31 Aug., 2006: Deadline for electronic submission of abstracts (PDF-format 
with less than 400 words, English)
01 Sep. - 30 Oct., 2006: Oral/poster/acceptance or rejection notification
31 Oct., 2006: Deadline for electronic submission of paper (4 pages on 
A4-size, English)
30 Nov., 2006: Electronic submission of final paper revisions.

04 - 06 Mar., 2007: Reception of Tutorials and/or DBF at Hakuba Tokyu Hotel
05 - 06 Mar., 2007: Tutorials
07 - Mar., 2007: DBF and poster presentations

Registration fee and Financial support
Tutorial: Free of charge
DBF: US$200 or equivalent Japanese Yen include Banquet fee.
Financial support: Max. US$1,500 travel cost is financially supported for 
excellent papers
approved by Program Committee, submitted by Graduate students and Post-docs.

Registration and further information
For registration, inquiries and further information, please send e-mail to 
Secretary of
the Organizing Committee.
Secretary: S. Nagayama: nagayama at lab.tamagawa.ac.jp
Address: Department of Intelligent Information Systems, Faculty of 
Engineering, Tamagawa University,
             6-1 Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo, 194-8160, Japan
And, also visit our web-site: "10th Tamagawa-Riken Dynamic Brain Forum - DBF'07"
URL:  http://www.tamagawa.ac.jp/sisetu/gakujutu/brain/dbf2007/index.html

Committee:
Advisory Committee,
Chairman: Shun-ichi Amari: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.
-Jun Tanji: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Mitsuo Kawato: ATR, Japan.
-Takeshi Yamakawa: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-Walter Freeman, University of California at Berkeley, USA.

Organizing Committee,
Chairman: Minoru Tsukada: Tamagawa University, Japan.
Vice-Chairman: Ichiro Tsuda: Hokkaido University, Japan.
-Keiji Tanaka: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.
-Ad Aertsen: University of Freiburg, Germany.
-Aike Guo: Chinese Academy of Science, China.
- Fanji Gu: Fudan University, China.
-Gert Hauske: Munich University of Technology, Germany.
-Antonio Roque: University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
-Edger Koemer: HONDA R&D Europe, Germany.

Executive Committee,
Chairman: Masamichi Sakagami: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Christph Schreiner: University of California, San Francisco, USA.
-Hiroshi Fujii: Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan.
-Kenji Doya: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
-Hiroshi Kojima: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Takeshi Aihara: Tamagawa University, Japan.
-Yutaka Sakai: Tamagawa University, Japan.

Program Committee,
Chairman: Shigetoshi Nara: Okayama University, Japan
-Kazuyuki Aihara: University of Tokyo, Japan.
-Shozo Yasui: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-:Hatsuo Hayashi: Kyusyu Institute of Technology, Japan.
-Hiroyuki Ito: Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan.
-Tomoki Fukai: Riken Brain Science Institute, Japan.

====================================================================



M.Tsukada/Tamagawa Univ.
--------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Dr. Minoru Tsukada
Tamagawa University Brain Science Reserch Center /
Department of Information & Communication Engineering,
Faculty of Engneering, Tamagawa University
6-1-1, Tamagawagakuen, Machida, Tokyo 194-8610, JAPAN
Phone : +81-427-39-8430 , Fax : +81-427-39-8858
E-mail : tsukada at eng.tamagawa.ac.jp
-------------------------------------------------------




From derdogmus at ieee.org  Sat Jan 28 18:49:54 2006
From: derdogmus at ieee.org (Deniz Erdogmus)
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:49:54 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: MLSP 2006 Data Analysis Competition Reminder
Message-ID: <43DC0322.1070905@ieee.org>

Dear Colleague,

We would like to remind you the March 1st deadline for the submission of 
entries to the Machine Learning for Signal Processing 2006 Data Analysis 
Competition (http://mlsp2006.conwiz.dk/index.php?id=18). The competition 
features 3 independent challenge problems:
1) Evaluation of ICA algorithms for large-scale, ill-conditioned, and 
noisy mixtures
2) Processing of fMRI data for an oddball task
3) Denoising MEG measurements
The entries for each problem will be evaluated separately and the 
winners will be invited to submit papers to the conference and to the 
follow-up journal special issue.
The paper submission deadline for MLSP 2006 is March 31st.

Sincerely,
Deniz Erdogmus and Vince Calhoun
MLSP 2006 Competition Chairs

-- 
Deniz Erdogmus
Assistant Professor
Departments of CSEE and BME
Oregon Health & Science University			
20000 NW Walker Road, Beaverton, OR 97006
(Tel) 1-503-7482007, (Fax) 1-503-7481548
http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz				
derdogmus at ieee.org








From nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr  Mon Jan 30 05:53:19 2006
From: nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr (Nicolas Brunel)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 11:53:19 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in cerebellar modelling at the
 Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS), Paris
Message-ID: <43DDF01F.6010703@univ-paris5.fr>

Postdoctoral position in cerebellar modelling at the Ecole Normale
Superieure (ENS), Paris
 
Applications are invited for a post-doctoral position to carry out
theoretical and modelling studies of network activity in the
cerebellum.  The position is funded for 2 years as part of a joint
experimental (Barbour and Dieudonn? groups at the ENS) and theoretical
(Hakim and Nadal at the ENS, Brunel at CNRS/Paris 5) project.
 
Applicants should have a strong background in theoretical
neuroscience, applied mathematics, or physics. Prior biological or
neuroscience training is preferred, but not required. Applicants
should send a curriculum vitae and have two or three letters of
recommendation sent by email to Nicolas Brunel (brunel at univ-paris5.fr)
before March 31st. The fellowship is planned to start in September 2006.
 
http://www.neurophys.biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr/~brunel
http://www.biologie.ens.fr/neuronsr/cerebellum.html
http://www.lps.ens.fr/~hakim
http://www.lps.ens.fr/~nadal

Nicolas Brunel

-- 
Laboratory of Neurophysics and Physiology
UMR 8119 CNRS-Universite Rene Descartes
45 rue des Saints Peres 75270 Paris Cedex 06
Tel (33).1.42.86.20.58 - Fax (33).1.49.27.90.62
nicolas.brunel at univ-paris5.fr
www.neurophys.biomedicale.univ-paris5.fr/~brunel



From retienne at jhu.edu  Tue Jan 31 21:11:08 2006
From: retienne at jhu.edu (Ralph Etienne-Cummings)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 21:11:08 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: Telluride Neuromorphic Workshop 2006 Announcement
Message-ID: <43E018BC.3010904@jhu.edu>

========================================================================
Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop
Call for Applications
Sunday, JUNE 25 - Saturday, JULY 15, 2006
TELLURIDE, COLORADO

Avis COHEN (University of Maryland)
Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Ralph ETIENNE-CUMMINGS (Johns Hopkins University)
Paul HASLER (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Timmer HORIUCHI (University of Maryland)
Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, 
Switzerland)
Christof KOCH (California Institute of Technology)- Past Organization 
Board Member
Terrence SEJNOWSKI (Salk Institute and UCSD)
Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland)
Andre van SCHAIK(University of Sydney)

We invite applications for a three week summer workshop that will be 
held in Telluride, Colorado from Sunday, June 25 to Saturday, July 15, 
2006. The application deadline is Friday, March 24, and application 
instructions are described at the bottom of this document.

The 2005 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is 
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic 
Engineering, Wow Wee Toys, Airforce Research Office, Eglin Airforce 
Research Lab, Nova Sensors, Institute for NeuroInfomatics - ETHZ, Geogia 
Institute of Technology, University of Maryland - College Park, Johns 
Hopkins University, The Salk Institute, and by the Center for 
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

Last year's workshop was an exciting event and a great success. We 
strongly encourage interested parties to browse through the previous 
workshop web pages at: http://ine-web.org/workshops/past-workshops

GOALS:

Carver Mead introduced the term "Neuromorphic Engineering" for a new 
field based on the design and fabrication of artificial neural systems, 
such as vision systems, head-eye systems, and roving robots, whose 
architecture and design principles are based on those of biological 
nervous systems. The goal of this workshop is to bring together young 
investigators and more established researchers from academia with their 
counterparts in industry and national laboratories, working on both 
neurobiological as well as engineering aspects of sensory systems and 
sensory-motor integration. The focus of the workshop will be on active 
participation, with demonstration systems and hands on experience for 
all participants. Neuromorphic engineering has a wide range of 
applications from nonlinear adaptive control of complex systems to the 
design of smart sensors. Many of the fundamental principles in this 
field, such as the use of learning methods and the design of parallel 
hardware (with an emphasis on analog and asynchronous digital VLSI), are 
inspired by biological systems. However, existing applications are 
modest and the challenge of scaling up from small artificial neural 
networks and designing completely autonomous systems at the levels 
achieved by biological systems lies ahead. The assumption underlying 
this three week workshop is that the next generation of neuromorphic 
systems would benefit from closer attention to the principles found 
through experimental and theoretical studies of real biological nervous 
systems as whole systems.

FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on 
systems neuroscience (in particular learning, oculo-motor and other 
motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on analog VLSI design, 
small mobile robots (Koalas, Kheperas, LEGO robots), hands-on projects, 
and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and 
possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are 
furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other 
activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two 
lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the 
community in general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among 
the participants, the majority of these lectures will be tutorials, 
rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be 
given by invited speakers. Participants will be free to explore and play 
with whatever they choose in the afternoon. Projects and interest groups 
meet in the late afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon 
there will be tutorial on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog 
VLSI, mobile robotics, auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, 
selective attention mechanisms, etc.
Projects that are carried out during the workshop will be centered in a 
number of working groups, including:

* active vision
* audition
* motor control
* central pattern generator and locomotion
* robotics
* multichip communication
* analog VLSI
* learning
* neuroprosthetic systems

The active perception project group will emphasize vision and human 
sensory-motor coordination. Issues to be covered will include spatial 
localization and constancy, attention, motor planning, eye movements, 
and the use of visual motion information for motor control.

The central pattern generator group will focus on small walking and 
undulating robots. It will look at characteristics and sources of parts 
for building robots, play with working examples of legged and segmented 
robots, and discuss CPG's and theories of nonlinear oscillators for 
locomotion. It will also explore the use of simple analog VLSI sensors 
for autonomous robots.

The robotics group will use rovers and working digital vision boards as 
well as other possible sensors to investigate issues of sensorimotor 
integration, navigation and learning.

The audition group aims to develop biologically plausible algorithms and 
aVLSI implementations of specific auditory tasks such as source 
localization and tracking, and sound pattern recognition. Projects will 
be integrated with visual and motor tasks in the context of a robot 
platform.

The multichip communication project group will use existing interchip 
communication interfaces to program small networks of artificial neurons 
to exhibit particular behaviors such as amplification, oscillation, and 
associative memory. Issues in multichip communicationwill be discussed.

LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 
feet high in Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver 
(350miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines 
provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the 
beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to 
participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski 
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are 
expected to share condominiums.

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants 
are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit 
design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology 
or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly 
encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, 
industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are 
prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or 
bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). 
Internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the 
workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will have a 
network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for the workshop 
projects. We also plan to provide wireless internet access and encourage 
participants to bring along their personal laptop.

No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend 
that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, 
and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains. 
Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect 
participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT:

Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around mid April 2006. 
Participants are expected to pay a $800.00 workshop fee at that time in 
order to reserve a place in the workshop. The cost of a shared 
condominium will be covered for all academic participants but upgrades 
to a private room will cost extra. Participants from National 
Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums. 
Travel reimbursement of up to $500 for US domestic travel and up to $800 
for overseas travel will be possible if financial help is needed (please 
specify on the application).


HOW TO APPLY:

Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above 
(i.e.postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and 
the equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We 
actively encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

The application website is: 
http://ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2006/apply/

Application will include:

* First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.
* Curriculum Vitae.
* One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop.
* Two letters of recommendation (to be sent by references directly to 
"Alice W. Mobaidin" <mobaidin at isr.umd.edu>).

The application deadline is Friday, March 24, 2006.
Applicants will be notified by e-mail by the end of April.



From casutton at cs.umass.edu  Tue Jan 31 23:25:47 2006
From: casutton at cs.umass.edu (Charles Sutton)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 23:25:47 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: HLT-NAACL 2006 Workshop on Joint Inference for
	NLP
Message-ID: <02AE6FC0-604C-43FF-9D04-7B758B013F54@cs.umass.edu>

Call for Papers: Extended Deadline!
======================================================================
JOINT INFERENCE FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Workshop at HLT/NAACL 2006, in New York City
June 8, 2006
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/workshops/jinlp2006/

NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 8, 2006
======================================================================


In NLP there has been increasing interest in moving away from systems
that make chains of local decisions independently, and instead toward
systems that make multiple decisions jointly using global information.
For example, NLP tasks are often solved by a pipeline of processing
steps (from speech, to translation, to entity extraction, relation
extraction, coreference and summarization)---each of which locally
chooses its output to be passed to the next step.  However, we can
avoid accumulating cascading errors by joint decoding across the
pipeline---capturing uncertainty and multiple hypotheses throughout.
The use of lattices in speech recognition is well-established, but
recently there has been more interest in larger, more complex joint
inference, such as joint ASR and MT, and joint extraction and
coreference.

The trend toward joint decisions using global information also appears
at a smaller scale.  For example, the benefit of discriminative
reranking is that it can efficiently exploit global features of the
output space.  Also, recent sequence models, such as CRFs and
Maximum-margin Markov networks, are trained to optimize a global
objective function over the space of all sequences, leveraging global
features of the input.

The main challenge in applying joint methods more widely throughout
NLP is that they are more complex and more expensive than local
approaches.  Various models and approximate inference algorithms have
been used to maintain efficiency, such as beam search, reranking,
simulated annealing, and belief propagation, but much work remains in
understanding which methods are best for particular applications, or
which new techniques could be brought to bear.

The goal of this workshop is to explore techniques for joint
processing for NLP tasks that involve multiple, interrelated
decisions.  Themes of the workshop include:

* Practical examples of joint models in NLP.  Applications to
    traditionally hard NLP problems, including speech and machine
    translation, are encouraged.

* Inference methods for joint approaches, including message-passing
    algorithms, discriminative reranking, sampling methods, propagation
    of n-best lattices, and linear programming.

* What kinds of global features tend to have the most impact in joint
    approaches?

* An intriguing property of joint models is that they have the
    potential to integrate information from multiple sources,
    (e.g. top-down information helping low-level processing).  What
    kinds of higher-level information are useful in NLP tasks?

* Comparison of local methods for training and inference, such as
    those based on local classifiers, and global approaches such as CRFs
    and Maximum-margin Markov Networks.

* When is it appropriate to use a joint model, and when do simpler,
    more independent approaches suffice?

* Training techniques for joint approaches. Training local classifiers
    is often more efficient training global approaches, and sometimes it
    is possible to use local training, but joint decision-making at test
    time.  When are such hybrid techniques expected work well?  What are
    the trade-offs between accuracy and training time?

Potential participants are encouraged to submit papers on these  
topics, and
on others related to joint decision-making in NLP.


IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper submissions due:  Wednesday, March 8
* Notification of accepted papers: Thursday, April 21
* Camera ready papers due: Wednesday, May 3
* Workshop: June 8, 2006


FORMAT OF PAPERS

If you wish to present at the workshop, submit a paper of no more than
8 pages in two column format, following the HLT/NAACL style (see
http://nlp.cs.nyu.edu/hlt-naacl06/cfp.html).  Proceedings will be
published in conjunction with the main HLT/NAACL proceedings.
The web site for workshop submissions is
http://www.softconf.com/start/HLT-WS06-JINLP/submit.html
Authors who cannot submit a PDF file electronically should contact the
organizers.


ORGANIZERS

Charles Sutton, University of Massachusetts
Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts
Jeff Bilmes, University of Washington


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Razvan Bunescu, University of Texas
Bill Byrne, University of Cambridge
Xavier Carreras,  Technical University of Catalonia
Ozgur Cetin, University of California
David Chiang, University of Maryland
Michael Collins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hal Daume, University of Southern California
Eric Fosler-Lussier, The Ohio State University
Dan Gildea, University of Rochester
Ralph Grishman, New York University
Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research
Katrin Kirchhoff, University of Washington
Philipp Koehn, University of Edinburgh
Shankar Kumar, Google
Chris Manning, Stanford University
Llu?s M?rquez,  Technical University of Catalonia
Gideon Mann, University of Massachusetts
Erik McDermott,  NTT Communication Science Laboratories
Ray Mooney, University of Texas
Franz Och, Google
Kishore Papineni, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Brian Roark, Oregon Graduate Institute
Dan Roth, University of Illinois
Salim Roukos, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
Koichi Shinoda, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Noah Smith, Johns Hopkins University
Andreas Stolcke, SRI International
Ben Taskar, Unversity of California





From R.Borisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk  Tue Jan 31 04:17:54 2006
From: R.Borisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk (Roman Borisyuk)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 09:17:54 -0000
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position at Plymouth University
Message-ID: <52A8091888A23F47A013223014B6E9FE0557158C@03-CSEXCH.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk>

Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, University of Plymouth, UK 

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (starting salary ?24,450 GB Pounds per annum)

 

Applications are invited for a post of Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Plymouth, UK. The position has been made available through the award of a research grant from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for a project entitled "Brain-Inspired Neuronal Model of Attention and Memory"

 

Applicants must have a PhD in the area of Applied Mathematics or Physics (ideally in Computational Neuroscience), experience of research work in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (or other closely related areas of sciences), and possess a good knowledge and understanding of the mathematical methods and computational tools for modelling neural networks at a biologically realistic level. The work of the Research Fellow will be specifically concerned with the development and investigation of new spiking neuron models of attention and memory. The project will draw on neurobiological experimental and modelling results from several neuroscience research labs in Europe.

 

The research fellow post is available from the 1st of April 2006 and an appointment will be made as soon as possible. The appointment is for a fixed term of three years, and will be subject to a probationary period of six months.

 

Informal enquiries, ideally including a CV/resum?, should be made in the first instance by email to Professor Roman Borisyuk: rborisyuk at plymouth.ac.uk 

 

The Centre for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience is one of the main UK labs specialising in theoretical and modelling approaches to understanding brain function (visit www.plymneuro.org.uk). It has research groups in vision, audition, sensorimotor control, mathematical neuroscience, biophysics of temporal brain dynamics, and neural computation. It is actively collaborating with several UK, US and European labs and participates in a number of major UK research council and EU funded research projects.

 

 



From derdogmus at ieee.org  Tue Jan 31 18:05:07 2006
From: derdogmus at ieee.org (Deniz Erdogmus)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 15:05:07 -0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postoctoral Research Associate Position at OHSU
Message-ID: <43DFED23.6050803@ieee.org>

Postdoctoral Research Associate Position at OHSU:

A postdoctoral research associate position is available for a highly 
qualified candidate starting as early as April 1st, 2006 at the 
Point-of-Care Laboratory (PoCL) of the Oregon Health and Science 
University, Portland, Oregon, USA. The PoCL is directed by Prof. Misha 
Pavel and also includes Assistant Professors Tamara Hayes and Deniz 
Erdogmus as participating faculty.

The PoCL focuses on developing theoretical approaches and novel 
techniques for assistive technologies. Unobtrusive monitoring of elderly 
to help them remain independent and amplifying attention through 
cognitive augmentation with a closed loop brain computer interface are 
sample projects that are currently underway at the PoCL. More PoCL 
Information is available at:
http://www.ogi.edu/research/dsp_group.cfm?research_group_id=453B5CAC-F103-E870-96AE2D69186F334F 


The sucessful candidate will exhibit superior theoretical skills in 
machine learning and signal processing as well as technical skills to 
install, maintain, and operate sensor suites and sensor networks 
necessary for data collection in relevant projects. Strong background in 
Bayesian reasoning and sequential state estimation are also of primary 
importance to this position. This associate is expected to comunicate 
and collaborate with our industry partners including Intel and Honeywell 
on a regular basis. Other duties of the postdoctoral associate include 
assisting with the advising of graduate students, preparation of 
scientific papers, and submission of grant proposals.

It is expected that the initial term of the position will be for one 
year with competitive compensation. The extension of the contract is 
contingent on continued satisfactory performance as determined by 
regular performance evaluations, as well as the availability of funds 
from externally funded research projects.

Portland is an excellent metropolitan city (repeatedly rated at the top 
within US cities) with a wide range of cultural activities and easy 
access to numerous outdoor activities.

Interested candidates should send their application materials - cover 
letter, CV, statement of research interests and research experience 
(concatenated in one big pdf file, please) - to Deniz Erdogmus at 
derdogmus at ieee.org by email.

-- 
Deniz Erdogmus
Assistant Professor
Departments of CSEE and BME
Oregon Health & Science University			
20000 NW Walker Road, Beaverton, OR 97006
(Tel) 1-503-7482007, (Fax) 1-503-7481548
http://www.csee.ogi.edu/~deniz				
derdogmus at ieee.org








From d.cornford at aston.ac.uk  Tue Jan 31 09:57:11 2006
From: d.cornford at aston.ac.uk (Dan Cornford)
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 14:57:11 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Research Jobs in Bayesian Inference and Gaussian
	Processes
Message-ID: <43DF7AC7.2020802@aston.ac.uk>

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS - 7 POSTS
POSTGRADUATE RESEARCHERS - 4 PhD STUDENTSHIPS
PROJECT MANAGER (part-time)

Applications are invited for these positions, to work on an
exciting and innovative 2 million research project

MANAGING UNCERTAINTY IN COMPLEX MODELS

The MUCM project, funded by Research Councils UK, is a
collaboration between five universities: Sheffield, Aston,
Southampton, Durham, and the London School of Economics.
It is concerned with quantifying and reducing uncertainty in the
predictions of complex models across a wide range of
application areas, including basic science, environmental
science, engineering, technology, biosciences, and economics.
The project is multi-disciplinary, and the unifying theme is a
Bayesian statistical approach to inference.  Applicants are
invited from a wide range of backgrounds, including application
areas, subject to having appropriate statistical skills.

An outline description of the MUCM project, plus further
information about all of these jobs and the application
procedure, can be found at http://mucm.group.shef.ac.uk.

These positions, including the PhD studentships, are available
to candidates of any nationality, to start on 1 June 2006 (or at
an agreed later date).

The postdoctoral research posts are offered for 3 years, but
with the possibility of extension for up to 4 years.  Applicants
should have (or expect to have) a PhD in Statistics or a related
discipline (including Machine Learning), or in a relevant area in
which complex process models are used, but in any case
should have substantial skills in Statistics.  We wish to recruit
researchers of high ability and promise, and can offer very
competitive salaries.

The PhD studentships are for three and a half years.  The
studentships pay tuition fees at home/EU rates plus an
enhanced stipend for living expenses.

The Project Manager post is available for up to 4 years.  The
Project Manager will be a vital part of the team, and will need to
have a university degree, preferably in Statistics or another
numerate field, as well as strong organisational and IT skills.

The closing date for applications for all of these posts is 28
February 2006.