Connectionists: 1st CfP: Cognitive Computation @ NIPS 2015 - Integrating Neural and Symbolic Approaches

Sat Aug 29 13:44:22 EDT 2015

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* 		Cognitive Computation:			* 
* Integrating Neural and Symbolic Approaches *
* 		(CoCo @ NIPS 2015)			*
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Workshop at NIPS 2015, Montreal, Canada
December 11 & 12, 2015

== WORKSHOP WEBPAGE ==

http://www.neural-symbolic.org/CoCo2015/

== MISSION STATEMENT ==

While early work on knowledge representation and inference was primarily symbolic, the corresponding approaches subsequently fell out of favor, and were largely supplanted by connectionist methods. In this workshop, we will work to close the gap between the two paradigms, and aim to formulate a new unified approach that is inspired by our current understanding of human cognitive processing. This is important to help improve our understanding of Neural Information Processing and build better Machine Learning systems, including the reuse of knowledge learned in one application domain in analogous domains.

The workshop brings together world leaders in the fields of neural computation, logic and artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, cognitive science, and computational neuroscience. Over the two workshop days, their invited lectures will be complemented with presentations based on contributed papers (following an open call for papers) and a poster session, giving ample opportunity to interact and discuss the different perspectives and emerging approaches.

The workshop targets a single broad theme of general interest to the vast majority of the NIPS community, namely the study of translations between neural models and knowledge representation for the purpose of achieving an effective integration of learning and reasoning. Neural-symbolic computing is now an established topic of wider interest to NIPS with topics that are relevant to almost everyone studying neural information processing.

== KEYWORDS == 

The following list gives some (but by far not all) relevant keywords for the CoCo @ NIPS 2015 workshop:
- neural-symbolic computing; 
- language processing; 
- cognitive agents; 
- multimodal learning; 
- deep networks; 
- symbol manipulation; 
- variable binding; 
- integration of learning and reasoning.

== INVITED SPEAKERS ==

- Antoine Bordes, Facebook AI Research.
- Rina Dechter, UC Irvine.
- Ramanathan V. Guha, Google Inc.
- Geoffrey E. Hinton, University of Toronto and Google Inc.
- Gary F. Marcus, NYU and Geometric Intelligence.
- Stephen H. Muggleton, Imperial College London.
- Daniel L. Silver, Acadia University.
- Paul Smolensky, Johns Hopkins University.
- Josh Tenenbaum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Greg Wayne, Deep Mind, Google Inc.
- Michael Witbrock, Cycorp Inc.

== CALL FOR PAPERS ==

The workshop intends to bring together researchers and world leaders in the fields of neural-symbolic integration, neural computation, logic and artificial intelligence, natural language understanding, cognitive science, and computational neuroscience. We intend 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. We expect the workshop to become a source of future collaboration between researchers interested in neural-symbolic integration. 

After a short introduction by the organizers to neural-symbolic computing in the relevant fields of artificial intelligence, theoretical computer science, cognitive science, neuroinformatics and computational neuroscience, the symposium will proceed with talks by the invited speakers and additional presentations based on submission from the community. Additionally, in order to further increase the opportunities for community participation, poster sessions will be included in the program.

Speakers will be encouraged to keep their talks accessible and centered on the main arguments of their perspective on the topic, leaving time for questions and discussion. 

We invite submission of papers dealing with topics related to the research questions discussed in the workshop. The reported work can range from theoretical/foundational research to reports on applications and/or implemented systems. We explicitly also encourage the submission of more controversial papers which can serve as basis for open discussions during the event.

Possible topics of interest include but are (by far!) not limited to:
- The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems;
- Neural Learning theory;
- Integration of logic and probabilities, e.g., in neural networks, but also more generally;
- Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks;
- Logical reasoning carried out by neural networks;
- Integrated neural-symbolic approaches;
- Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks;
- Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning;
- Neural-symbolic cognitive models;
- Biologically-inspired neural-symbolic integration;
- Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, natural language processing, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc.

= Submission instructions =

- Submissions have to be made via EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coconips2015) before the paper submission deadline indicated below.
- Submissions are limited to at most eight pages, an additional ninth page containing only cited references is allowed. Still, also shorter papers are expressly welcomed.
- Submissions have to use the NIPS 2015 submission format (see http://nips.cc/Conferences/2015/PaperInformation/StyleFiles).
- Reviewing will be single-blind, i.e., you are free to indicate your name etc. on the paper. (Still, this is not an obligation.)

Please note that at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the event and be available to present the paper at the workshop.

=Publication=

Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings (which will be distributed during the workshop) and will be made available from this webpage. 
Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers to a journal special issue after the workshop.

== IMPORTANT DATES ==

- Deadline for paper submission: October 03, 2015
- Notification of paper acceptance: October 17, 2015
- Camera-ready paper due: November 9, 2015
- Workshop date: December 11/12, 2015
- NIPS 2015 main conference: December 7-10, 2015

== ADMISSION ==

The workshop is open to anybody, please register via NIPS 2015 (http://nips.cc).

== WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS ==

- Tarek R. Besold (Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, Germany)
- Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK)
- Gary F. Marcus (New York University, U.S.A.)
- Risto Miikulainen (University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.)

== ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ==

- General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to Tarek R. Besold at Tarek(dot)Besold(at)uni(hyphen)osnabrueck(dot)de.
- This workshop is conceptually related to the series of International Workshops on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy). If interested, have a look at http://www.neural-symbolic.org
- Please also feel free to join the neural-symbolic integration mailing list for announcements and discussions - it's a low traffic mailing list. If interested, register at http://maillists.city.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/nesy.

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Tarek R. Besold
Institute of Cognitive Science
University of Osnabrück (Germany)
tarek.besold at uni-osnabrueck.de
https://sites.google.com/site/tarekbesold/

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