Connectionists: AusAI'18 Call for Workshop Proposals

[Jeremiah Deng]

AI’2018 Call for Workshop Proposals

The Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, now celebrating its 31st anniversary in 2018, has been a key event for the AI research community in Australasia and beyond. AI’2018 will be hosted by Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in mid-December, 2018.  

AI’2018 seeks workshop proposals on foundational and emerging topics in areas related to artificial intelligence and applications. The workshops aim at providing a vibrant and structured opportunity for researchers and industry practitioners to share their research positions, original research results and practical development experiences on specific challenges and emerging technical issues. The workshop topics should be focused and cohesive so as to facilitate a platform for participants to benefit from interaction with each other. Some possible topics (non-exhaustive) include:
·     AI and cognitive science
·     Automatic machine learning
·     Stochastic optimization in neural networks
·     Biologically plausible neural networks
·     Natural language processing
·     Computer vision
·     AI and computer gaming
·     AI and privacy 
·     AI for cyber security
·     Parallel computing
·     AI and new programming paradigms
·     AI and IoT: smart grids and smart buildings
·     AI in specific disciplines: biology, ecology, e-commerce, e-government, environmental sciences, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, social sciences, transport, etc.
·     New topics in fundamental AI research

The organizers of each workshop shall have full control on the call for papers, forming of program committees, review and selection of papers, planning and chairing the program. This may include organizing keynotes. To avoid conflict of interests, the peer-review process on paper submissions must be double blind, which should be clearly stated in the workshop CFP. IN ADDITION, the chairs must include the following statement in the CFP:
“By submitting a paper to the workshop, the authors agree that at least one author should attend the workshop to present the paper, if the paper is accepted. For no-show authors, their paper will not be published by the workshop proceedings.”

Each workshop will have a right to include its papers in a joint Proceedings of AI Workshops to be published by the ACM ICPS and made available through the ACM Digital Library. The workshop chair must appoint a program committee to select the outstanding papers from the papers presented in the workshop. Based on the reviews, each selected paper should be further improved for the camera-ready version. A detailed schedule of due dates for the paper selection and the collection of the camera-ready versions will be announced immediately after the workshop announcement. Prospective workshop organizers should send a proposal (maximum three pages) with the following sections to ai18workshops at gmail.com. 
·     Title of the workshop;
·     Objectives, scope, and contribution to the main conference;
·     Contacts of key organizers;
·     A tentative list of members of the program committee (with links to members webpages) with 1/3 of members confirmed;
·     Expected number of papers to be accepted;
·     Expected workshop length (half-day, full-day). 

The registration fees for workshops will be determined by the conference. The fees will be paid to the conference, and the conference will provide workshop facilities including working notes printing, meeting rooms, coffee break, lunch, and proceedings publication. 

Important Dates:
·     Workshop proposal due: May 31, 2018
·     Workshop notification: May 31, 2018
·     Workshop call for papers: June 15, 2018
·     Suggested workshop author notification: October 12, 2018
·     Workshop camera-ready due: October 26, 2018
AI’18 Workshop Co-Chairs
Jeremiah Deng, University of Otago, New Zealand
Lin Shang, Nanjing University, China
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