From rickys at sethi.org Tue Dec 1 00:58:16 2020 From: rickys at sethi.org (Ricky J. Sethi) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 00:58:16 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Identifying, Tracking, and Fact-Checking Misinformation Message-ID: <20201201055816.GA17560@siddhartha.sethi.org> *** Please advertise widely -- Apologies for crossposting *** ====================================================================== CFP: Frontiers in Big Data Special Issue Research Topic Topic: Fact-Checking Misinformation Title: Identifying, Tracking, and Fact-Checking Misinformation Abstract Submission URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/16605/identifying-tracking-and-fact-checking-misinformation Abstract Submission Deadline: January 22, 2021 ====================================================================== Background: The phenomena of fake news and the rise of "alternative facts" often dominate news cycles globally. Although these terms are new, reliance upon propaganda and misinformation predates the Internet, not just in politics but in communication exchange in general. Indeed, the proliferation of fake news in today???s digital world has moved beyond a specific election cycle and now commands headlines all over the world. Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda are shared on social networks and spread like wildfire across all sorts of media using automation technologies like social bots and coordinated activities orchestrated by malicious entities. Being able to distinguish credible information from misinformation is essential to curbing the propagation and amplification of such disinformation. Goal: As the spread of misinformation threatens to become a virtual pandemic, tools are needed to combat disinformation analogously to the way we mitigate biological pathogens: approaches to identify, track, and verify potential misinformation. We therefore invite novel theoretical, experimental, survey-based, substantial works-in-progress, and industry or military experience contributions to a special issue of Frontiers in Big Data titled "Identifying, Tracking, and Fact-Checking Misinformation." This issue covers challenging topics in fact-checking misinformation using automated, computational, and crowd-sourced approaches to fact-checking, including provenance and sources, critical thinking, knowledge graphs, network flows, social media proliferation, emotion, viral models, contexts, satire, manipulated content, imposter content, deep fakes, social bots, malicious actors, reporting and tracking of real world events, rating and reviewing systems, recommendation systems, and more. We especially solicit approaches which leverage the massive amount of data, both structured and unstructured, that is utilized in the intelligent analysis of user-generated content as well as the understanding and establishment of social relationships in the development of potential insights, policies, and strategies for dealing with misinformation. We also encourage submissions relating to the transmission and countering of misinformation surrounding coronavirus and vaccines, psychological and legal considerations in the spread and mitigation of misinformation, as well as communication, political, and military applications of tracking and fact-checking misinformation in various forms, including hoaxes, satires, conspiracy theories, and fake news. Guest Co-Editors: * Ricky J. Sethi: http://research.sethi.org/ricky/ * Md Atiqur Rahman Ahad: http://ahadvisionlab.com/ * Prashant Shiralkar: https://sites.google.com/site/shiralkarprashant/ * Onur Varol: http://www.onurvarol.com/ Keywords: misinformation, fact-checking, fake new, political communication, intelligent analysis, user-generated content About Frontiers Research Topics: With their unique mixes of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author. From inaki.rano at gmail.com Tue Dec 1 05:08:52 2020 From: inaki.rano at gmail.com (Inaki Rano) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 11:08:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: First CfP Autonomous Robots: Special Issue on Unconventional Sensors in Robotics Message-ID: [with apologies for cross-posting] We believe this CfP might be of interest for some of the members of this community. *Autonomous Robots: Special Issue on Unconventional Sensors in Robotics* Endowing robots with range, visual and propioceptive sensing capabilities has enabled huge scientific progress in many of their fundamental skills such as mapping, navigation and interaction. These conventional modalities, however, are limited in many aspects and do not fit all of the potential spectrum of robots, tasks and scenarios. Passive visual sensing, for instance, requires significant computational resources that might not be available in all platforms. In addition to a similarly high computational footprint, active range sensing has also a significant power consumption. None of these sensing technologies is a good fit for underwater, micro/nano-, or soft robots, to name a few. Moreover, these perceptual abilities might be insufficient or inadequate to address some robotic challenges, like fine-grained/high-speed/accurate manipulation, chemical source localisation, high-speed tracking, avoidance of highly dynamic obstacles, autonomy in extreme/hazardous environments or natural human-robot interaction. The limitations of conventional sensors stem from different factors, such as the different capabilities of existing technologies, their inability to measure certain variables of interest, or an insufficient accuracy or robustness in certain conditions. For instance, visual sensors are strongly constrained by the illumination and transmission media and, in particular, strongly limited in the dark or in turbid waters. In other cases, the response time of the sensors puts strict limits to the dynamics of the robot and the scene. In these cases and many others, research on unconventional sensing modalities can equip robots with new capabilities and improve their fundamental ones, contributing to address many relevant challenges and broadening the tasks and scenarios where robots can be deployed. This special issue will focus on the use of unconventional sensors to address robotic challenges where standard vision, range and proprioception are not sufficient, dealing with both the scientific foundations of novel unconventional sensors and their use and applications on real robots. *Topics of interest* include, but are not necessarily limited to: - Unconventional visual sensors - Sound perception - Tactile sensing - Olfactory sensing - Applications of unconventional sensors in robotics - Learning and cognition using unconventional sensing - Semantic perception using unconventional sensors - Localization and mapping using unconventional sensors - Sensor fusion using unconventional sensors for navigation, mapping, obstacle avoidance and object manipulation - Sensory feedback in prosthetic devices using unconventional sensors - Unconventional sensing for feedback control - Motion planning and re-planning using unconventional sensor measurements - Design and development of novel unconventional sensors - Deep learning-based approaches to unconventional sensor data *Important dates* - June 1st 2021 - Manuscript submission deadline - August 31st 2021 - Decisions and author notification - November 15th 2021 - Final decisions and author notification - December 31st 2021 - Camera ready manuscript submission *Submission guidelines* Manuscript submission guidelines can be found at: https://www.springer.com/journal/10514/updates/18498580 *Guest Editors* For inquiries do not hesitate to contact the guest editors: - I?aki Ra??, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (igra at mmmi.sdu.dk) - Augusto Gomez Eguiluz, University of Seville, Spain (ageguiluz at us.es) - Javier Civera, University of Zaragoza, Spain (jcivera at unizar.es) Kind regards, Inaki, Augusto & Javier. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alb.mazzoni at gmail.com Tue Dec 1 06:40:18 2020 From: alb.mazzoni at gmail.com (Alberto Mazzoni) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 12:40:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Deadilne for Neural Engineering NER2021 call for papers EXTENDED In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear friends, The deadline for the submission of 4-page papers to our bi-annual IEEEembs conference on Neural Engineering NER2021 is postponed to Dec 10th! One page paper deadline is Feb 19th. NER is the world?s gathering place for biomedical engineers, neuroscientists, and clinicians to share research and to exchange ideas and breakthrough advances in novel engineering tools for elucidating brain function and neuro technologies for the restoration and enhancement of impaired sensory, motor, and cognitive functions. The conference program will feature keynote speakers, invited talks, mini-symposia, and poster sessions. Please note that there will be a Special Session on Computer Models in Neuroengineering. All papers will be peer reviewed. All accepted one page and four page papers will appear in the Conference Program. Only four page papers will have the opportunity to be published in IEEE XPlore.Please submit yourpapers on #neurotechnology #bionics #robotics #prosthetics #neuroscience#machinelearning and more Information and complete call for papers available here: https://neuro.embs.org/2021/ Thanks, best and see you there! Alberto Mazzoni www.santannapisa.it/en/computational-neuroengineering-laboratory -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bls at ieee.org Tue Dec 1 09:17:05 2020 From: bls at ieee.org (Bertrand Le Saux) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 15:17:05 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Open_post-doctoral_position_=40_ESA_?= =?utf-8?b?zqYtbGFi?= Message-ID: We have an opening for a post-doc fellowship at the European Space Agency (ESA)/ESRIN ?-lab in Frascati (Rome), Italy. We are looking for people with a background in artificial intelligence, AI for Earth observation, machine learning, machine vision or quantum computing. Join us to make advances in Earth observation and modelling, and tackle today's great challenges! Full description and link to application: https://career2.successfactors.eu/career?career_ns=job_listing&company=esa&navBarLevel=JOB_SEARCH&rcm_site_locale=en_GB&career_job_req_id=11020&selected_lang=en_GB&jobAlertController_jobAlertId=&jobAlertController_jobAlertName=&_s.crb=LTgIvnQmM4v7qkQNIEQetLDV7EHRKJ3maQkkQcJkPqk%3D ESA ?-lab blog: https://blogs.esa.int/philab/ Application expected by Dec. 11, 2020 Kind regards, Bertrand Le Saux -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mike at kopernikusauto.com Tue Dec 1 10:42:01 2020 From: mike at kopernikusauto.com (Mike Woodcock) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 16:42:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [Jobs] ML/CV Engineer Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Kopernikus Automotive is a startup working on self-driving cars to deploy solutions in constrained environments like factories, working in partnerships with leading global car manufacturers and suppliers. We mainly focus on using Cameras as the main sensor and the ML team is looking for a bright Computer Vision / Machine Learning engineer to join the team. I invite you to check more on https://www.kopernikusauto.com/ We have two positions available for an ML/CV Engineer and a Junior/Entry level position as well. We are looking for bright minds in Machine Learning and Computer vision to join our team. If you are interested you could read more on * https://www.kopernikusauto.com/jobs2 * https://www.kopernikusauto.com/jobs4 (Junior) If you have any doubts regarding the position you could contact us at * jobs+cvml07 at kopernikusauto.com * jobs+cvml08 at kopernikusauto.com (Junior position) Kind regards, Mike Woodcock, Principal ML Engineer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From george at cs.ucy.ac.cy Tue Dec 1 08:56:32 2020 From: george at cs.ucy.ac.cy (George A. Papadopoulos) Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2020 15:56:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 15th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2021): Second Joint Call for Doctoral Consortium, Posters & Demos, Research Projects and Tutorials Message-ID: *** Second Joint Call for Doctoral Consortium, Posters & Demos, Research Projects and Tutorials *** 15th International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS 2021) May 12-14, 2021, Royal Apollonia Beach Hotel 5*, Limassol, Cyprus http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2F Submission deadline (except tutorials): February 9, 2021 (AoE) Submission deadline only for tutorials: March 19, 2021 (AoE) (Proceedings to be published by Springer) RCIS has become a recognized conference on research challenges in Information Science. Organized for the 15th time in a row, RCIS 2021 will be held from May 12-14, 2021, in Limassol, Cyprus. The topics of interest are organized into some major categories (more details in the call for papers http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FcallPapers.php): ? Information Systems and their Engineering ? User-Oriented Approaches ? Data and Information Management ? Business Process Management ? Domain-specific IS Engineering ? Data Science ? Information Infrastructures ? Reflective Research and Practice IMPORTANT DATES FOR ALL SATELLITE EVENTS ? Submission deadline (except tutorials): February 9, 2021 (AoE) ? Submission deadline for tutorial proposals: March 19, 2021 (AoE) ? Notification to authors and registration opening: March 12, 2021 ? Notification for tutorial proposals: March 22, 2021 ? Author registration deadline for all paper types: March 29, 2021 ? Camera-ready copy deadline for all paper types: March 29, 2021 ? Conference: May 12-14, 2021 DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM The RCIS 2021 Doctoral Consortium is an opportunity for doctoral students to present, discuss and develop their research project in an interdisciplinary workshop, under the guidance of a panel of senior researchers. The Doctoral Consortium offers nice opportunities for PhD students. Firstly, the feedback received during the Doctoral Consortium will really benefit students who have defined their topic, research plan and have obtained early results, but who still have room for improving their longer-term plan. Secondly, students at all stages of their doctoral project can meet the welcoming RCIS community and widen their network of contacts. The Doctoral Consortium has the following objectives: ? Provide a platform for students to present their work and to meet other peers and be familiar with different research topics and methods. ? Provide feedback on students' current research and guidance on future research directions. ? Promote the development of a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of collaborative research and networking. ? Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other researchers. Interested PhD students are invited to submit papers, in agreement with their supervisors, addressing the instructions that are provided on the online call: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FcallDoctoral.php . Papers shall be formatted according to the Springer LNCS/LNBIP conference proceedings template (for LaTeX and Word): http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.springer.com%2Fgp%2Fcomputer-science%2Flncs%2Fconference-proceedings-guidelines . Submissions must be written in English, and must be authored by the student only. The maximum length of the paper should be eight (8) pages, including references, appendices, etc. The submission site address is http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Feasychair.org%2Fmy%2Fconference%3Fconf%3Drcis2021 where you can choose the "RCIS2021_Doctoral_Consortium" track. Doctoral Consortium Chairs ? Xavier Franch, Universitat Polit?cnica de Catalunya, Spain ? Renata Guizzardi, University of Twente, The Netherlands Doctoral Consortium Student Co-Chair ? Blagovesta Kostova, EPFL, Switzerland POSTERS AND DEMOS The posters & demos track will showcase prototypes and new research ideas in Information Science. This track provides a forum for researchers and practitioners to present their work, interact with conference participants, and obtain feedback on on-going research. We invite two types of submissions: ? Posters are intended to convey a research result and are not advertisements for commercial software packages. While posters need not describe completed work, they should report on research for which at least some preliminary results are available. ? Demonstrations should directly and actively involve the exhibition and display of tools/prototypes and associated materials that illustrate research work in progress and serve as ground for discussion of research ideas. Posters and demonstrations proposals must be submitted as a single PDF file with no more than 6 pages in Springer LNCS/LNBIP format (http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.springer.com%2Fgp%2Fcomputer-science%2Flncs%2Fconference-proceedings-guidelines) including references and appendices. Proposals that exceed the limit of 6 pages will be rejected without review. Proposals that have already been accepted or are currently under review for other conferences or journals will not be considered for publication at RCIS 2021. The submission site address is http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2F where you can choose the "RCIS2021 Posters & Demos" track. More details on the submission and presentation format is online: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FcallPostersDemo.php . Posters & Demos Chairs ? Dominik Bork, TU Wien, Austria ? Giovanni Meroni, Politecnico di Milano, Italy RESEARCH PROJECTS @RCIS RCIS 2021 features a track entirely devoted to presenting future or ongoing research projects (e.g., H2020 or ERC projects, national grants) in the context of information science. This track features a good opportunity for presenters to get feedback before submitting research project or to disseminate the intermediate results of their projects, and for participants to get an updated view of innovative ongoing research while getting in touch with potential research partners. The Research Projects @RCIS Track follows a two-step publication process. Firstly, the authors should submit a 2 pages paper summarizing the objectives of the project and relevant results. Each submission will be peer reviewed on the relevance of the submitted paper in the context of RCIS. If the paper is accepted, the authors will have to register to the conference in order to present their work as a poster at the "Research Projects @ RCIS" session at RCIS. A discussant system will be organized to ensure proper feedback and discussions about the projects. Furthermore, the accepted 2 pages paper will be published in the conference proceedings to be published by Springer in the LNBIP series. Beyond the special topic for RCIS 2021, the conference welcomes Research Projects submissions from any domain of Information Science. More information about the special topic and the range of topics that RCIS traditionally addresses can be found in: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FcallPapers.php . The submission site address is http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Feasychair.org%2Fmy%2Fconference%3Fconf%3Drcis2021 where you can choose the "ResearchProjects at RCIS2021" track. More information about preparing and submitting contributions related to this track can be found here: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FresearchProjects.php . Research Projects @RCIS Chairs ? Denisse Mu?ante, T?l?com SudParis, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, France ? Anthony Simonofski, UNamur and KU Leuven, Belgium TUTORIALS Tutorials are intended to provide independent instruction (know-how) on a topic of relevance for the RCIS academic and practitioner community. However, we discourage commercial or sales-oriented tutorials. Potential presenters should keep in mind that there might be a varied audience, including novice graduate students, seasoned practitioners, and specialised researchers. Tutorial speakers should be prepared to cope with this diversity. The conference has specific slots for tutorials. They will be organised in sessions of 90 minutes with a free format. Tutorials run in parallel with other conference tracks, and participation in the tutorials is included in the attendees' conference fee. We invite proposals for tutorials that may address one or more of the listed topics below, although authors should not feel limited by them. A 2-page summary of the tutorials that end up being accepted and delivered will be published in the conference proceedings, which will be published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series. Furthermore, a free registration for the conference will be offered to the main presenter (i.e. to one speaker), unless they are the only paying author of a paper presented at the conference. Beyond the special topic for RCIS 2021, the conference welcomes tutorial proposals from any domain of Information Science. More information about the special topic and the range of topics that RCIS traditionally addresses can be found in: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2FcallPapers.php . Tutorial proposals are limited to 5 pages in Springer LNCS/LNBIP format and should be formatted according to the Springer LNCS/LNBIP conference proceedings template (for LaTeX and Word): http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.springer.com%2Fgp%2Fcomputer-science%2Flncs%2Fconference-proceedings-guidelines . The submission site address is http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=https%3A%2F%2Feasychair.org%2Fmy%2Fconference%3Fconf%3Drcis2021 where you can choose the "RCIS2021_Tutorials" track. More information about preparing and submitting contributions related to this track can be found here: http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/~george/lm/lm.php?tk=CQlGb3JtYWwJY29ubmVjdGlvbmlzdHNAbWFpbG1hbi5zcnYuY3MuY211LmVkdQkxNXRoIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgQ29uZmVyZW5jZSBvbiBSZXNlYXJjaCBDaGFsbGVuZ2VzIGluIEluZm9ybWF0aW9uIFNjaWVuY2UgKFJDSVMgMjAyMSk6IFNlY29uZCBKb2ludCBDYWxsIGZvciBEb2N0b3JhbCBDb25zb3J0aXVtLCBQb3N0ZXJzICYgRGVtb3MsIFJlc2VhcmNoIFByb2plY3RzIGFuZCBUdXRvcmlhbHMJNTE1CUdlb3JnZQkzNQljbGljawl5ZXMJbm8=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rcis-conf.com%2Frcis2021%2Ftutorials.php . Tutorial Chairs ? Sergio Espa?a, Utrecht University, The Netherlands ? Patricia Mart?n-Rodilla, University of A Coruna, Spain CONFERENCE COMMITTEES General Chairs ? George A. Papadopoulos, University of Cyprus, Cyprus ? Selmin Nurcan, Universit? Paris 1 Panth?on-Sorbonne, France Organising Chair ? Petros Stratis, Easy Conferences LTD., Cyprus Program Chairs ? Samira Cherfi, CNAM, France ? Anna Perini, FBK, Italy Proceedings Chair ? Raihana Ferdous, FBK, Italy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefan.kiebel at tu-dresden.de Wed Dec 2 06:02:28 2020 From: stefan.kiebel at tu-dresden.de (Kiebel, Stefan) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 11:02:28 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position in Cognitive Neuroscience available at TU Dresden/Germany Message-ID: <20efd2fa0af9469a8ae177d3a185d023@MSX-L103.msx.ad.zih.tu-dresden.de> We are seeking an enthusiastic postdoc with a particular interest in the neuroscience of context-specific, goal-directed human behaviour. The postdoc position is supervised by Prof. Dr. Stefan Kiebel at the TU Dresden, Germany. Initial contract length 3,5 years. The position is part of an interdisciplinary research collaboration, the CRC 940 'Volition and Cognitive Control' (https://tud.link/ylxq), funded by the German Research Foundation. The overall aim of the CRC is to identify the cognitive and neuronal mechanism that underlie the control of goal-directed actions and decision making. Within the CRC, the specific aim of our group is to take a fresh look at the role of context-specific action selection to enable fast and accurate decisions in dynamic and uncertain task environments. The project will provide an excellent opportunity to work within an interdisciplinary environment of cognitive and computational neuroscientists, psychologists and physicists. TU Dresden is one of eleven German Universities of Excellence and offers an interdisciplinary scientific environment. The Neuroimaging Centre at the TU Dresden (http://www.nic-tud.de) has cutting-edge infrastructure with 3-Tesla MRI, MRI compatible headphones and eye-tracking, several EEG systems, a neurostimulation unit including neuronavigation, TMS and tDCS devices. The postdoc position is available at the next possible date. Subject to personal qualification, employees are remunerated according to salary group E 13. For details please see the official advertisement: https://tud.link/q3qk For more information on our research group see: https://tu-dresden.de/mn/psychologie/ifap/ni?set_language=en Prof. Dr. Stefan Kiebel Professor of Neuroimaging Technische Universit?t Dresden Chemnitzer Str. 46b, 01187 Dresden, Germany -- https://tu-dresden.de/mn/psychologie/ifap/ni https://twitter.com/kiebellab -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From napoleon.torres-martinez at cea.fr Wed Dec 2 09:24:30 2020 From: napoleon.torres-martinez at cea.fr (TORRES-MARTINEZ Napoleon 228119) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 14:24:30 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position mailing List In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: We are offering Postdoctoral fellow in AI Real time signal processing for epilepsy The post-doctoral fellowship will be carried out at CEA-LETI-CLINATEC in partnership with CEA-LETI-DSYS and DSCIN, located at the research technological center CEA (Commissariat ? l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives), in Grenoble, France. CEA-LETI teams involved in the project possess significant experience in neural signal decoding, machine learning and signal processing. The project partners are reference units for the development of smart algorithms and data processing. The teams have a leading position in the field of Artificial Intelligence (Deep Learning (DL) / Machine Learning (ML), in particular focusing on non-conventional applications under constraints, algorithmic approaches under computing power limitations and efficient model re-training in potentially non-stationary context. Clinatec has a long experience in Implantable Medical Devices and in preclinical models. We propose in this particular project to explore "forecasting seizures algorithms" for closed loop neuromodulation: Our proposal is based on the optimization of existing algorithms that can be applied to generate prediction/forecasting of seizures occurrence. The final goal of the project is moving toward neuroprosthetic for drug resistance epilepsy. Postdoctoral mission will include: ? The test of conventional decoding algorithms and the comparison; ? Design and optimization of innovative decoding algorithms including ANN; ? Optimization, implementation of best algorithm(s) for real time application, integration to the Clinatec real time experimental platform; Postdoctoral fellow will contribute to: ? The experiment design ? Algorithms development ? Experimental platform integration Profile of candidate: PhD or equivalent with strong knowledge in Machine learning, Deep learning, real time Signal processing (high dimensional data flow), with strong skills in Python, matlab. This position require a collaborative mindset. We Offer: Contract duration 24 month A highly interdisciplinary team composed of neuroscientist, medical doctors, electronic engineers, mathematicians, data analysts and software developers An international team in one of the biggest research centers in France in a very open and friendly student's city of Grenoble. Grenoble attracts every year 65 000 students of 180 different countries. With a close relationship with international research labs and institutes and unique partnership with firms and companies - the capital of the Alps ranks 5th among the world's most innovative cities. For further information please contact: Napoleon Torres / T?l. : +33 (0) 4 38 78 0614 / Email : napoleon.torres-martinez at cea.fr or https://www.emploi.cea.fr/offre-de-emploi/emploi-post-doctorant-en-traitement-du-signal-intelligence-artificielle-et-logiciel-h-f_14864.aspx (in French) Napoleon TORRES-MARTINEZ MD PhD Neurochirurgien-biologiste CEA-Leti MINATEC Campus, 17 rue des Martyrs 38054 GRENOBLE Cedex 9 napoleon.torres-martinez at cea.fr T?l. : + 33 (0)4 38 78 0614- Fax et/ou mobile : + 33 (0)4 38 78 78 53 55 www.leti.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcnieho at gmail.com Wed Dec 2 09:18:57 2020 From: dcnieho at gmail.com (Diederick C. Niehorster) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 15:18:57 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Psychtoolbox now offers priority support, community membership and more! Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting. https://www.psychtoolbox.net Have you got some leftover funds in your lab's budget and wonder how to spend them before Christmas? Wonder no longer, we can help! As many of you know, for over 15 years Psychtoolbox for Matlab and the free GNU/Octave has been primarily developed by Mario Kleiner, with almost no support for his efforts. Over this time, not only Psychtoolbox's popularity and functionality, but also the required workload, has greatly increased, requiring his full time commitment. Given the urgency of this issue, some years ago an event was held at VSS to discuss how to improve the sustainability of Psychtoolbox, focusing especially on the financial situation. Additionally a user survey was conducted during the years 2016 to 2018, asking labs about their willingness to financially support Psychtoolbox development. Out of 1270 responses of individual labs, 417 labs (~33% of all responses) stated they would certainly contribute financially if invoices could be provided [1]. That was very encouraging and we have now made this possible! Since 2018, Psychtoolbox and Mario Kleiner have found a new home in Medical Innovations Incubator GmbH, which supports early-stage companies in the area of life sciences with know-how and methods. Since then, Mario and the incubator have together developed a concept for commercial support and services which will allow Mario to continue Psychtoolbox development. Here we would like to introduce the outcome of this work with our companion website, https://www.psychtoolbox.net , detailing the options available for labs, companies and individuals to support the Psychtoolbox project. In particular, we want to point labs to the ability to purchase a yearly membership for paid priority support. At a modest price of 150 Euros per year (+ VAT), this provides labs with fast expert advice and help for questions and problems related to Psychtoolbox and its surrounding ecosystem, in addition to supporting the future maintenance and development of Psychtoolbox and the software it depends upon. E.g., Mario also improves the open-source Linux operating system to make it even more suitable for experiments requiring high precision, performance, flexibility and robustness. He also develops workarounds for bugs in proprietary operating systems like Apple macOS and MS-Windows. All of this work additionally benefits other neuroscience toolkits, especially ones which use parts of Psychtoolbox as their underpinning, e.g., PsychoPy. Additional options include contracting us for development and improvement of specific Psychtoolbox or Linux features which are vital for your experimental needs [2]. We also offer product integration partnerships for companies which manufacture and sell neuroscience products. Lastly, for a small fee, individuals can become community members - essentially a small donation. You can also buy Psychtoolbox swag (from t-shirts, hoodies and mugs all the way to teddy bears) in the swag shop, where a fraction of the proceeds will go to support Psychtoolbox. We hope that through https://www.psychtoolbox.net labs, companies and users can find the right support or partner program fitting to their individual needs, and can find a way to contribute to Psychtoolbox development and maintenance. As is the case with many open source projects, we depend on your support to keep the project viable and moving forward. We hope that we are now able to offer you viable and mutually beneficial ways of financially contributing to the project. Please also contact us at https://www.psychtoolbox.net if you would like to discuss other options, or if you run into any problems with the purchase process. As a recent example of the exciting new features added to Psychtoolbox, including High Dynamic Range support, that keep Psychtoolbox as the foremost option for demanding neuroscience and beyond, click this link to see what is new in the recent Psychtoolbox 3.0.17 release: https://psychtoolbox.discourse.group/t/psychtoolbox-3-0-17-beta-update-dynamically-high-released/3489 Your continued support will allow continuous progress, as well as maintenance, to ensure your code keeps working on old and new hardware and operating systems, and for exciting new paradigms to become possible over the years to come. Rest assured: Psychtoolbox itself will remain open source software and will continue to be available for free. Thank you for your time and support, The Psychtoolbox team [1] Another 635 labs (~50%) responded that their support would depend on the specific payment or business model behind Psychtoolbox. If you are one of these labs and none of our current options are suitable for you, please get in touch with us at https://www.psychtoolbox.net [2] A few examples of our happy contract work customers so far are PsychoPy for substantially improved audio, timing and response collection functionality; Denis Pelli for fixing severe issues with Apple macOS for visual stimulus timing and response collection; and the VESA industry consortium for High Dynamic Range display support (see https://vesa.org/featured-articles/vesa-funds-development-of-new-video-compression-test-tool-for-high-dynamic-range-displays/ for their press release). From fabio.bellavia at unifi.it Wed Dec 2 08:27:21 2020 From: fabio.bellavia at unifi.it (Fabio Bellavia) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 14:27:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP - MDPI Journal of Imaging special issue on "Fine Art Pattern Extraction and Recognition" Message-ID: <1b57f4c2-6440-c648-b665-7f32eaad8a38@unifi.it> apologies for multiple posting, please distribute among interested parties __________________________________________________________________________ ??????????????? ? ?? Call for Papers - Special Issue ?? ???????????????? of the MDPI Journal of Imaging on ? ? ????????? _____________________________________________ ?? ? ????????? Fine Art Pattern Extraction and Recognition ??? ? ??????? _____________________________________________ -->>> https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/faper2020 <<<-- __________________________________________________________________________ ___________ Aim & Scope Cultural heritage, in particular fine art, has invaluable importance for the cultural, historic, and economic growth of our societies. Fine art is developed primarily for aesthetic purposes, and it is mainly concerned with paintings, sculptures, and architectures. In the last few years, due to technology improvements and drastically declining costs, a large-scale digitization effort has been made, leading to a growing availability of large digitized fine art collections. This availability, along with the recent advancements in pattern recognition and computer vision, has opened new opportunities for computer science researchers to assist the art community with automatic tools to analyse and further understand fine arts. Among the other benefits, a deeper understanding of fine arts has the potential to make them more accessible to a wider population, both in terms of fruition and creation, thus supporting the spread of culture. The ability to recognize meaningful patterns in fine art inherently falls within the domain of human perception, and this perception can be extremely hard to conceptualize. Thus, visual-related features, such as those automatically learned by deep learning models, can be the key to tackling problems of extracting useful representations from low-level colour and texture features. These representations can assist in various art-related tasks, ranging from object detection in paintings to artistic style categorization, useful for examples in museum and art gallery websites. This special issue will provide the researchers from diverse areas such as pattern recognition, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and image processing, with the opportunity to present advancements in the state of the art, innovative research, ongoing projects, and academic and industrial reports on the application of visual pattern extraction and recognition for the better understanding and fruition of fine arts. _______________________________________ Topics include, but are not limited to: - Application of machine learning and deep learning to cultural heritage - Computer vision and multimedia data - Generative adversarial networks for artistic data - Augmented and virtual reality for cultural heritage - 3D reconstruction of historical artifacts - Historical document analysis - Content-based retrieval in the art domain - Speech, audio, and music analysis from historical archives - Digitally enriched museum visits - Smart interactive experiences in cultural sites - Projects, products, or prototypes for cultural heritage restoration, preservation, and fruition _______________________________________ Submission Deadline:? 28 February 2021 _______________________________________ Submit your paper to manuscript submission and peer review site via the following link: ->> https://www.mdpi.com/journal/jimaging/special_issues/faper2020 <<- The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in the MDPI Journal of Imaging is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). ________________ Editor-in-Chief ________________ Prof. Gonzalo Pajares Martinsanz, Universitad Complutense de Madrid, Spain ______________ Guest Editors ______________ Giovanna Castellano, Universita' di Bari, Italy Gennaro Vessio, Universita' di Bari, Italy Fabio Bellavia, Universita' di Palermo, Italy From jtouboul at brandeis.edu Wed Dec 2 14:44:08 2020 From: jtouboul at brandeis.edu (Jonathan Touboul) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 14:44:08 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position in theoretical neuroscience at Brandeis University Message-ID: <3641F3B3-63B9-44C5-9BF1-C182A5B35C61@brandeis.edu> A postdoctoral position is available in the Department of mathematics at Brandeis University under the mentoring of Jonathan Touboul to work on probability or dynamical problems arising in mathematical biology. Research topics include randomly connected networks and dynamical systems, and applications include synaptic plasticity, Parkinson?s disease, embryonic development, stochastic neural networks, ecological models. The techniques we use in the lab include dynamical systems (with delays, jumps and/or multiple timescales), probabilities and statistical physics (stochastic networks, random matrices, large deviations techniques). See http://blogs.brandeis.edu/mathneuro for more information. All projects will involve collaboration with experimental groups in Boston area, Paris and abroad. The position is up to 2 year term, contingent upon satisfactory progress, with competitive salary and benefits packages. The fellow will participate to the vibrant scholar life in the Boston area. The successful candidates will join the Mathematics Department at Brandeis University (http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/mathematics/) with strong ties to the Neuroscience group (http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/). Opportunities to teach in the math department could be available and are encouraged. Candidates should have a Ph.D. in mathematics, applied math, (computational) neuroscience, physics or engineering and have an excellent track record of scholarship, have experience in dynamical systems and/or stochastic models, and be familiar with computational programing. Applications from under-represented groups are strongly encouraged (see statement below). Candidates should send their CV (including a publication list), a cover letter indicating their research interests and professional goals, as well as at least two reference letters, through mathjobs.org: https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/16903 Please do not hesitate to contact Jonathan Touboul jtouboul at brandeis.edu for further information. Applications will be processed on an ongoing basis. At Brandeis, we believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential components of academic excellence. Because diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of Brandeis? history and mission, we value and are seeking candidates with a variety of social identities, including those that have been underrepresented in higher education, who possess skills that spark innovation, and who, through their scholarly pursuits, teaching, and/or service experiences, bring expertise in building, engaging, and sustaining a pluralistic, unified, and just campus community. Brandeis University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status,disability or veteran status. From ajyu at ucsd.edu Wed Dec 2 21:25:02 2020 From: ajyu at ucsd.edu (Angela Yu) Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 18:25:02 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position in Face Processing and Social Cognition Message-ID: Applications are invited from highly motivated researchers for a postdoctoral position immediately available in the Computational & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, led by Prof. Angela Yu, at University of California, San Diego. One current project of particular interest is using machine learning, computer vision, and statistical techniques to model human face processing and representation, as well as face-based social cognition. More broadly, Dr. Yu?s lab applies modern machine learning and statistical tools to extract computational principles that underlie cognitive processes that enable intelligent behavior, in particular how humans and other intelligent agents perform inference, learning, decision-making, and social interactions under conditions of uncertainty and non-stationarity. Current interests include face processing, attention, active sensing, judgement and decision making, and social cognition. Applicants should be committed to applying rigorous computational and mathematical tools to understand natural intelligence. Experience or interest in carrying out human behavioral experiments (either in person or on-line) and/or collaborating with neuroimaging/neurophysiology laboratories is desirable. Initial appointment is for one year, renewable for up to 2-3 years. Dr. Yu's lab is situated within the Cognitive Science department, and also affiliated with the Hal?c?o?lu Data Science Institute, the Computer Science Department, the Neurosciences Graduate Program, and the Institute of Neural Computation. There are ample opportunities for collaborations with related groups across the UCSD main campus, the medical school, and the Salk Institute. Interested candidates should send a research statement, along with a CV including publications, to Dr. Angela Yu (ajyu at ucsd.edu ) with the subject ?Postdoc Application?. Two or more letters of references should be sent directly by the recommenders to ajyu at ucsd.edu . More information about Dr. Yu?s group can be found at https://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~ajyu . ---------------------------------------------- Angela Yu Associate Professor Dept. of Cognitive Science Hal?c?o?lu Data Science Institute UC San Diego 858-822-3317 http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~ajyu ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tani1216jp at gmail.com Thu Dec 3 03:59:42 2020 From: tani1216jp at gmail.com (Jun Tani) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 17:59:42 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral and staff scientist positions in active inference for enactive cognition at OIST Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit at OIST *https://groups.oist.jp/cnru * focuses on understanding brain-based mechanisms for cognition and action by conducting synthetic brain modeling studies using robotic experimental platforms. We are opening several research positions (postdoctoral and staff scientist) in the following areas related to active inference and predictive coding. ? Theories for active inference by embodied agents. ? Lifetime learning based on intrinsic motivation, including autonomous goal generation. ? Developmental robotics. ? Social cognition with a special focus on primary intersubjectivity. ? Simultaneous multi-domain learning toward development of domain-independent general cognitive competence. ? Computational psychiatry modeling for ASD and schizophrenia. Successful candidates must be highly motivated to work on the aforementioned interdisciplinary research projects and to collaborate with other members of the group. Candidates should have a degree in computer science, robotics, statistical physics, or related fields. A strong background in neural network modeling or machine learning will be advantageous. Individuals hired will work on an annual contract basis. Persons interested in these positions should send an email to tani1216jp at gmail.com with a copy of their curriculum vitae. Best regards, Jun Dr. Jun Tani, Eng. Professor, Cognitive Neurorobotics Research Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Lab2-A626 (Office) A615 (Lab), https://groups.oist.jp/cnru -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From perusquia at ieee.org Thu Dec 3 08:20:06 2020 From: perusquia at ieee.org (Monica Perusquia Hernandez) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 22:20:06 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: ACII2021 - Call for Workshop Proposals Message-ID: ======================================================= Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2021 28 Sep ? 1 Oct 2021, Nara, Japan http://www.acii-conf.net/2021/ ======================================================= *Call for Workshop Proposals* The organizing committee of Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2021 is now inviting proposals for workshops. The biennial conference is the flagship conference for research in Affective Computing, covering topics related to the study of intelligent systems that read, express, or otherwise use emotion. Workshops at ACII allow a group of scientists an opportunity to get together to network and discuss a specific topic in detail. Examples of past workshops include: Emotions in Games, Affective Brain-Computer Interfaces, Affective Touch, Group Emotions, Affective Computing for Affective Disorders, etc. We want to encourage workshop proposals that draw together interdisciplinary perspectives on topics in affective computing. Proposals are also encouraged that make a connection to the theme of the conference on ?Ethical Affective Computing?, and consider issues around the ethical use of affective computing technologies. Workshops should focus on a central question or topic, and will be held the day before the conference. Workshop organizers will be responsible for soliciting and reviewing papers and putting together an exciting schedule. We also encourage workshop organizers to allow for time for networking and discussion. Workshop organizers are also expected to present a short summary of the workshop during the main conference to allow the dissemination of the workshop outcomes to the wider community. **Submission Procedures** Please submit proposals as a single PDF via email to Desmond Ong ( dco at comp.nus.edu.sg) AND Luke Chang (luke.j.chang at dartmouth.edu) with the following information: ? Title of Workshop ? Organizers and affiliations, with a main contact person identified if there are multiple organizers ? Rationale for the workshop, which should cover the importance and timeliness of the proposed topic to ACII, as well as the scope of the workshop. ? Expected outcomes and impact of the workshop ? Length of workshop (full-day or half-day) ? Proposed format of workshop (e.g., oral presentations, poster session, breaks). - List of tentative and confirmed PC members (mention, per PC member, whether tentative or confirmed) - Workshop PC members are in charge of the peer review process, and the workshop organizer will collate and recommend acceptance of the papers to ACII Workshop Chairs. - Expected number of submissions, planned acceptance rate, and paper length, review process (with schedule) - We recommend a workshop paper submission deadline sometime in May, with notifications due back to authors by June or early July, in time for Camera-Ready papers due July 30, 2021 - We will work with workshop organizers to have access to the conference submission system that we will be using for the main conference (details TBA to accepted workshops). ? Advertising plan (e.g. listserves or conferences or other communities that you will advertise the workshop call to). Also include where you plan to host the workshop website. ? Tentative/confirmed keynote speaker(s): please include short biographical details and details on the topic. ? Any logistical requirements. ? List of related and previous workshops/conferences on this/related topics. **Important Dates** Feb 21, 2021: Workshop proposal submission deadline Mar 7, 2021: Notification of acceptance of Workshop proposal May (TBD by workshop organizers): Workshop paper submission deadline June/July (TBD by workshop organizers): Workshop paper notification July 30, 2021: Workshop Camera-Ready Papers Due September 28, 2021: Date of Workshops -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernard.girau at loria.fr Thu Dec 3 08:07:55 2020 From: bernard.girau at loria.fr (Bernard Girau) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 14:07:55 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: postdoc position, neuromorphic and self-organizing architectures In-Reply-To: <745260723.329006.1598977406190.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> References: <745260723.329006.1598977406190.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Message-ID: <10307186.30062247.1607000875579.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Two postdoc positions are (still) available at the Loria laboratory, University of Lorraine, in Nancy, France. Supervision: Bernard Girau Duration: 12 months Contact: Bernard.Girau at loria.fr Application de adline: a pplications will be considered until the positions are filled. Postdoc 1 summary This postdoc proposal first aims to study how spiking versions of dynamic neural fields can be implemented on neuromorphic circuits that have emerged recently, such as the Intel Loihi architecture, in terms of computation and communication. The main illustrative application will be to track targets in a visual scene captured by a DVS spiking camera. The question of the implementation of neural architectures with several neural fields connected to each other will also be addressed, with applications to visual attention and visual memory. Finally, on the basis of a spiking version of self-organizing maps (SOM) that uses local STDP learning rules, an additional objective will be the evaluation of the capacity of this model to be mapped onto the Loihi chip. More details can be found on [ https://www.loria.fr/en/jobs-training/postdoc-neuromorphic-architectures/ | https://www.loria.fr/en/jobs-training/postdoc-neuromorphic-architectures/ ] Postdoc 2 summary We are interested in the design of adaptive and dynamic computing architectures, taking advantage of brain-inspired principles of structural plasticity. The objective of the work proposed here is to make the link between a reconfigurable multi-core architecture capable of exploiting the principles of hardware self-organization on one hand, and different models of self-organizing maps that integrate mechanisms of structural plasticity on the other hand. The two main tasks are: - to study the implementation of self-organizing map models featuring structural plasticity on the multi-core reconfigurable board, by analyzing their behavior when dealing with real-world data and their properties with respect to the board's communication constraints - to interpret the vector quant ization learned by the self-organizing maps in terms of communication needs among the computing units of the self-organizing architecture and in terms of dynamic allocation of computing resources within the board More details can be found on [ https://www.loria.fr/en/jobs-training/postdoc-self-organizing-hardware-architectures/ | https://www.loria.fr/en/jobs-training/postdoc-self-organizing-hardware-architectures/ ] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From O.Inel at tudelft.nl Thu Dec 3 06:58:00 2020 From: O.Inel at tudelft.nl (Oana Inel) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 11:58:00 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: ACM UMAP 2021: Second call-for-papers Message-ID: <23EEDCAC-DF9A-4BB6-9309-B4D4CD8252C2@tudelft.nl> --- Apologies for cross-posting --- ============================ Call for Papers - ACM UMAP 2021 29th ACM International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization Theme: "Re-Evaluating Evaluation in Personalization Research" Hybrid: Utrecht (The Netherlands) and Online June 21-25th (tentative), 2021 Website: https://www.um.org/umap2021/ ============================ Abstracts due: January 17, 2021 (mandatory) Full paper due: January 24, 2021 ============================ BACKGROUND AND SCOPE: ============================ ACM UMAP ? User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization ? is the premier international conference for researchers and practitioners working on systems that adapt to individual users or to groups of users, and that collect, represent, and model user information. ACM UMAP is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and SIGWEB, and organized with User Modeling Inc. as the core Steering Committee, extended with past years? chairs. The proceedings are published by ACM and will be part of the ACM Digital Library. ACM UMAP covers a wide variety of research areas where personalization and adaptation may be applied. This includes a number of domains in which researchers are engendering significant innovations based on advances in user modeling and adaptation, recommender systems, adaptive educational systems, intelligent user interfaces, e-commerce, advertising, digital humanities, social networks, personalized health, entertainment, and many more. We welcome submissions related to user modeling, personalization and adaptation; the conference web site provides a detailed list. Below we present a short (but not proscriptive) list of topics of importance to the conference. As the theme for UMAP 2021 is ?Re-Evaluating Evaluation? we encourage submissions in all areas that offer a critical analysis of evaluations of personalized systems. We particularly want to acknowledge that some of the research might be influenced by Covid-19 related constraints (e.g., difficulty of running lab studies), and welcome submissions which introduce novel methodologies arising from a need to conduct research in new ways. CONFERENCE TOPICS: ============================ We welcome submissions related to user modeling, personalization and adaptation in any area. The topics listed below are not intended to limit possible contributions. Final decisions will be made on the basis of suitability for, and fit to, the overall conference (not for specific tracks). Additionally, there is no quota for the maximal number of accepted papers per track. Topics include (but are not limited to): ? Personalized Recommender Systems ? Track chairs: Alejandro Bellogin, Sole Pera, Ludovico Boratto ? Adaptive Hypermedia and the Semantic Web ? Track chairs: Maria Bielikova, Panagiotis Germanakos, Ben Steichen ? Intelligent User Interfaces ? Track chairs: Katrien Verbert, Denis Parra ? Personalized Social Web ? Track chairs: Julita Vassileva, Jie Zhang ? Technology-Enhanced Adaptive Learning ? Track chairs: Ella Haig, Manolis Mavrikis ? Fairness, Transparency, Accountability, and Privacy ? Track chairs: Christine Bauer, Michael Ekstrand ? Personalization for Persuasive and Behavior Change Systems ? Track chairs: Jaap Ham, Rita Orji SUBMISSION AND REVIEW PROCESS ============================ Papers will be submitted through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=acmumap2021 Long (8 pages + references) and Short (4 pages + references) papers in ACM style. Original research papers addressing the theory and/or practice of UMAP, and papers showcasing innovative use of UMAP and exploring the benefits and challenges of applying UMAP technology in real-life applications and contexts are welcome. * Long papers should present original reports of substantive new research techniques, findings, and applications of UMAP. They should place the work within the field and clearly indicate its innovative aspects. Research procedures and technical methods should be presented in sufficient detail to ensure scrutiny and reproducibility. Results should be clearly communicated and implications of the contributions/findings for UMAP and beyond should be explicitly discussed. * Short papers should present original and highly promising research or applications. Merit will be assessed in terms of originality and importance rather than maturity, extensive technical validation, and user studies. Separation of long and short papers will be strictly enforced so papers will not compete across categories, but only within each category. Papers must be formatted using the ACM SIG Standard (SIGCONF) proceedings template: https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template. UMAP uses a double blind review process. Authors must omit their names and affiliations from submissions, and avoid obvious identifying statements. For instance, citations to the authors' own prior work should be made in the third-person. All accepted papers will be published by ACM and will be available via the ACM Digital Library. To be included in the Proceedings, at least one author of each accepted paper must register for the conference and present the paper there. Student registration fee is allowed for students who present a student paper. IMPORTANT DATES ============================ Abstracts: January 17, 2021 (mandatory) Full paper: January 24, 2021 Notification: March 8, 2021 Camera-ready: April 11, 2021 Video submission: May 5th, 2021 Conference: June 21-June 25, 2021 (tentative) Note: The submissions times are 11:59pm AoE time (Anywhere on Earth) ORGANIZERS ============================ General chairs Judith Masthoff, University of Utrecht Eelco Herder, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen Program chairs Nava Tintarev, University of Maastricht Marko Tkalcic, University of Primorska RELATED EVENTS ============================ Separate calls will be sent for Workshops and Tutorials, Doctoral Consortium, and Demo/Late Breaking Results, as these have different deadlines and submission requirements. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hans.ekkehard.plesser at nmbu.no Thu Dec 3 09:22:12 2020 From: hans.ekkehard.plesser at nmbu.no (Hans Ekkehard Plesser) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 14:22:12 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Technical_Editor_=E2=80=93_European_Res?= =?utf-8?q?earch_Infrastructures_for_Neuroscience_=28EBRAINS=29?= Message-ID: Dear colleagues, The Computational Neuroscience Group at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (www.nmbu.no) aims to recruit a technical editor in a senior engineer position. The position is part of our contribution to the Human Brain Project (www.humanbrainproject.eu) in building the European EBRAINS research infrastructures for neuroscience. This full-time position is available immediately and limited until 31 March 2023. As technical editor, you will be part of the EBRAINS High-Level Service Team and be responsible for coordinating and supervising the production and provision of documentation and tutorial materials for EBRAINS service offerings with the pertaining EBRAINS partners. We are looking for applicants with a master's, preferably a doctoral, degree in a STEM discipline, ideally with experience in technical writing, documentation generation systems, and neuroscience. Closing date for applications is 4 January 2021. For more information about the position and to submit your application, please see https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/196909/technical-editor-senior-engineer Please contact Prof Hans Ekkehard Plesser (hans.ekkehard.plesser at nmbu.no) if you have any questions concerning the position. Best regards, Hans Ekkehard -- Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser Head, Department of Data Science Faculty of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6723 1560 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser at nmbu.no Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marco.fiore at inria.fr Thu Dec 3 10:49:30 2020 From: marco.fiore at inria.fr (Marco Fiore) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 16:49:30 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral fellowship in Network Intelligence at IMDEA Networks Message-ID: <2CBEA54A-F89D-4AED-8D18-348E3AF63F1A@inria.fr> The Networks Data Science group (http://nds.networks.imdea.org/) at IMDEA Networks Institute has an opening for one Postdoctoral fellow in the area of Network Intelligence, with a starting date in early 2021. The successful candidate will contribute to the ongoing activities of the group on developing and integrating AI solutions in modern mobile telecommunication networks. The work will involve designing original deep neural network architectures, training and validating them models with time series of real-world traffic measured in nationwide mobile communication networks, and collaborating to their integration in experimental platforms for system prototyping. To this end, the fellow is expected both to carry out independent, hands-on activities, and to coordinate the work of PhD students in the group. The position offers: - a unique opportunity to test AI models with large-scale measurement data - access to an experimental platform for NI solution prototyping - the possibility of developing or honing PhD student supervising skills - a vibrant, collaborative, multi-cultural and English-speaking environment - the prospect to publish at top-tier venues in networking and ML. The position requires: - a PhD in Computer Science or relevant field obtained by the joining date - proven competences in applied machine learning (e.g., deep neural networks, learning from streaming data, time-series analysis and modeling) to solve practical problems in computer science - a solid research record with strong publications in top-tier venues - fluency in written and spoken English - enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research. Past experience with big data platforms (e.g., Apache Spark) is a plus. Inquiries on the position can be directed to the group head, Dr. Marco Fiore, via email at marco.fiore at imdea.org. Candidates shall submit a CV with a complete list of publications, a brief research statement, and the contact details of two referees through the IMDEA Networks hiring portal (https://careers.networks.imdea.org/), for the position: Post-Doc: [Post-Doc Researcher] [Networks Data Science Group] [2021]. Applications received by December 10, 2020 will be given full consideration, but the position will stay open until a suitable candidate is identified. ------------------------------- Marco Fiore Research Associate Professor IMDEA Networks Institute Avda del Mar Mediterraneo 22 28918 Legan?s, Madrid, Spain phone: +34 91 481 6926 mail: marco.fiore at imdea.org web: http://people.networks.imdea.org/~marco_fiore/ From angela.radulescu at nyu.edu Thu Dec 3 14:08:16 2020 From: angela.radulescu at nyu.edu (Angela Radulescu) Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2020 14:08:16 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Postdoctoral_position=2C_=E2=80=9CTask_?= =?utf-8?q?representation_in_virtual_reality=E2=80=9D?= Message-ID: The Center for Data Science at New York University is looking to fill a fully-funded postdoctoral position to work on computational principles of task representation in virtual reality (VR). The project is part of a multi-lab effort to build goal representation and inference models for human-machine collaboration. The position will be primarily supervised by Drs. Angela Radulescu and Todd Gureckis at NYU. About the position: This funded position will include (1) developing and testing computational models of human gaze and behavioral data from rich, immersive VR environments; (2) designing and conducting novel experiments to probe how representations change under different tasks. We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in computational cognitive modeling who are motivated to test theories in naturalistic settings. The initial appointment will be for one year (with the potential to renew for a second year). We are looking to fill the position as early as January 2021. The start date is flexible (earlier is preferred). The salary is $75,000/year and benefits are provided. Post-docs will also have access to computational resources and administrative support. Qualifications: Required: - Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computer Science or a related field - Experience with computational modeling / cognitive models, such as reinforcement learning, Bayesian inference, and artificial neural networks - Experience gathering and analyzing data from different modalities - Excellent interpersonal and organizational skills Preferred: - Experience developing behavioral experiments in VR (e.g. Unity) - A demonstrated commitment to building reproducible workflows for data collection and analysis About the group: The Computational Cognitive Science group at NYU brings together diverse labs across the university broadly interested in the computational principles of learning, thought, and intelligence. The PIs collaborating on this project, Drs. Todd Gureckis, Brenden Lake and Angela Radulescu are especially interested in how rich human behavioral data can bridge models of intelligence from cognitive science and AI. For more information, please visit: http://nyuccl.org/cogsci/ How to apply: Please email a cover letter, current CV, and email addresses of 3 referees to vr-postdoc-apply-2020 at gureckislab.org. Reviews of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. We are committed to increasing the number of individuals from diverse backgrounds, so we welcome and encourage applications from all qualified individuals. If you have any questions about the position, the research group, or anything else, please do not hesitate to contact us directly. -- Angela Radulescu Faculty Fellow NYU Center for Data Science http://angelaradulescu.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ioannakoroni at csd.auth.gr Fri Dec 4 03:30:25 2020 From: ioannakoroni at csd.auth.gr (Ioanna Koroni) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2020 10:30:25 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Computer Vision and Machine Learning (CVML) and Autonomous Systems Web Lecture Series References: <013101d6c7df$bcf4c2c0$36de4840$@csd.auth.gr> Message-ID: <024901d6ca17$b78abdf0$26a039d0$@csd.auth.gr> Dear Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Autonomous Systems engineers, scientists and enthusiasts, you are welcomed to register in the 'Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Autonomous Systems Web Lecture Series'. After the very successful completion of a) the Spring2020 edition of the CVML Web Lecture Series and b) the 'Summer School on Autonomous Systems 2020' 17-21/8/2020, attracting more than 100 registrants, AIIA Lab (AIIA.CVML research group) offers an asynchronous mode to study Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Autonomous Systems topics. CVML Web Lecture list is found below. Sample material of this course is available and lecture topics are provided as well. This asynchronous e-course provides an overview and in-depth presentation of the various computer vision and deep learning problems encountered in autonomous systems perception, e.g. in drone imaging or autonomous car vision. It consists of 21 one-hour lectures and related material (ppt/pdf, self-assessment exercises, videos, 5 programming exercises), covering the following topics: a. Computer vision. After reviewing image acquisition, camera geometry (mapping the 3D world on a 2D image plane) and camera calibration, stereo and multi-view imaging systems are presented for recovering 3D world geometry from 2D images. This is complemented by Structure from Motion (SfM) towards Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for vehicle and/or target localization and visual object tracking and 3D localization. Motion estimation algorithms are also overviewed. b. Neural Networks and Deep Learning. As there is much hype and often little accuracy, when treating these topics, first the principles of Machine Learning are presented, focusing on classification and egression. Then, an introduction to neural networks, provides rigorous formulation of the optimization problems for their training, starting with Perceptron. It continues with Multilayer perceptron training through Backpropagation, presenting many related problems, such as over-/under-fitting and generalization. Deep neural networks, notably Convolutional NNs are the core of this domain nowadays and they are overviewed in great detail. Their application on deep learning for object detection is a very important issue as well, complemented with a presentation of deep semantic image segmentation. c. Autonomous Systems. First of all, an introduction to Autonomous Systems (AS) provides an overview of various issues related to AS perception and control. Then topics related to autonomous drones are detailed, notably drone mission planning and control and multiple drone imaging. Then Autonomous cars and autonomous marine vehicles are overviewed. d. CVML algorithms and programming. Various such tools, libraries and frameworks are overviewed: Robotic Operating System (ROS), linear algebra libraries (BLAS), DNN libraries (e.g., cuBLAS, cuDNN) and frameworks (e.g., Pytorch, Tensorflow, Keras etc). Distributed computing frameworks (Apache Spark) and collaborative SW development tools are overviewed as well (e.g., GitHub). e. Signals and Systems. Much confusion exists nowadays in ML literature, as even mature ML scientists have no background on Signals and Systems (SS) and confuse even basic notions, e.g., convolutions and correlations. SS principles are overviewed, while focusing on fast convolution algorithms, particularly on 2D convolution algorithms that are an absolute must for CNN libraries/frameworks and many computer vision tasks. You can use the following link for course registration: http://icarus.csd.auth.gr/cvml-web-lecture-series/ Lecture topics, sample lecture ppts and videos, self-assessment questionnaires and programming exercises can be found therein. For questions, please contact: Ioanna Koroni > The short course is organized by Prof. I. Pitas, IEEE and EURASIP fellow, Chair of the IEEE SPS Autonomous Systems Initiative, Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Information analysis Lab (AIIA Lab), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Coordinator of the European Horizon2020 R&D project Multidrone. He is ranked 249-top Computer Science and Electronics scientist internationally by Guide2research (2018). He is head of the EC funded AI doctoral school of Horizon2020 EU funded R&D project AI4Media (1 of the 4 in Europe). He has 31600+ citations to his work and h-index 85+. AUTH is ranked 153/182 internationally in Computer Science/Engineering, respectively, in USNews ranking. Relevant links: 1) Prof. I. Pitas: https://scholar.google.gr/citations?user=lWmGADwAAAAJ &hl=el 2) Horizon2020 EU funded R&D project Aerial-Core: https://aerial-core.eu/ 3) Horizon2020 EU funded R&D project Multidrone: https://multidrone.eu/ 4) Horizon2020 EU funded R&D project AI4Media: https://ai4media.eu/ 5) AIIA Lab: https://aiia.csd.auth.gr/ LECTURES Computer vision 1. Introduction to computer vision 2. Image acquisition, camera geometry 3. Stereo and Multiview imaging 4. Structure from motion 5. Localization and mapping 6. Object tracking and 3D localization 7. Motion estimation Machine Learning 1. Introduction to Machine Learning 2. Introduction to neural networks, Perceptron 3. Multilayer perceptron. Backpropagation 4. Deep neural networks. Convolutional NNs 5. Deep learning for object detection 6. Deep Semantic Image Segmentation Autonomous Systems 1. Introduction to autonomous systems 2. Introduction to multiple drone systems 3. Drone mission planning and control 4. Introduction to car vision 5. Introduction to autonomous marine vehicles CVML algorithms and programming 1. CVML programming tools Signals and Systems 1. Fast 1D convolution algorithms 2. Fast 2D convolution algorithms CVML PROGRAMMING EXERCISES ?ou can improve your programming knowledge on Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Image/Video Processing topics through programming exercises using OpenCV, PyTorch and CUDA on the following topics: 1. Introduction to OpenCV Programming 2. CNN image classification 3. PyTorch for deep object detection 4. OpenCV programming for object tracking 5. CUDA programming of 2D convolution algorithms SELF-ASSESSMENT You can now assess your CVML knowledge and background by performing the exercise described in: https://aiia.csd.auth.gr/cvml-knowledge-self-assessment/ Sincerely yours Prof. I. Pitas Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Information analysis Lab (AIIA Lab) Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Post scriptum: To stay current on CVML matters, you may want to register to the CVML email list, following instructions in https://lists.auth.gr/sympa/info/cvml -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gros at itp.uni-frankfurt.de Fri Dec 4 03:56:16 2020 From: gros at itp.uni-frankfurt.de (Claudius Gros) Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2020 09:56:16 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Focus on Criticality and Complexity in Brain Dynamics Message-ID: <4d2e-5fc9f980-2f-279d5180@24727087> Dear colleagues Together with Dante Chialvo, we are editing a Focus on Criticality and Complexity in Brain Dynamics Journal of Physics: Complexity Deadline 30 April 2021 https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/2632-072X/page/Focus_on_Criticality_and_Complexity_in_Brain_Dynamics Among others, we especially interested in compact perspectives, e.g. on -- experimental and theoretical methodology -- 'critical' assessments of underlying concepts -- controversial viewpoints -- . . . We hope that the focus on brain criticality and complexity will be a place to assess where the field stands and where the fields needs to go. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any further information. We are looking forward to your contribution! Claudius Gros -- ### ### Prof. Dr. Claudius Gros ### http://itp.uni-frankfurt.de/~gros ### ### Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems, A Primer ### A graduate-level textbook, Springer (2008/10/13/15) ### ### Life for barren exoplanets: The Genesis project ### https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-016-2911-0 ### From andypotatohy at gmail.com Sat Dec 5 11:33:40 2020 From: andypotatohy at gmail.com (Yu (Andy) Huang) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2020 11:33:40 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in breast cancer detection using deep learning Message-ID: We are seeking a postdoctoral fellow to work on detecting breast cancer in MRI . The ideal candidate has experience in deep learning for medical imaging. Funding is guaranteed for 5 years. We have 100,000 breast MRI images -- an absolutely unique resource of deep learning. Without exaggeration, this is an opportunity to save lives! The project is a wonderful collaboration between CCNY and the Radiology Department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center . For details, please see here https://www.parralab.org/jobs.html. Interested candidates please contact parra at ccny.cuny.edu. -- *Yu (Andy) Huang, Ph.D.* Research Fellow, Radiology Dept., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Rm. 321-G17P, 321 East 61st Street, New York, NY 10065 Office: 646-608-7608 Email: huangy7 at mskcc.org Research Associate, CCNY-MSK Partnership for Artificial Intelligence Center for Discovery and Innovation, Rm. 3.320, 85 St Nicholas Terrace, New York, NY 10031 Email: yhuang16 at citymail.cuny.edu; andypotatohy at gmail.com Web: http://www.parralab.org/people/yu-andy-huang/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Albrecht_Zimmermann at gmx.net Sat Dec 5 13:33:04 2020 From: Albrecht_Zimmermann at gmx.net (Albrecht Zimmermann) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2020 19:33:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position in interactive non-supervised and semi-supervised data mining @ Greyc Lab Caen Message-ID: The Constraints, Data Mining and Graphs team (CoDaG) is a research group of the GREYC, the computer science laboratory of the University of Caen Normandy. CoDaG is looking for a post-doctoral researcher on a two-year contract, starting on January 1, 2021. The position will be financed by the research project SCHISM, jointly held by the GREYC, the CERMN (Centre d'?tude et de recherche sur le m?dicament de Normandie) and the LITIS (Laboratoire d'informatique, de traitement de l'information et des syst?mes) in Rouen. ? *Context* ? The research performed in SCHISM will focus on interactive pattern-mining, and interactive clustering in a chemoinformatics context. Interactive data-mining is a recent research direction that breaks with the older paradigm of specifying parameter settings for algorithms, letting the algorithm run, interpret the results of the operation, and, based on this interpretation, adjust parameter settings to restart the process. Interactive data-mining, on the other hand, proposes partial or preliminary results to the user, collects their feedback, and uses this feedback to bias the mining process going forward. ? The overall goal of SCHISM is to develop a robust approach to interactive data-mining that integrates both pattern-mining and clustering, and to deliver a prototype that allows users to launch pattern mining or clustering algorithms, visualize the results, give feedback, and rerun mining operations, which will take the given feedback into account. ? *Research description* ? As the name already indicates, CoDaG's research focus is on pattern mining. Current work on interactive pattern-mining uses direct feedback on patterns: the user is presented with a partial selection of patterns then he indicates for individual patterns whether he likes or dislikes them, or he imposes a partial order on the whole partial result set. The post-doctoral researcher will instead exploit indirect feedback to integrate pattern-mining and clustering, and refine the pattern-mining process: users give feedback on a clustering instead of patterns, which will provide information about instances, e.g. instances that must or cannot be grouped together. This piece of information will then be exploited to mine patterns, e.g. those that discriminate between cannot-be-grouped instances, or those that are common to must-be-grouped ones. Research work will therefore involve becoming familiar and working with concepts from both interactive clustering and interactive pattern-mining. ? *Profil and application* ? The successful applicant will: 1. possess or be on track to complete a PhD computer science, or applied mathematics with a focus on machine learning or data-mining, Fluency in written and spoken English or French is essential. 2. have strong programming skills (Java, Python, etc.) and in-depth understanding of statistics and machine learning. Experience with Linux is a plus. 3. have a productive publication record. 4. have a strong work ethic and time management skills along with the ability to work independently and within a multidisciplinary team as required.Salary will be in line with European and French guidelines w.r.t. with years of research experience. Additional funding is available for travel. ? Your application should include: 1. curriculum vitae 2. statement of past research accomplishments, career goal and how this position will help you achieve your goals 3. two representative publications 4. contact information for three references The application should be sent to Albrecht Zimmermann (albrecht.zimmermann at unicaen.fr) and Bertrand Cuissart (bertrand.cuissart at unicaen.fr) From Albrecht_Zimmermann at gmx.net Sat Dec 5 13:36:10 2020 From: Albrecht_Zimmermann at gmx.net (Albrecht Zimmermann) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2020 19:36:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Paid research internship/master's thesis in Interactive structured pattern mining @ Greyc Lab, Caen Message-ID: Paid 5 or 6-month master?s thesis, GREYC, CoDaG Team, Universit? de Caen Normandie, France Contact : Albrecht Zimmermann (albrecht.zimmermann at unicaen.fr) Supervisors : Albrecht Zimmermann, Bertrand Cuissart, Abdelkader Ouali Start date: February/March 2021 Salary: the master's student will be paid according to rules governing French student internships (~560 euro/month) This master?s thesis will be performed in the context of the project InvolvD, financially supported by a grant of the french national research agency (ANR). Pattern mining is the task of finding regularities or unexpected patterns in large databases. Structured pattern mining performs this task on structured data like sequences, trees, or, of particular importance for InvolvD, graphs. Until recently, pattern mining correspond to an iteration of the following pipeline: the data user specifies and parametrizes constraints, then he explores a large set of resulting patterns and adjusts the constraints, and restarts the process. Recently, different researchers have proposed involving user feedback to more directly shape mining constraints. The feedback typically consists of rejecting or accepting individual patterns, or of ranking a small set of patterns. In addition to the pattern language itself, patterns have a second representation in this setting, which characterizes them w.r.t. observed statistics, covered instances etc. The latter representation is used together with the user feedback to learn a preference function, e.g. via an SVM or a regression learner Optimizing this preference function then guides the mining process towards areas in the search space that are expected to contain interesting patterns to the user, and away from those containing uninteresting patterns. Existing work on interactive pattern mining is mainly limited to unstructured patterns, i.e. itemsets, which can be both more easily distinguished, and for which ad-hoc pattern representations can be constructed without much effort. As an example, an itemset {i1, i2, i3, i4} differs from {i1, i2, i3, i5} by the *presence* of i4/i5 and a pattern representation that involves presence indicators can be used to learn this. A sequence i1->i2->i3->i4 differs from i2->i4->i3->i1 due to the *order* of the elements and therefore requires a representation that can efficiently capture this to learn a preference function over sequential patterns. Yet adding all possible pairwise orders (let alone higher-order ones) will quickly make the representation unwieldy, and randomly picking only some risks losing valuable information. This master?s thesis aims specifically at: - Producing a review of the state-of-the-art on interactive structured pattern mining - Proposing a static representation that would allow using methods developed for unstructured patterns - Proposing and testing dynamic representations that are constructed during the feedback process, cutting down on the size of the initial (and overall) presentation The funding for InvolvD includes funding for a three-year PhD thesis, which will further explore those topics, and for which the master student would therefore be well positioned. Required skills: - Experience in machine learning, data mining, computer programming or applied mathematics is highly appreciated. - French and/or English are the working languages. Candidates are encouraged to contact us as soon as possible. Begin of the thesis is expected in February or March 2021. The complete application consists of the documents below, which should be sent as a single PDF file to Albrecht Zimmermann (albrecht.zimmermann at unicaen.fr), Bertrand Cuissart (bertrand.cuissart at unicaen) and Abdelkader Ouali (abdelkader.ouali at unicaen.fr). - CV - One-page cover letter (clearly indicating available start date as well as relevant qualifications, experience and motivation) - University certificates and transcripts (both B.Sc and M.Sc degrees marks) - Contact details of up to three referees - Possibly an English language certificate and a list of publications - Attention: all documents should be in English or in French. From cbroderi at brandeis.edu Fri Dec 4 09:50:43 2020 From: cbroderi at brandeis.edu (Catherine Broderick) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2020 09:50:43 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics, Fall 2021 at Brandeis University Message-ID: BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Department of Mathematics invites applications for a tenure-track position in applied mathematics at the rank of assistant professor beginning Fall 2021. Candidates must have a Ph.D. in mathematics or a related field, demonstrate potential for excellence in research, and display a commitment to teaching. An ideal candidate will be expected to help to build an applied mathematics program within the department, and to interact with the broader student, staff, and faculty, including other science faculty at Brandeis. Candidates from all areas of applied mathematics will be considered. First consideration will be given to applications received by December 31, 2020. A research-intensive liberal arts university, Brandeis fosters highly collaborative science both within and between departments.The suburban campus in Waltham, MA is just 20 minutes from the bustling academic and biotechnology centers of Boston and Cambridge. At Brandeis, we believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential components of academic excellence. Because diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of Brandeis? history and mission, we value and are seeking candidates with a variety of social identities, including those that have been underrepresented in higher education, who possess skills that spark innovation, and who, through their scholarly pursuits, teaching, and/or service experiences, bring expertise in building, engaging, and sustaining a pluralistic, unified, and just campus community. Brandeis University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status,disability or veteran status. Applications should include an AMS cover sheet, cover letter, a curriculum vitae including a publications list, research, teaching and diversity statements, and four letters of recommendation, one of which addresses teaching effectiveness. Applications should be submitted through MathJobs.org. (This position is pending budgetary approval). Catherine Broderick Academic Administrator Department of Mathematics 415 South Street Brandeis University, MS 050 Waltham, MA 02453 781-736-3050 cbroderi at brandeis.edu pronouns: she/her/hers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kc.w at cityu.edu.hk Sat Dec 5 10:24:21 2020 From: kc.w at cityu.edu.hk (Dr. Ka Chun WONG) Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2020 15:24:21 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Journal Special Issue Papers on Springer Nature journal (i.e. SN Operation Research Forum) for Metaheuristics Message-ID: https://www.springer.com/journal/43069/updates/18357818 Advances, Applications & Challenges in Metaheuristics: In Celebration of the Cuckoo Search Algorithm Overview Cuckoo Search, a nature inspired optimization algorithm, was invented by Xin-She Yang (UK) & Suash Deb (India) 10 years ago. Since then it had been proved to be an important & a very useful tool for addressing myriads of optimization problems, both for industrial applications as well as for theoretical ones. Recently the 1st publication of Cuckoo search, published in the year 2009, reached 5000 citations (Google Scholar). In order to celebrate these milestones, SN Operations Research Forum intends to publish a special topical collection by assembling a collection of papers and showcasing the recent efforts in the areas of metaheuristics and nature inspired computing. Accordingly, the journal invites manuscripts, which neither had been published already nor submitted for consideration elsewhere, for this special issue highlighting ?Advances, Applications & Challenges in Metaheuristics? to be guest edited by Ka-Chun Wong (Hong Kong) & Thomas Hanne (Switzerland) & due for publication in 2021. The aim here is to present academicians/researchers/industry professionals/post graduate students some of state-of-the-art research on metaheuristics and the cuckoo algorithm through a cluster of original research contributions in any aspect of the below areas as well as their novel applications. Articles highlighting the challenges as faced by the researchers and/or envisaged by them as well as comprehensive surveys are also welcome in the aforesaid areas. Along with Cuckoo Search (CS) and the other well-known metaheuristics algorithms like Particle swarm optimization (PSO), Ant colony optimization (ACO), Memetic algorithms, Evolutionary algorithms, Simulated annealing, Artificial bee colony etc., articles dealing with the following (but not limited to) areas are also solicited: ? Artificial immune systems ? Chaos optimization ? Central Force Optimization ? Chicken Swarm Optimization ? Earthworm Optimization ? Elephant Herding Optimization ? Firefly algorithm ? Grey wolf optimization ? Harmony search ? Monarch butterfly optimization ? Rainfall optimization ? Sperm Swarm optimization ? Tabu search ? Wolf search optimization ? Whale optimization Guest Editors * Ka-Chun Wong, Dept. of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (kc.w at cityu.edu.hk) * Thomas Hanne, Inst. of Information Systems, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland (thomas.hanne at fhnw.ch) Submission Procedure * Papers should be submitted at the SN Operations Research Forum website: https://www.editorialmanager.com/orfo/default.aspx * Select Article Type: Manuscript * Upload your files. When the system asks, "Does this manuscript belong to a special issue?" reply: Yes, then choose the option ?Advances, Applications & Challenges in Metaheuristics: In Celebration of the Cuckoo Search? * Complete the the submission process as required. Important Dates * Submission Deadline: March 30, 2021 * Publication Date: Upon acceptance of each paper Papers are published upon acceptance, regardless of the Special Issue publication date. Thanks for attention. Kind Regards, Ka-Chun ---------------------------------------------- Ka-Chun Wong BEng, MPhil (CUHK), PhD (Toronto) Department of Computer Science City University of Hong Kong Email: kc.w at cityu.edu.hk Web: http://www6.cityu.edu.hk/stfprofile/kc.w.htm Disclaimer: This email (including any attachments) is for the use of the intended recipient only and may contain confidential information and/or copyright material. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email and all copies from your system. Any unauthorized use, disclosure, reproduction, copying, distribution, or other form of unauthorized dissemination of the contents is expressly prohibited. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Pavis at iit.it Fri Dec 4 10:47:36 2020 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2020 15:47:36 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position on deep learning for online 2D/2.5D/ 3D scene understanding from images - MEMEX H2020 EU project - (2000002K) Message-ID: Postdoc position on deep learning for online 2D/2.5D/ 3D scene understanding from images - MEMEX H2020 EU project (2000002K) Genova, Italy The Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision (PAVIS) research line at IIT invites qualified applicants to submit their CV?s for a Postdoc position in Genoa under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Del Bue. PAVIS research line is actively developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure to understand our physical space and the human behaviors within it. The focus of the group is on creating intelligent systems that jointly accomplish two main goals: Spatial AI: Perceive and understand autonomously the real physical world, both static and dynamic, with its corresponding spatial semantic (where are things, what is their function, which is the dynamic of the scene). Social AI: Perceive and understand humans and their behaviors as observed by cameras in relation to the physical spaces they are interacting with. This open position, up to two years, is financed in the context of the H2020 European Project MEMEX (MEMories and EXperiences for inclusive digital storytelling ? Grant Agreement 870743 -https://www.memexproject.eu) ? an interdisciplinary effort to provide Augmented Reality (AR) systems to impact the European society at large. The candidate will have the opportunity to work on realistic problems involving leading European research centers and companies with the aim to create a novel AR platform able to understand the semantic scene structure of the environment using an RGB video stream from a smartphone. The research topics on 3D scene understanding are related to the recent PAVIS achievements on Spatial AI related to 3D semantic mapping, object 3D localization, graph neural networks (GNNs) for scene modelling and active visual reasoning by integrating deep learning models with multi-view geometry approaches. Such methods will leverage massive worldwide geolocalised data as provided by project partners to finally deploy a mobile app that understands, localizes and reason about the semantic elements present in a generic scene. A relevant scientific track record on major computer vision conferences/journals (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, TPAMI, IJCV, etc.) is a criteria for the selection as well as experience on DNN models and in particular related to GNN. Experience on multi-view geometry is considered a plus for this position. At the time of the application, eligible candidates should have a Ph.D. degree in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics or related fields. The successful candidate will be offered a competitive salary commensurate to qualifications and experience. Please submit your application using the online form https://iit.taleo.net/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=2000002K including a detailed curriculum vitae with publication list brief description of research interests and main accomplishments and names and contacts of 2 referees. The call will remain open until the position is filled but a first deadline for evaluation of candidates will be January 15, 2021. Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IIT - was founded with the objective of promoting Italy?s technological development and further education in science and technology. In this sense, IIT is committed to achieving its scientific program, which sees a major inspirational principle in the integration between basic scientific research and the development of technical applications. Research activities at IIT cover areas of high innovative content, representing the most advanced frontiers of modern technology with wide application possibilities in various fields from medicine to industry, from computer science to robotics, life sciences and nanobiotechnology. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is an Equal Opportunity Employer that actively seeks diversity in the workforce. Please note that the data that you provide will be used exclusively for the purpose of professional profiles? evaluation and selection, and in order to meet the requirements of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Your data will be processed by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, based in Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as Data Controller, in compliance with the rules on protection of personal data, including those related to data security. Please also note that, pursuant to articles 15 et. seq. of European Regulation no. 679/2016 (General Data Protection Regulation), you may exercise your rights at any time by contacting the Data Protection Officer (phone +39 010 71781 - email: dpo[at]iit.it). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cognitivium at sciencebeam.com Mon Dec 7 03:27:48 2020 From: cognitivium at sciencebeam.com (Mary) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 11:57:48 +0330 Subject: Connectionists: "Deep Dive Into ERPs Technique" Online Course Message-ID: <202012070827.0B78RoLL113965@scs-mx-02.andrew.cmu.edu> Dear Researchers, Science Beam team would like to take the opportunity to invite you for ?Deep Dive Into ERPs Technique? Online Course to be held on January-February 2021. This is going to be a 7-session course which is coming after the ?Introduction to ERPs and ERPLAB? WEBINAR. If you haven?t taken part in the mentioned webinar, you can watch it now by clicking on the link below: https://sciencebeam.com/erplab-webinar/ In this course you will learn: ? What are ERPs? ? Neural Origins of ERPs ? Advantages of the ERP Technique ? EEG Data Acquisition ? Common ERP Components ? Design and Interpretation of ERP Experiments ? ERPLAB Toolbox guide ? Application of ERPs in Research and Clinical Settings For more information and registering please visit the link below: https://sciencebeam.com/pragati-gupta-course/ If you need more information please don?t hesitate to contact me. workshop at sciencebeam.com WhatsAppNo: 008613380781282 Mary Rezaee Human Neuroscience Department Manager International Affairs Rep. www.ScienceBeam.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From borriewang at gmail.com Sun Dec 6 19:17:26 2020 From: borriewang at gmail.com (Boyu Wang) Date: Sun, 6 Dec 2020 19:17:26 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: MSc/ PhD/Postdoc Positions in Computational Neuroscience at Western University Message-ID: Western University has recently made major investments in building excellence in cognitive and computational neuroscience. The Computational Brain Sciences Research Group at the Brain and Mind Institute has become a major hub of excellence in this area, bringing together an interdisciplinary and highly collaborative team of researchers, spanning Neuroscience, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Statistics and Mathematics, who seek to uncover how the brain solves the computational problems that ultimately give rise to intelligent behavior. Our group is tightly embedded into the strong and vibrant research community in basic and clinical neuroscience at Western. ======================= MSc/ PhD Positions: We are looking for exceptionally talented and motivated MSc / PhD students for the fall 2021 intake. Through BrainsCAN funding, we offer a competitive graduate scholarship program in computational neuroscience. Interested applicants should contact one or more principal investigators at Western University whose combined expertise covers the spectrum of computation and neuroscience, and who can serve as co-advisors on the proposed research project. Projects that contribute to increasing diversity in neuroscience at Western University are encouraged. Core members of our research group can be found here . Please send a single PDF file entitled _.pdf to the principal investigator(s) you hope to work with, containing: ? a CV ? a short Research Statement (maximal 2 pages) outlining your research interest and how it fits with ongoing work in the lab ? the name and contact information of 2 academic references ? please state clearly, which graduate program (Neuroscience, Computer Science, Statistics, or Applied Mathematics, or other) you are applying for. Individual PIs will begin the review of applications on December, 18th. Deadline for the graduate scholarship is January 4th. ===================== Postdoctoral Fellowship Program: Special Call We also offer a special BrainsCAN Postdoctoral Fellowship which aims to attract the world?s most promising and diverse early-career neuroscientists who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ2S+, people with a disability, and women. More details can be found here . Deadline for the postdoctoral scholarship is January 11th. best, --------------------- Boyu Wang Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science & Brain and Mind Institute University of Western Ontario -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar Mon Dec 7 00:54:52 2020 From: axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar (Axel Soto) Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 02:54:52 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: IUI Workshop on Exploratory Search and Interactive Data Analytics (ESIDA) Message-ID: Fourth IUI Workshop on Exploratory Search and Interactive Data Analytics (ESIDA) https://sites.google.com/view/esida2021/home 13 April 2021, Virtual Important Dates: Submission deadline: December 23, 2020 (midnight Hawaii time) Acceptance notification: January 31, 2021 Final manuscript due: February 15, 2021 Workshop: April 13, 2021 Workshop Description: This workshop will be part of the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces 2021 Conference (http://iui.acm.org/2021/). The workshop focuses on systems that personalize, summarize and visualize the data for supporting interactive information seeking and information discovery, along with tools that enable user modeling and methods for incorporating the user needs and preferences into both analytics and visualization. Our aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on different personalization aspects and applications of exploratory search and interactive data analytics. This will allow us to achieve four goals: (1) propose new strategies for systems that need to convey the rationale behind their decisions or inference, and the sequence of steps that lead to speci?c (search) results; (2) develop new user modeling and personalization techniques for exploratory search and interactive data analytics; (3) develop a common set of design principles for this type of systems across platforms, contexts, users and applications; (4) develop a set of evaluation metrics for personalization in exploratory search. The workshop aims to solicit submissions in the following areas of personalized interactive data analytics and exploratory search: Personalized interactive exploration via interactive data analytics: ? personalization aspects in systems for exploratory search. ? cross-domain/ context-aware/ cross-platform exploratory search systems. ? interactively modelling the user?s information needs for high-recall information retrieval. ? new applications of exploratory search and interactive data analytics. Data analytics: ? interactive interfaces for data-intensive platforms. ? interaction degrees of freedom. ? preprocessing vs. online processing. ? interactive data visualization evaluation of interactive systems for exploratory search and data analytics. Metrics for explainable intelligent systems: ? metrics for explainable exploratory search. ? explainability and transparency in expert vs. non-expert systems. ? human-in-the-loop analytics systems. ? ef?cient vs. explainable analytics. ? user perception of explainability and transparency in interactive intelligent systems. Organisers: Dorota Glowacka, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki (Finland), glowacka[at]cs.heelsinki.fi Evangelos Milios, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Canada), eem[at]cs.dal.ca Axel J. Soto, Institute for Computer Science and Engineering, UNS - CONICET (Argentina), axel.soto[at]cs.uns.edu.ar Fernando V. Paulovich, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Canada), paulovich[at]dal.ca Denis Parra, Department of Computer Science, Pontificia Universidad Cat?lica (Chile) , dparra[at]ing.puc.cl Osnat (Ossi) Mokryn, Department of Information and Knowledge Management, University of Haifa (Israel), omokryn[at]univ.haifa.ac.il Submission Information: We encourage submissions of work in progress, concept papers, case studies, ongoing research projects, reports on recently completed PhD dissertations or recently accepted journal papers, and generally material that will stimulate discussion, generate useful feedback to the authors, encourage research collaborations and vigorous exchange of ideas on promising research directions, in one of the following formats: -full papers (up to 8 pages in ACM sigconf format), which will presented either as contributed talks or posters -extended abstracts (up to 4 pages in ACM sigconf format), which will be presented as posters with a possibility to be accompanied by a demo. Papers can be submitted through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=esida21 From ahtan at smu.edu.sg Mon Dec 7 03:58:43 2020 From: ahtan at smu.edu.sg (TAN Ah Hwee) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 08:58:43 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Job: Postdoctoral Research Position Available Message-ID: <038b4039655e4800bfbc38d4d0a7274f@smu.edu.sg> The School of Information Systems at the Singapore Management University is looking to fill a fully funded postdoctoral position to work on computational principles and modelling of autonomous multi-agent teams with hierarchical control and reinforcement learning. The project is part of an externally funded project aimed at developing large scale simulation of Computer Generated Forces (CGF). Successful candidate will join an active research team led by Prof. Ah-Hwee TAN and the position will be co-supervised by Dr. Budhitama SUBAGDJA. About the position: The main responsibilities of the position include: a) Research and development of computational models for hierarchical reinforcement learning and decision making in large scale multi-agent environment; b) Leading the design, development and evaluation of simulation prototypes; and c) Documentation, preparation of technical publications and reports The appointment will be for one year initially and renewable for another year. We are looking to fill the position as early as possible. The salary and benefits provided will be competitive and commensurate with the candidate?s profile and experience. Academic / Professional Qualifications ? PhD degree in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or closely related disciplines from a reputable institution of higher learning ? Minimum 3-4 years of relevant research experience in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, or related fields. Knowledge / Skills / Competencies ? Good analytical, technical and problem solving skills ? Knowledge/Proficiency in programming languages, in particular Python, Java and C/C++ ? Competency in application prototype design and development ? Good writing, communication and interpersonal skills ? Applicants with research publications in artificial intelligence and cognitive science areas will be advantageous Interested candidate please send a cover letter and current CV with email addresses of three referees to ahtan at smu.edu.sg. Your email should have the subject heading of "Application for Postdoctoral Position". Reviews of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Mon Dec 7 14:41:44 2020 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (smart at neuralcorrelate.com) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 14:41:44 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Vote TODAY for the Best Illusion of the Year! In-Reply-To: <08ea01d6ccc0$7d906310$78b12930$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <0bfa01d5aeac$5f779ca0$1e66d5e0$@neuralcorrelate.com> <08ea01d6ccc0$7d906310$78b12930$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <0c4101d6ccd1$013b8f40$03b2adc0$@neuralcorrelate.com> Dear Colleagues, Worldwide voting for the 16th Best Illusion of the Year Contest started at 8am EST on Monday, December 7th, and will remain open until 10am EST on Thursday, December 10th, 2020! The Top 3 Illusions of the Year will be announced on the Contest?s website on Friday, December 11th. The Best Illusion of the Year Contest, hosted by the Neural Correlate Society, is now an online competition, in which anybody with an internet connection can vote to pick the Best Illusion of the Year. The Top 10 finalist illusions competing for first, second, and third place have been selected from dozens of entries from countries all around the world. The 1st place winning illusion will receive a $3,000 award, the 2nd place winner a $2,000 award, and the 3rd place winner a $1,000 award. The Neural Correlate Society thanks the Museum of Mind, Gold Sponsor of the 2020 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, for its generous support. On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse -------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Author, Champions of Illusion and Sleights of Mind Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience 2014 Society for Neuroscience?s Science Educator Award 2014 Empire Innovator Scholar State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From p.w.h.van.der.putten at liacs.leidenuniv.nl Mon Dec 7 08:31:20 2020 From: p.w.h.van.der.putten at liacs.leidenuniv.nl (Putten, P.W.H. van der) Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2020 13:31:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: The Future of AI is Human, online event Dec 15 featuring Jay McClelland and others Message-ID: <61FCD8C1-157E-4DA9-9C4B-47F1888A00F2@liacs.leidenuniv.nl> ** The Future of AI is Human ** The SAILS AI research initiative at Leiden University, the Netherlands, is inviting you to come and join us for an online event on the intersection of AI & art, science and society, on?Tuesday December 15, 16.30-18.30 CET. It will conclude with an interview with Jay McClelland, co-author of the classical 1986 PDP Books on connectionist models of the mind. Free registration at https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/sails/research/webinar-dec-2020-art-society-and-technology We are not alone anymore. Artificial Intelligence is changing society, for better or for worse, and we will need to find new ways to relate to our artificial counterparts. Will our joint future be symbiotic, antagonistic or more one of fruitful collaboration? And what can we actually learn from the AI about what makes us human ? perhaps even beyond intelligence? What are the grand challenges that are still out there, and do we even know how to begin to tackle them? SAILS, the Leiden University wide research program on AI, has the pleasure to invite you to a livestream talk show on December 15, where we invite artists, scientists and designers to debate and imagine our future with AI, through a whirlwind of very current yet not so middle-of-the-road artworks and research projects. Jay McClelland from Stanford University, whose books on neural networks launched the previous AI summer in the eighties, will conclude the event with his thoughts on the big pieces of puzzle still missing and reflect on our long-term future with AI. Our guests: ? Designer Vera van der Seyp will explain how she used AI to create the graphical design and typography for this event, and how she collaborates with AI in her creative practice. ? Artists and researchers Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders will discuss their creative robotic works that explore our entanglements with machines, and vice versa. ? Sex care robots for elderly: why not? Eduard Fosch Villaronga on making robotics and AI in general more inclusive, for groups such as elderly people, people with disabilities and the LGBTQ+ communities. ? It seems hard to escape our filter bubbles nowadays and misinformation is rampant. Is the use of AI in the hunt for clicks to blame? Or can we reverse the role of AI in online media? Designer Jasper Schelling and researcher Suzan Verberne will share their views on how to uncover framing, junk news and polarization, separate news from opinion and provide diversity in recommendations. ? Since its inception in the 1950s, the field of AI has been characterized by ebbs and flows. Jay McClelland is a cognitive psychologist who was right there at the spring of a new AI summer. In fact, one could argue he helped kickstart it. We will hear his views on what inspired his early work in parallel distributed processing and connectionist models of the mind, his thoughts on the incredible success of deep neural networks, and what the future of AI could hold. More detailed information on the speakers and the event is available on the SAILS website at https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/sails/research/webinar-dec-2020-art-society-and-technology Kind regards, Peter Peter van der Putten Assistant professor, LIACS, Leiden University, The Netherlands http://liacs.leidenuniv.nl/~puttenpwhvander/ From marcin at amu.edu.pl Tue Dec 8 06:29:47 2020 From: marcin at amu.edu.pl (Marcin Paprzycki) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2020 12:29:47 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder: Call for Chapters -- Sustainable Smart Cities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Considerations -- Studies in Computational Intelligence (Springer) In-Reply-To: <8ab205ec-4da2-c891-91af-36d4bd4cdb20@ibspan.waw.pl> References: <8ab205ec-4da2-c891-91af-36d4bd4cdb20@ibspan.waw.pl> Message-ID: Call for contributions ? edited volume Sustainable Smart Cities: Theoretical Foundations and Practical Considerations Volume Editors: Pradeep Kumar Singh Marcin Paprzycki Mohammad Essaaidi Shahram Rahimi Book Series: SPRINGER --> Studies in Computational Intelligence The prime objective of the book is to explore the current areas of research and development, and challenges to be faced in different areas, as related to making cities smart. We are particularly interested in, real-world-grounded, solutions facilitated from the technology and computing perspectives. However, we are also open to, technology oriented, considerations related to the social aspects of development of smart cities of the future. It can be easily observed that (i) Internet of things (IoT),(ii) cloud, fog/edge computing,(iii) data science-based solutions,(iv) 5G and other networking technologies,(v) distributed ledger/blockchain & security, as well as (vi) artificial intelligence & machine learning, are the key technologies for smart cities. All of them are parts of integrated approaches and they have been used to deliver smart city applications like: intelligent traffic monitoring, innovative solutions for city monitoring (including video surveillance), smart homes and office buildings, smart parking, etc. In addition, smart transportation, smart energy solutions, disaster management, and smart healthcare have been identified as some of the key requirements for future cities to be seen as smart. Numbers of unique sustainable solutions have been proposed by researchers working in the area of data science, to fulfill the dream of the smart city. However, up to now, proposed approaches are, much too often, just academic ideas, published in journals and conference proceedings. A lot more work is needed to be able to make these ideas a reality. This is also why we propose this book as a way to bring together ideas and possible ways of realizing them. Moreover, smart cities cannot be created without the involvement of all the stakeholders of the city, namely, local community, government, NGOs, academia and industry. They have to understand technology and on the basis of such understanding, jointly, formulate reasonable plans for ?smartifying? their city. Note also that each city may have different hierarchy of needs that should be addressed. This is why we invite also reflection on how to involve all the city?s stakeholders to jointly work to make their city smart for the citizens. We are inviting chapters addressing topics from any of the six major areas. Contributions in the form of research articles, reviews, taxonomies, lists of solved and unsolved problems, findings of special interest in the context of smart city technologies, and social aspects of their realization. * Social aspects of making city smart * 5G and other networking technologies for smart cities * Data science and business analytics for smart cities * IoT, edge/ fog and cloud for smart cities * Distributed ledger . blockchain and security solutions for smart cities * Artificial intelligence and machine learning for smart cities Deadlines: Full Chapter Submission: 30 January, 2021 Acceptance: 30 March, 2021 Tentative Publication: June, 2021 Submissions (Easy Chair Only): https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=smartcities2021 Contacts: Pradeep Kumar Singh (pradeep_84cs at yahoo.com) Marcin Paprzycki (marcin.paprzycki at ibspan.waw.pl) Additional information: * There is no explicit limit on the length of the contribution. * Comprehensive state-of-the-art review is expected and required. * The similarity index must be below 20% from all sources. * There is NO PUBLICATION FEE at any stage of the process. * Appropriate Springer Template (for the Studies in Computational Intelligence series) must be used. Use of LaTeX is strongly encouraged. * Contributors are responsible for delivery of material written in high quality English, error free, formatted according to the required specification. Texts formatted using different templates, full for spelling/grammar errors, written in incomprehensible English, will be rejected without review. -- Ta wiadomo?? zosta?a sprawdzona na obecno?? wirus?w przez oprogramowanie antywirusowe Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus From albrecht.haase at unitn.it Wed Dec 9 02:52:54 2020 From: albrecht.haase at unitn.it (Albrecht Haase) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 08:52:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position in functional neuroimaging in a new transgenic insect model Message-ID: <9159c91a-6b4c-5c04-5385-af72fcf222f5@unitn.it> Dear colleagues, I would like to advertise a two-years postdoc fellowship in insect neuroscience in the Neurophysics lab at the University of Trento. Thanks for sharing. Albrecht Haase *Characterization of a new transgenic animal model for in vivo whole-brain imaging at single-neuron resolution.* *Research goals and tasks:* The project is a collaboration between the University of Trento, the University of D?sseldorf, and the CNRS, Paris, to optimize and characterize the first transgenic honeybee model expressing a pan-neuronal calcium sensor (GCaMP6). This will allow minimally invasive functional imaging of 3D activity patterns and their dynamics at high spatial and temporal resolution using in vivo two-photon microscopy. It will grant simultaneous access to the entire brain to study neuronal correlates of a rich behavioural repertoire that includes odour discrimination and learning, navigation, and social communication. The research fellow?s tasks will be, in collaboration with our partners, to optimize the maintenance of the recently generated first transgenic bee colonies and to contribute to the extension of the genetic toolkit. At the same time, she/he will conduct the first experiments of two-photon functional imaging in these transgenic bees to record and analyse activity patterns in different brain regions in response to different external stimuli (olfactory, visual, combinatorial). Furthermore, she/he will perform the first continuous long-term imaging experiments to study learning and memory formation. *About us:* The Neurophysics Group (https://r.unitn.it/en/cimec/nphys) is an interdisciplinary research laboratory jointly operated by the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC) and the Department of Physics at the University of Trento, Italy. Our University is currently ranked 1st in the National Research Assessment Evaluations (RAE)for medium universities. Also the center has recently been recognized as the leading cognitive neuroscience research department in Italy. CIMeC's goal is to foster cutting-edge research on cognition and its neural underpinnings and to support the dissemination of these findings internationally and within the local community. As an interdisciplinary research and teaching center, it draws on faculty from several departments, including Psychology and Cognitive Science, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, and Information Engineering and Computer Science. CIMeC?s faculty members originate from Argentina, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Israel, New Zealand, UK, USA, and beyond.* * *Duration of the fellowship: *24 months *Expected starting date: *Jan 2021 *Required qualifications:* * a PhD in biology, neuroscience, engineering, or related disciplines * appropriate scientific curriculum, documenting the scientific and professional experience required to carry out the described research * advanced experience in microscopy and postprocessing and analysis of imaging data * experience in beekeeping is an advantage, the preparedness to learn it is required * excellent English language skills *Applications: * * ?via email to albrecht.haase at unitn.it * attaching a CV and contact details to at least 2 references * deadline: 31 December 2020 -- Dr. Albrecht Haase Associate Professor of Applied Physics Head of the Neurophysics Group, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences - CIMeC Head of the Laboratory for Biophotonics and Neurophysics, Department of Physics University of Trento Piazza Manifattura 1, Building 14, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy Tel office: +39 0464 808699 https://r.unitn.it/en/cimec/nphys @NeurophysicsT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rava at ens.fr Tue Dec 8 07:58:18 2020 From: rava at ens.fr (Rava A. da Silveira) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2020 13:58:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in the lab of Rava Azeredo da Silveira in Basel Message-ID: *Openings for PhD positions in the lab of Rava Azeredo da Silveira* *(Basel)* The lab of Rava Azeredo da Silveira invites applications for *PhD* *positions* at the Institute for Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB), an associated institute of the University of Basel. Research questions will be chosen from a broad range of topics in theoretical/computational neuroscience and cognitive science (see the description of the lab?s activity, below). Candidates with backgrounds in mathematics, statistics, artificial intelligence, physics, computer science, engineering, biology, and psychology are welcome. Experience with data analysis and proficiency with numerical methods, in addition to familiarity with neuroscience topics and mathematical and statistical methods, are desirable. Equally desirable are a spirit of intellectual adventure, eagerness, and drive. The positions will come with highly competitive work conditions and salaries. *Application deadline:* We will start reviewing applications on 20 December 2020. *How to apply:* Please send the following information *in one single PDF, to * *silveira at iob.ch* *:* 1. letter on motivation and interests; 2. curriculum vit?; 3. transcripts of undergraduate and Master grades. In addition, please arrange for three letters of recommendations to be sent to the same email address. In all email correspondence, please include the mention ?APPLICATION-PHD? in the subject header, otherwise the application will *not* be considered. *** *The Silveira** Lab* focuses on a range of topics, which, however, are tied together through a central question: How does the brain represent and manipulate information? Among the more concrete approaches to this question, the lab analyses and models neural activity in circuits that can be identified, recorded from, and perturbed experimentally, such as visual neural circuits in the retina and the cortex. Establishing links between physiological specificity and the structure of neural activity yields an understanding of circuits as building blocks of cerebral information processing. On a more abstract level, the lab investigates the representation of information in populations of neurons, from a statistical and algorithmic?rather than mechanistic?point of view, through theories of coding and data analyses. These studies aim at understanding the statistical nature of high-dimensional neural activity in different conditions, and how this serves to encode and process information from the sensory world. In the context of cognitive studies, the lab investigates mental processes such as inference, learning, and decision-making, through both theoretical developments and behavioral experiments. A particular focus is the study of neural constraints and limitations and, further, their impact on mental processes. Neural limitations impinge on the structure and variability of mental representations, which in turn inform the cognitive algorithms that produce behavior. The lab explores the nature of neural limitations, mental representations, and cognitive algorithms, and their interrelations. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From O.Inel at tudelft.nl Tue Dec 8 10:01:30 2020 From: O.Inel at tudelft.nl (Oana Inel) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2020 15:01:30 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: ACM UMAP 2021: Call for Workshop and Tutorial Proposals Message-ID: ? Apologies for cross-posting ? 29th ACM International Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (ACM UMAP 2021) Utrecht, Netherlands, and Online June 21-25, 2021 https://www.um.org/umap2021/ CALL FOR WORKSHOPS Important Dates: Proposals due: January 15, 2021 Notification to proposers: January 29, 2021 Workshop Day(s): June TBA, 2021 Submission email: umap2021-workshop at um.org ACM UMAP 2021 is pleased to invite proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with the conference. ACM UMAP is the premier international conference for researchers and practitioners working on systems that adapt to individual users or to groups of users, and which collect, represent, and model user information. The workshops provide a venue to discuss and explore emerging areas of User Modelling and Adaptive Hypermedia research with a group of like-minded researchers and practitioners from industry and academia. Information about Hybrid Conference Format ACM UMAP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event, which welcomes everyone who is willing, able and allowed to travel in Utrecht, the Netherlands. However, there will also be an opportunity to attend the conference and the workshops online. Please check the conference website for updates: https://www.um.org/umap2021/ Workshops can therefore be held by the presenters at Utrecht (with synchronous online streaming), or designed as fully virtual workshops. The workshops will most probably be scheduled to start in the mornings or evenings local time (UTC+1). Workshop Format In this edition, our goal is to have a balanced workshop program comprising different workshop formats, combining newly emerging, currently evolving and established research topics. Different full-day and half-day workshop schemas are possible, such as: ? Working group meetings around a specific problem or topic; participants may be asked to submit a white paper or position statement ? Mini-conferences on specialized topics, having their own paper submission and review processes ? Mini-competitions or challenges around selected topics with individual or team participation ? Interactive discussion meetings focusing on subtopics of the UMAP general research topics. ? Joint panels for different workshops Instructions for Proposers Workshop proposals should not exceed 5 pages and should be organized as follows: ? Workshop title and acronym ? Workshop chair(s), including affiliation, email address, homepage, and experiences in organizing such events ? Abstract (up to 300 words) and topics of interest ? Motivation on why the workshop is of particular interest at this time ? Workshop format, discussing the mix of events such as paper presentations, invited talks, panels, and general discussions ? Intended audience and expected number of participants ? List of (potential) members of the program committee ? Requested duration (half day or full day) ? Proposed workshop format (e.g. hybrid or fully virtual) ? When available, past editions of the workshop, including URLs, a brief statement on the development of the workshop series, e.g., in terms of topics, number of paper submissions and participants, post-workshop publications over the years and acceptance statistics Submission and Review Process Workshop proposals should be submitted in PDF by email to: umap2021-workshop at um.org We encourage both researchers and industry practitioners to submit workshop proposals. Researchers interested in submitting a workshop proposal are invited to contact us in advance, so we can help to design successful proposals. In particular, for workshop proposals with novel interactive formats, we are happy to assist in further developing and implementing the ideas. We strongly suggest involving organizers from different institutions, bringing different perspectives to the workshop topic. We welcome workshops with a creative structure that may attract various types of contributions and may ensure rich interactions. The organizers of accepted workshops will prepare a workshop web site containing the call for papers and detailed information about the workshop organization and timeline. They will be responsible for their own publicity and reviewing processes. There will be a conference adjunct proceedings published by ACM where all the workshop papers will be published. Hence, the workshop organizers will need to adhere to the adjunct proceedings publication timeline. Schedule ? Proposal submission: January 15, 2021 ? Notification of proposal acceptance: January 29, 2021 ? Send the workshop description & website URL: February 15, 2021 ? (Suggested) 1st call for papers: February 20, 2021 ? (Suggested) 2nd call for papers: March 2, 2021 ? (Suggested) paper submission: March 26, 2021 ? (Suggested) notification to authors: April 19, 2021 ? Workshop summary camera-ready deadline: May 7, 2021 ? Workshop papers camera-ready deadline: May 7, 2021 ? Workshop Date: June TBA, 2021 Proceedings and Registration Policy Workshop papers will be included in the Adjunct Proceedings published by ACM. To be included in the Proceedings, at least one author of each accepted workshop paper must register for the conference or the workshop and present the paper there. Student registration fee is allowed to students who present a student paper. A "Workshop/Tutorial Only? fee will be available as well. CALL FOR TUTORIALS Important Dates: Proposals due: January 15, 2021 Notification to proposers: January 29, 2021 Tutorial Day: June TBA, 2021 Submission email: umap2021-workshop at um.org ACM UMAP 2021 is pleased to invite proposals for tutorials to be given in conjunction with the conference. ACM UMAP is the premier international conference for researchers and practitioners working on systems that adapt to individual users or to groups of users, and which collect, represent, and model user information, Tutorials are intensive instructional sessions aimed to provide a comprehensive introduction to established or emerging research topics of interest for the UMAP community. Information about Hybrid Conference Format ACM UMAP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event, which welcomes everyone who is willing, able and allowed to travel in Utrecht, the Netherlands. However, there will also be an opportunity to attend the conference and the tutorials online. Please check the conference website for updates: https://www.um.org/umap2021/ Tutorials can therefore be held by the presenters at Utrecht (with synchronous online streaming), or designed as fully virtual tutorials. The tutorials will most probably be scheduled to start in the morning or evening local time (UTC+1). Tutorial Topics Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: ? new user modeling technologies, methods, techniques, and trends (e.g. exploiting data mining and big data analytics for user modeling, evaluation methodologies, data visualization, etc.) ? user modeling and personalization techniques for specific domains (e.g., health sciences, e-government, e-commerce, cultural heritage, education, internet of things, mobile, music, information retrieval, human-robot interaction etc.) ? application of user modeling and personalization techniques for information retrieval and recommender systems ? eliciting and learning user preferences by taking into account users? emotional state, physical state, personality, trust, cognitive factors Instructions for Proposers An ideal tutorial should be broad enough to provide a basic introduction to the chosen area, but it should also cover the most important topics in depth. Tutorial presenters can have one page in the adjunct proceedings. Tutorial proposals should not exceed 5 pages and should contain the following information: ? Title and abstract of the tutorial for inclusion on the ACM UMAP 2021 website (200 words maximum) ? Tutorial description: ? learning objectives of the tutorial and relevance to ACM UMAP 2021 ? targeted audience (introductory, intermediate, advanced) and prerequisite knowledge or skills ? a brief outline of the tutorial structure ? Information about potential practical sessions ? Tutorial length: full (6 hours) or half day (3 hours) ? Other venues to which the tutorial or part thereof has been or will be presented, in addition to explaining how the current tutorial differs from the other editions ? Proposed tutorial format (hybrid or fully virtual) ? Name, email address, affiliation and brief professional biography of the tutorial instructor(s), indicating previous training and speaking experience Submission and Review Process Tutorial proposals should be submitted in PDF by email to: umap2021-workshop at um.org All proposals will be reviewed by the tutorial chairs. The features that will be evaluated are: ? ability of the tutorial to contribute to strengthening the foundations of UMAP research ? clarity of the tutorial, which should emerge from its description ? organization, as appearing from the outline ? background/experience of tutorial instructor(s) in teaching the target topics Timeline ? Proposals due: January 15, 2021 ? Notification of acceptance: January29, 2021 ? Adjunct proceedings camera ready: May 7, 2021 ? Tutorial Day: June TBA, 2021 Proceedings and Registration Policy A ?Workshop/Tutorial Only? fee will be available, as well as the option for student registration. Workshop and Tutorial Chairs Berardina Nadja De Carolis, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy berardina.decarolis at uniba.it Dietmar Jannach, University of Klagenfurt, Austria dietmar.jannach at aau.at -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From d.mandic at imperial.ac.uk Tue Dec 8 10:39:18 2020 From: d.mandic at imperial.ac.uk (Danilo Mandic) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2020 15:39:18 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Data Analytics on Graphs. Hot off the press and a free download Message-ID: <7b25c863-eb27-f663-fa25-69a11a3c120d@imperial.ac.uk> I am delighted to announce that our three-part article on *Data Analytics on Graphs* is just appearing in consecutive issues of *Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning,* vol 13, issues 1, 2-3, and 4. The? focus of the three parts is as follows: Part 1. Data Analytics on Graphs: Graphs and Spectra on Graphs (159 pages), Part 2. Data Analytics on Graphs: Signals on Graphs (177 pages), Part 3. Data Analytics on Graphs: Machine Learning on Graphs (205 pages). and the authors are L. Stankovic, D. P. Mandic, M. Dakovic, M. Brajovic, B. Scalso Dees, S. Li, and A. G. Constantinides. The publisher is showcasing this work at the ongoing NeurIPS conference, where these articles are free to download by the attendees. https://www.nowpublishers.com/conference/neurips2020 Enjoy the reading! Danilo ------ Prof Danilo Mandic Imperial College London www.commsp.ee.ic.ac.uk/~mandic -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.machens at neuro.fchampalimaud.org Tue Dec 8 10:57:59 2020 From: christian.machens at neuro.fchampalimaud.org (Christian Machens) Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2020 15:57:59 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neuroscience / Machine Learning Group Leader Call 2020 - Champalimaud Research Message-ID: <1E475E98-225F-4DCA-9E99-540240904065@neuro.fchampalimaud.org> CR Computational Neuroscience / Machine Learning Group Leader Call 2020 The Champalimaud Foundation (CF) invites applications for Group Leaders to join a dynamic and highly collaborative international research institute in Lisbon, Portugal. Champalimaud Research (CR) is seeking to expand its Neuroscience Programme (CNP) with one Junior Group Leader (Assistant Professor equivalent). About you We welcome applicants with expertise in modern Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Suitable research areas for the recruited applicant include statistical methods for complex, high dimensional datasets, artificial neural networks, computer vision, reinforcement learning, and control theory. We will consider candidates that work on foundational issues in these fields, as well as candidates who take more applied approaches. The ideal candidate should present a research program with both fundamental research and applied elements, and have a strong desire to collaborate with existing teams within CR and CF, including the Champalimaud Clinical Centre. Special attention will be given to applications of individuals from underrepresented groups. About the position To promote risk-taking research, generous support for salary, start-up and annual running costs will be provided. Researchers will be based at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (CCU), a highly interactive and innovative scientific environment where the Neuroscience Programme is composed of groups applying a range of theoretical and experimental approaches to understand the algorithmic, physiological and circuit mechanisms of behaviour. Researchers routinely collect rich datasets ripe for development and application of new analysis tools or comparison with theory. These datasets include high dimensional neurophysiological and imaging data, to -omics, and various measures of behaviour. About us The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown is situated on the waterfront in Lisbon. English is the official language of the Centre. Lisbon has a sunny Atlantic-Mediterranean climate, vibrant culture, international schools, convenient housing options and is considered one of the world?s safest cities. About the application Applications should include a (1) detailed scientific curriculum vitae, which may include any mentoring, outreach, or policy experiences, (2) a brief summary of past accomplishments (max. two pages), (3) a description of future research plans (max. four pages), (4) three key publications (pdf-files preferred, preprints welcome) along with (5) brief (~200 word each) descriptions of their significance, and (6) contact details for three individuals who can provide recommendation letters upon request. Applications or informal inquiries should be addressed to careers at research.fchampalimaud.org with the subject ?Neuro GL Call 2020 ? YOUR LAST NAME?. The deadline for the applications is February 28, 2021 and review of applications will begin in March, 2021. Non-discrimination and equal access policy The Champalimaud Foundation actively promotes non-discrimination and equal access, so that no candidate may be privileged, favored, prejudiced or deprived of any right or excluded from any duty on the basis of age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, disability, chronic illness, language, nationality, territory of origin, family status (marital, pregnancy and maternity, having or not having dependents), socioeconomic situation, education, religion, political or ideological beliefs, trade union membership, or on any other grounds which are not deemed relevant for the performance of the duties associated with the advertised position. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pomarien at gmail.com Wed Dec 9 07:02:11 2020 From: pomarien at gmail.com (Samir ouchani) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 13:02:11 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [MEDI 2021] Call for Workshops Message-ID: Call for Workshops: 10th International Conference on Model and Data Engineering (MEDI 2021) 21 - 23 June 2021, Tallinn, Estonia https://cs.ttu.ee/events/medi2021/ The MEDI Main Conference: ----------------------- The Tenth International Conference on Model & Data Engineering (MEDI) will be held from 21 to 23 June 2021 in Tallinn, Estonia. Its main objective is to provide a forum for the dissemination of research accomplishments and to promote the interaction and collaboration between the models and data research communities. MEDI 2021 provides an international platform for the presentation of research on models and data theory, development of advanced technologies related to models and data and their advanced applications. This international scientific event, initiated by researchers from Euro-Mediterranean countries, also aims at promoting the creation of north-south scientific networks, projects and faculty/student exchanges. The conference is accompanied by satellite events, including demonstration papers and workshops. Workshops --------- Typically, workshops focus on multiple topics related to model and data engineering. For this edition, we would also like to encourage workshops focusing on practical applications of research in business/industry and on joint projects run by industry and research entities. The list of workshop topics is not limited to the aforementioned and we encourage representatives of research and business to submit workshop proposals promoting their achievements. Workshop Proposal Submission Procedure -------------------------------------- Workshop proposals should be emailed to the workshop chairs: ? George Chernishev, Saint-Petersburg University, Russia: g.chernyshev at spbu.ru ? Samir Ouchani, Lineact CESI Engineering School, France: souchani at cesi.fr ? Antonio Corral, University of Almeria, Spain: acorral at ual.es ? J?ri Vain, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia: juri.vain at taltech.ee The proposal should include: ? Workshop title ? Estimated length (one day or half day) ? Names, affiliations, and e-mails of PC chairs ? Short bios of the workshop PC chairs, including previous experience in organizing workshops or conferences (if applicable) ? A (tentative) list of PC (if possible) ? The main goals of the workshop ? The list of workshop topics o Preliminary CFP o How information about the workshop will be disseminated and how papers will be solicited The organizers of accepted workshops are expected to organize the workshop's program committee, disseminate the workshop call for papers, solicit submissions, conduct the reviewing process, and prepare the final workshop program. The official language of workshops is English. Organizational Support ---------------------- Workshops will benefit from the MEDI 2021 organizational infrastructure and receive support w.r.t. registration, badges, lunches, coffee breaks, and publication of the workshop proceedings. Publication ----------- Workshop papers will be published by Springer in "Communications in Computer and Information Science". Best papers from all accepted workshops will be selected for a special issue. Important Dates --------------- ? Submission of workshop proposals: March 30, 2021 ? Workshop acceptance/rejection notification: April 9, 2021 ? Camera-ready: June 9, 2021 ? Workshops: June 21-22, 2021 A detailed workshop timeline, i.e., deadlines for submissions, reviews, camera-ready due, are proposed by the workshop PC chairs, in agreement with the MEDI 2021 workshop chairs. MEDI 2021 workshop chairs George Chernishev, Samir Ouchani, Corral Antonio, and J?ri Vain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From augenstein at di.ku.dk Wed Dec 9 05:19:15 2020 From: augenstein at di.ku.dk (Isabelle Augenstein) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 10:19:15 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 2 PhD fellowships on Explainable NLP at University of Copenhagen Message-ID: The Machine Learning Section at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science at the University of Copenhagen is offering two PhD scholarships in Natural Language Processing with a start date of 1 September 2021. The application deadline is 31 January 2021. The Machine Learning Section provides a strong, international and diverse environment for research within Theoretical and Applied Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Understanding, Information Retrieval, and Medical Image Analysis. It is housed within the main Science Campus, which is centrally located in Copenhagen. For details, see https://di.ku.dk/english/research/machine-learning/. The successful candidates will join Isabelle Augenstein?s Natural Language Understanding research group (www.copenlu.com/). The Natural Language Processing research environment at the University of Copenhagen is internationally leading, as e.g. evidenced by it being ranked 2nd in Europe according to CSRankings. The PhD fellowships are offered in the context of a DFF Sapere Aude research leader fellowship on ?Learning to Explain Attitudes on Social Media (EXPANSE)?. Sapere Aude is a program by the Independent Research Fund Denmark to support the most talented younger researchers in Denmark with funding for blue-skies research to build up or expand their research groups. More information about the project can also be found at: https://dff.dk/en/grants/research-leaders-2020/researchleader-14 The principal supervisor is Associate Professor Isabelle Augenstein, Department of Computer Science, e-mail: augenstein at di.ku.dk. Applicants should hold a MSc degree or equivalent in Computer Science or a related field, and have good written and oral English skills. The assessment of your qualifications will also be made based on previous scientific publications (if any) and relevant work experience. Applications can be submitted here: https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/?show=153150 ??? Isabelle Augenstein, PhD Associate Professor Department of Computer Science University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 5, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark www: http://isabelleaugenstein.github.io/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From boris.gutkin at ens.fr Wed Dec 9 06:24:42 2020 From: boris.gutkin at ens.fr (boris gutkin) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 12:24:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded doctoral position at Ecole Normale Superieure and CentraleSupelec Paris in AI/Cognitive Computational Neuroscience/Quantitative Finance from fall 2021 Message-ID: Fully funded doctoral position in multi-agent modelling of financial markets and cognitive computational neuroscience. Laboratory for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the Ecole Normale Superieure Paris and the Chair for Quantitative Finance at CentraleSupelec are looking for exceptional candidates to work on a doctorate as a part of a collaborative project spanning development of multi-agent models of stock markets (e.g. see Lussange et al 2020, Bavard et al 2018, da Gamma Battista 2017) and the effects of human cognitive traits and bounded rationality on the market dynamics. The candidate will be physically based at ENS. The student will be advised by Damien Challet (Chair for Quantative Finance, CentraleSupelec) and Boris Gutkin (Mathematics of Neural Circuits Team, LNC2, ENS) and collaborate closely with Stefano Palminteri (Human Reinforcement Learning Team, LNC2, ENS). The student will have an opportunity to be involved in all aspects of the project, from computational modelling to behavioral experiments to data mining. Industrial applications of the project outcomes can also be explored as well as a potential collaboration with Capital Fund Management, Paris. More information can be found at: https://psl.eu/recherche/grands-projets-de-recherche/projets-europeens/programme-doctoral-ai4thesciences https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/580403 Start expected in fall 2021. Elibigibility: Master?s degree or equivalent in a quantitative discipline. There is no nationality or age criteria, but applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in France for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the deadline of the call Interested candidates should contact boris.gutkin at ens.fr before January 30 to discuss their application to the program. ------------------- Bavard S, *Lebreton M, Khamassi M, Coricelli G, Palminteri S. Reference-point centering and range-adaptation enhance human reinforcement learning at the cost of irrational preferences . Nature Communications (2018). da Gama Batista, Joao, Domenico Massaro, Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, Damien Challet, and Cars Hommes. "Do investors trade too much? A laboratory experiment." Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 140 (2017): 18-34. Lussange, J., Lazarevich, I., Bourgeois-Gironde, S., Palminteri, S., Gutkin, B. (2020) Modelling Stock Markets by Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning. Comput Econ. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-020-10038-w -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: clip_image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available URL: From marinella.petrocchi at iit.cnr.it Wed Dec 9 08:25:20 2020 From: marinella.petrocchi at iit.cnr.it (Marinella Petrocchi) Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2020 14:25:20 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 3rd CfP: ACM SACMAT 2021 - Symposium of Access Control Models and Technologies Message-ID: <7c2d0c873285b1a00a5a98124ad953a0@iit.cnr.it> Apologies for cross-posting ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies -- SACMAT 2021 June 16-18, 2021, Barcelona, Spain http://sacmat.dista.uninsubria.it/2021/about.php ---------------------------------------------------------- Important dates ---------------------------------------------------------- * Paper submission: February 15, 2021 (11:59 pm AOE) * Rebuttal: March 30 - April 2nd, 2021 * Notifications: April 15th, 2021 * Systems demo and Poster submissions: April 19th, 2021 * Systems demo and Poster notifications: April 27th, 2021 * Panel Proposal: TBD * Camera ready: May 4th, 2021 * Conference date: June 16 ? June 18, 2021 * Call for Research Papers Papers offering novel research contributions are solicited for submission. Accepted papers will be presented at the symposium and published by the ACM in the symposium proceedings. In addition to the regular research track, this year SACMAT will again host the special track -- "Blue Sky/Vision Track". Researchers are invited to submit papers describing promising new ideas and challenges of interest to the community as well as access control needs emerging from other fields. We are particularly looking for potentially disruptive and new ideas which can shape the research agenda for the next 10 years. We also encourage submissions to the newly introduced ?Work-in-progress Track? to present ideas that may have not been completely developed and experimentally evaluated. Topics of Interest Submissions to the regular track covering any relevant area of access control and computer security are welcomed. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Systems: * Operating systems * Cloud systems and their security * Distributed systems * Fog and Edge-computing systems * Cyber-physical and Embedded systems * Mobile systems * Autonomous systems (e.g., UAV security, autonomous vehicles, ) * IoT systems (e.g., home-automation systems) * WWW Network: * Network systems (e.g., Software-defined network, Network function virtualization) * Corporate and Military-grade Networks * Wireless and Cellular Networks * Opportunistic Network (e.g., delay-tolerant network, P2P) * Overlay Network * Satellite Network Privacy and Privacy-enhancing Technologies: * Mixers and Mixnets * Anonymous protocols (e.g., Tor) * Online social networks (OSN) * Anonymous communication and censorship resistance * Access control and identity management with privacy * Cryptographic tools for privacy * Data protection technologies * Attacks on Privacy and their defenses Authentication: * Password-based Authentication * Biometric-based Authentication * Location-based Authentication * Identity management * Usable authentication Mechanisms: * Blockchain Technologies * AI/ML Technologies * Cryptographic Technologies * Programming-language based Technologies * Hardware-security Technologies (e.g., Intel SGX, ARM TrustZone) * Economic models and game theory * Trust Management * Usable mechanisms Data Security: * Big data * Databases and data management * Data leakage prevention * Data protection on untrusted infrastructure Policies and Models: * Novel policy language design * New Access Control Models * Extension of policy languages * Extension of Models * Analysis of policy languages * Analysis of Models * Policy engineering and policy mining * Verification of policy languages * Efficient enforcement of policies * Usable access control policy * Regular Track Paper Submission and Format Papers must be written in English. Authors are required to use the ACM format for papers, using the two-column SIG Proceedings Template (the sigconf template for LaTex) available in the following link: https://www.acm.org/publications/authors/submissions The length of the paper in the proceedings format must not exceed twelve US letter pages formatted for 8.5" x 11" paper and be no more than 5MB in size. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that their submission will print easily on simple default configurations. The submission must be anonymous, so information that might identify the authors - including author names, affiliations, acknowledgements, or obvious self-citations - must be excluded. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that their anonymity is preserved when citing their own work. Submissions should be made to the EasyChair conference management system by the paper submission deadline of February 15, 2021 11:59 pm AOE: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sacmat21 All submissions must contain a significant original contribution. That is, submitted papers must not substantially overlap papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal, conference, or workshop. In particular, simultaneous submission of the same work is not allowed. Wherever appropriate, relevant related work, including that of the authors, must be cited. Submissions that are not accepted as full papers may be invited to appear as short papers. At least one author from each accepted paper much register for the conference prior to the camera-ready deadline. * Blue Sky Track Paper Submission and Format All submissions to this track should be in the same format as for the regular track, but the length must not exceed ten US letter pages, and the submission are not required to be anonymized (optional). Submissions to this track should be submitted to the EasyChair conference management system by the same deadline as for the regular track. * Work-in-progress Track Paper Submission and Format Authors are invited to submit papers in the newly introduced work-in-progress track. This track is introduced for (junior) authors, ideally Ph.D. and Masters students, to obtain early, constructive feedback on their work. Submissions in this track should follow the same format as for the regular track papers while limiting the total number of pages to six US letter pages. Paper submitted in this track should be anonymized and can be submitted to the EasyChair conference management system by the same deadline as for the regular track. * Call for Lightning Talk Participants are invited to submit proposals for 5-minute lightning talks describing recently published results, work in progress, wild ideas, etc. Lightning talks are a new feature of SACMAT, introduced this year to partially replace the informal sharing of ideas at in-person meetings. Submit at https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=sacmat21 by May 28, 2021 (the early registration deadline). Notification of acceptance on June 2, 2021. * Call for Posters SACMAT 2021 will include a poster session to promote discussion of ongoing projects among researchers in the field of access control and computer security. Posters can cover preliminary or exploratory work with interesting ideas, or research projects in early stages with promising results in all aspects of access control and computer security. Authors interested in displaying a poster must submit a poster abstract in the same format as for the regular track, but the length must not exceed three US letter pages, and the submission should not be anonymized. The title should start with "Poster:". Accepted poster abstracts will be included in the conference proceedings. Submissions for posters should be emailed to the poster chair, Dr. Diego Perino (Diego.perino at telefonica.com), by Apr 19, 2021, 5PM PDT. The subject line should include "SACMAT 2021 Poster:" followed by the poster title. * Call for Demos A demonstration proposal should clearly describe (1) the overall architecture of the system or technology to be demonstrated, and (2) one or more demonstration scenarios that describe how the audience, interacting with the demonstration system or the demonstrator, will gain an understanding of the underlying technology. Submissions will be evaluated based on the motivation of the work behind the use of the system or technology to be demonstrated and its novelty. The subject line should include "SACMAT 2021 Demo:" followed by the demo title. Demonstration proposals should be in the same format as for the regular track, but the length must not exceed four US letter pages, and the submission should not be anonymized. A two-page description of the demonstration will be included in the conference proceedings. Submissions should be emailed to the Demonstrations Chair, Dr. Diego Perino (Diego.perino at telefonica.com), by Apr 19, 2021, 5pm PDT. * Financial Conflict of Interest (COI) Disclosure: In the interests of transparency and to help readers form their own judgements of potential bias, ACM SACMAT requires authors and PC members to declare any competing financial and/or non-financial interests in relation to the work described. * Definition For the purposes of this policy, competing interests are defined as financial and non-financial interests that could directly undermine, or be perceived to undermine the objectivity, integrity and value of a publication, through a potential influence on the judgements and actions of authors with regard to objective data presentation, analysis and interpretation. Financial competing interests include any of the following: Funding: Research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. A specific role for the funding provider in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, should be disclosed. Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication. Personal financial interests: Ownership or contractual interest in stocks or shares of companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration (including reimbursements for attending symposia) from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications (awarded or pending) filed by the authors or their institutions whose value may be affected by publication. For patents and patent applications, disclosure of the following information is requested: patent applicant (whether author or institution), name of inventor(s), application number, status of application, specific aspect of manuscript covered in patent application. It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest become significant, but note that many US universities require faculty members to disclose interests exceeding $10,000 or 5% equity in a company. Any such figure is necessarily arbitrary, so we offer as one possible practical alternative guideline: "Any undeclared competing financial interests that could embarrass you were they to become publicly known after your work was published." We do not consider diversified mutual funds or investment trusts to constitute a competing financial interest. Also, for employees in non-executive or leadership positions, we do not consider financial interest related to stocks or shares in their company to constitute a competing financial interest, as long as they are publishing under their company affiliation. Non-financial competing interests: Non-financial competing interests can take different forms, including personal or professional relations with organizations and individuals. We would encourage authors and PC members to declare any unpaid roles or relationships that might have a bearing on the publication process. Examples of non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to): ? Unpaid membership in a government or non-governmental organization ? Unpaid membership in an advocacy or lobbying organization ? Unpaid advisory position in a commercial organization ? Writing or consulting for an educational company ? Acting as an expert witness * Conference Code of Conduct and Etiquette ACM SACMAT will follow the ACM Policy Against Harassment at ACM Activities. Please familiarize yourself with the ACM Policy Against Harassment and guide to Reporting Unacceptable Behavior. * AUTHORS TAKE NOTE The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of your conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. (For those rare conferences whose proceedings are published in the ACM Digital Library after the conference is over, the official publication date remains the first day of the conference.) -- Marinella Petrocchi Senior Researcher @Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) National Research Council (CNR) Pisa (Italy) Mobile: +39 348 8260773 Skype: m_arinell_a Web: https://marinellapetrocchi.wixsite.com/mysite `Luck is a matter of geography' (Bandabardo') From mschilli at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Wed Dec 9 11:04:42 2020 From: mschilli at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Malte Schilling) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 17:04:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Multiple PhD positions on Trustworthy AI Message-ID: <246C36DB-836A-4D70-8493-4854D392FA80@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> We are currently offering multiple PhD positions within the research training group ?dataninja? (each position will be for three and a half years). The Dataninja research training group is focused on developing novel methods in the area of trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. The goal is to make AI more robust, easier to integrate, more trustworthy, and more secure. In particular, the research program is aiming to provide progress with regard to three dedicated domains: - Consider Artificial Intelligence as a catalyst for data analysis and data mining in science; - establish AI as part of the whole value chain for business and production; - develop trustworthy AI algorithm considering societal challenges. Dataninja connects leading research groups in AI in North Rhine-Westphalia and offers young academics an ideal opportunity to establish their own research in the core areas of AI as part of an excellent network. Positions are open in seven different projects that are hosted at different working groups across North Rhine-Westphalia. We expect (more details see in job offers on our website): - completed university degree and completed or highly advanced scientific studies in Computer Science, Data Science, or related disciplines - strong programming, computational, and analytical skills - a high degree of scientific curiosity, in particular in the area of Artificial Intelligence - good English and communications skills We offer fully funded PhD positions for three and a half years. Expected starting date: Early 2021 More information and current open positions can be found at www.dataninja.nrw , contact: mschilli at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dorien.herremans at gmail.com Wed Dec 9 23:07:16 2020 From: dorien.herremans at gmail.com (Dorien Herremans) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 12:07:16 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Listening test for AI music with emotion Message-ID: Dear community, Singapore University of Technology and Design music generation team invites you to participate in a listening study and evaluate the effectiveness of our approach on performing Lead Sheet Generation from scratch. The study is called "*Generating Lead Sheets with Sentiment*" and should roughly take 20 minutes to complete. MIR Researchers, Music Producers/Composers/Performers, Music Theorists/Musicologists and Music Psychologists are invited to participate! https://forms.gle/9nDqDMig7T9AogiV6 Finally, the study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance from our institution. Thank you very much! -- Dorien Herremans, PhD Assistant Professor, ISTD & DAI Director, SUTD Game Lab http://dorienherremans.com Singapore University of Technology and Design Information Technology and Design Pillar Office 1.502-18 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Wed Dec 9 18:44:05 2020 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos) Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2020 23:44:05 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Special Issue on Foundations of Data Science - Machine Learning Journal Message-ID: <01849594-36aa-cee4-25e8-a6ff594fa254@isep.ipp.pt> Special Issue on Foundations of Data Science - Machine Learning Journal Data science is currently a very active topic with an extensive scope, both in terms of theory and applications. Machine Learning is one of its core foundational pillars. Simultaneously, Data Science applications provide important challenges that can often be addressed only with innovative Machine Learning algorithms and methodologies. This special issue focuses on the latest developments in Machine Learning foundations of data science, as well as on the synergy between data science and machine learning. We welcome new developments in statistics, mathematics and computing that are relevant for data science from a machine learning perspective, including foundations, systems, innovative applications and other research contributions related to the overall design of machine learning and models and algorithms that are relevant for data science. Theoretically well-founded contributions and their real-world applications in laying new foundations for machine learning and data science are welcome. This special issue solicits the attention of a broad research audience. Since it brings together a variety of foundational issues and real-world best practices, it is also relevant to practitioners and engineers interested in machine learning and data science. Accepted papers will be presented at the IEEE DSAA conference in Porto, October 2021. --------------------------------------------------------- Topics of Interest --------------------------------------------------------- We welcome original research papers on all aspects of data science in relation to machine learning, including the following topics: *Machine Learning Foundations of Data Science Auto-ML Fusion of information from disparate sources Feature engineering, Feature embedding and data preprocessing Learning from network data Learning from data with domain knowledge Reinforcement learning Evaluation of Data Science systems Risk analysis Causality, learning causal models Multiple inputs and outputs: multi-instance, multi-label, multi-target Semi-supervised and weakly supervised learning Data streaming and online learning Deep Learning *Emerging Applications Autonomous systems Analysis of Evolving Social Networks Embedding methods for Graph Mining Online Recommender Systems Augmented Reality, Computer Vision Real-Time Anomaly, Failure, image manipulation and fake detection *Human Centric Data Science Privacy preserving, Ethics, Transparency Fairness, Explainability, and Algorithm Bias Accountability and responsibility Reproducibility, replicability and retractability Green Data Sciences *Infrastructures IoT data analytics and Big Data Large-scale processing and distributed/parallel computing; Cloud computing *Data Science for the Next Digital Frontier in: Telecommunications and 5G Retail, Green Transportation Finance, Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies Manufacturing, Predictive Maintenance, Industry 4.0 Energy, Smart Grids, Renewable energies Climate change and sustainable environment Contributions must contain new, unpublished, original and fundamental work relating to the Machine Learning journal?s mission. All submissions will be reviewed using rigorous scientific criteria whereby the novelty of the contribution will be crucial. --------------------------------------------------------- Submission Instructions -------------------------------------------------------- Submit manuscripts to: http://MACH.edmgr.com. Select ?SI: Foundations of Data Science? as the article type. Papers must be prepared in accordance with the Journal guidelines: https://www.springer.com/journal/10994 Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality, original work that has neither appeared in, nor is under consideration by other journals. All papers will be reviewed following standard reviewing procedures for the Journal. --------------------------------------------------------- Key Dates --------------------------------------------------------- Continuous submission/review process Cutoff dates: 30 December and 1st March Last paper submission deadline: 1 March 2021 Paper acceptance: 1 June 2021 Camera-ready: 15 June 2021 --------------------------------------------------------- Guest Editors --------------------------------------------------------- Al?pio Jorge, University of Porto, Jo?o Gama, University of Porto Salvador Garc?a, University of Granada Carlos Ferreira [https://www2.isep.ipp.pt/assinatura_email/EMAIL_ISEP.png] ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hausser at gmail.com Wed Dec 9 20:38:05 2020 From: hausser at gmail.com (Michael Hausser) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 01:38:05 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Optical Biology PhD Program at UCL Message-ID: We invite applications for the *Optical Biology 4-year PhD program* at UCL. The program brings together neuroscientists, cell biologists, physicists, chemists and computational scientists at UCL, with world-leading industrial and academic partners, to deliver an integrated training programme in the most advanced optical methods and analysis tools. The program offers a strong focus on bespoke personal mentorship and career development support for students. Full funding will be available for top-ranked applicants; research expenses will also be provided, as well as funds to attend international courses and meetings. We also provide transition costs at the end of the PhD to help you move to the next stage of your career. The application deadline is *14 December 2020*. For more details and information about applying please visit: https://opticalbiology.org Applications and queries should be sent to: opticalbiologyPhD at ucl.ac.uk ? Michael Hausser Director, Optical Biology PhD Program Facilitator, International Brain Laboratory Professor of Neuroscience, UCL tel +44-20-7679-6756 email m.hausser at ucl.ac.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marinella.petrocchi at iit.cnr.it Thu Dec 10 11:28:18 2020 From: marinella.petrocchi at iit.cnr.it (Marinella Petrocchi) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 17:28:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Abstract due December 22: CfP ROMCIR 202 - Reducing Online Misinformation through Credible Information Retrieval Message-ID: <0005817496000c5785c97cff9e8fdf36@iit.cnr.it> Apologies for Cross Posting --- For those interested, a gentle reminder for the abstract, due on December, 22, 2020. --- What: ROMCIR 2021: Reducing Online Misinformation through Credible Information Retrieval Where: Online Event (originally scheduled in Lucca, Italy) When: March 28-April 1, 2021 Colocated with: ECIR 2021 European Symposium on Information Retrieval https://www.ecir2021.eu/ Conference website: https://romcir2021.disco.unimib.it/ Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=romcir2021 Abstract registration deadline: December 22, 2020 Submission deadline: January 4, 2021 The central topic of the ROMCIR (Reducing Online Misinformation through Credible Information Retrieval) 2021 workshop, as part of the satellite events of the ECIR (European Conference on Information Retrieval) 2021 conference, concerns providing access to users to credible and/or verified information, to mitigate the information disorder phenomenon. By ?information disorder? we mean all forms of communication pollution, from misinformation made out of ignorance, to intentional sharing of false content. In this context, all those approaches that can serve to the assessment of the credibility of information circulating online and in social media, in particular, find their place. This topic is very broad, as it concerns different contents (e.g., Web pages, news, reviews, medical information, online accounts, etc.), different Web and social media platforms (e.g., microblogging platforms, social networking services, social question-answering systems, etc.), and different purposes (e.g., identifying false information, accessing information based on its credibility, retrieving credible information, etc.). The workshop solicits the sending of two types of contributions relevant to the workshop and suitable to generate discussion: - Original, unpublished contributions (pre-prints submitted to ArXiv are eligible) that will be included in an open-access post-proceedings volume of CEUR Workshop Proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org/), indexed by both Scopus and DBLP. - Already published or preliminary work that will not be included in the post-proceedings volume. All submissions will be undergo double-blind peer review by the programme committee. Submissions are to be done electronically through the EasyChair at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=romcir2021 Instructions: Submissions must be at least: 10 pages long (regular papers) between 5 and 9 pages long (short papers) Co-Chairs: Fabio Saracco, IMT School For Advanced Studies, Lucca, Italy Marco Viviani, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy -- Marinella Petrocchi Senior Researcher @Institute of Informatics and Telematics (IIT) National Research Council (CNR) Pisa (Italy) Mobile: +39 348 8260773 Skype: m_arinell_a Web: https://marinellapetrocchi.wixsite.com/mysite `Luck is a matter of geography' (Bandabardo') From jose at rubic.rutgers.edu Thu Dec 10 11:49:21 2020 From: jose at rubic.rutgers.edu (Stephen =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9?= Hanson) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:49:21 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE GRADUATE TRAINING RUTGERS-RUBIC Message-ID: <8757ecfa23bac5fa138b31be5756c4483798d546.camel@rubic.rutgers.edu> Please see attached Recruitment Flyer and sjh/nndl Recruiting Graduate Students (RA stipend, tuition waiver included) to Brain Imaging Computational neuroscience research training. attachment: selected Bib, sjh and neural networks/deep learning -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: flyer2021.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 94551 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: NN87-02.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 86233 bytes Desc: not available URL: From perusquia at ieee.org Fri Dec 11 01:53:52 2020 From: perusquia at ieee.org (Monica Perusquia Hernandez) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 15:53:52 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder: Call for Special Sessions (ACII21) Message-ID: ======================================================= Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) 2021 28 Sep ? 1 Oct 2021, Nara, Japan http://www.acii-conf.net/2021/ ======================================================= The organising committee of the 2021 Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (ACII) is now inviting for special session proposals. Interested parties will need to provide sufficient evidence in support of their proposed special session topic explaining why it deserves distinct focus, how it relates to the theme of the conference ?Ethical Affective Computing? (technologies and applications including but not limited to mental health monitoring/diagnosis, lie detection and social/assistive robots which consider the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference). It should demonstrate that there is sufficient interest to attract papers on this topic. Once accepted, the organizers of the special session will be expected to attract sufficient papers to make up one session, 1hr 40min, at the conference even after a rigorous peer review of submissions. Note, if a special session fails to receive an adequate number of accepted papers, the special sessions will be canceled and the accepted papers will be included in regular sessions. Also, at least one of the special session organizers will be expected to attend the conference. **Submission format** Proposals must be submitted as a single PDF via email to hongying.meng at brunel.ac.uk AND youngjun.cho at ucl.ac.uk Your proposal should include the following items: ? Title of the session ? Rationale of the need for the Special Session at ACII 2021. The rationale should highlight the novelty of the topic and how it relates to the theme of the conference: Ethical Affective Computing ? Potential candidates for submission ? Potential structure of session i.e., oral, posters, mix of oral and poster, or other structure relevant for the special session ? Short biography of the organizers **Review Process of Special Session Submissions** Papers will be treated as regular papers from both the perspective of the review process and of the proceedings (e.g., length, timeline). The special session will have its own keyword and session organizers will be asked to nominate reviewers. **Key Dates for Special Session Proposal (23:59pm GMT)** Submission of Special Session proposals: January 11, 2021 Notification of acceptance for the Special Sessions: January 18, 2021 Paper Submission to the accepted Special Sessions Deadline: April 9, 2021 (regular paper submission deadline) Notification of acceptance for the papers: 25 June, 2021 Camera-ready papers due: 30 July, 2021 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nguyensmai at gmail.com Thu Dec 10 20:06:09 2020 From: nguyensmai at gmail.com (Nguyen, Sao Mai) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 02:06:09 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Fully funded Ph.D. position at Ecole Polytechnique (LIX) and IP Paris In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: We have a fully funded Ph.D. position to work at the intersection of Robotics and Formal Methods on the CoLeSlAw project. Continuously Learning Complex Tasks via Symbolic Analysis (CoLeSlAw) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fully autonomous robots have the potential to impact real-life applications, like assisting elderly people. Autonomous robots must deal with uncertain and continuously changing environments, where it is not possible to program the robot tasks. Instead, the robot must continuously learn new tasks. The robot should further learn how to perform more complex tasks combining simpler ones (i.e., a task hierarchy). This problem is called lifelong learning of hierarchical tasks. The existing learning algorithms for hierarchical tasks are limited in that: a) they require the robot to execute a large number of real actions to sample the continuous state space of observations, hence requiring a lot of time; b) they cannot deal with subspaces without continuous interpolation, as it is the case for a hierarchy of tasks. The goal of the Ph.D. project is to explore the use of set-based and symbolic reasoning for the continuous space to tackle the above challenges (e.g., reducing the number of samples required to learn a hierarchy of tasks and allow for more effective planning of the robot tasks, further handling discontinuities in the task hierarchies). The main outcome of the project will be an algorithmic framework to effectively explore task hierarchies and new reachability algorithms for data-oriented models, such as neural networks. A detailed description of the project is available online: http://www.sergiomover.eu/others/colesaw_description.pdf Candidate -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ideal candidate will have a Master degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Robotics, with a strong background in at least one topic among learning algorithms, robotics, planning, and formal methods (e.g., abstract interpretation, model checking). Deadlines -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Ph.D. will start as soon as possible and not later than June 1st 2021. We encourage the candidates to contact us before February 28th 2021 to receive full consideration. Work environment -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Ph.D. will be carried out in the Laboratoire d?informatique de ?cole Polytechnique (LIX), ?cole Polytechnique, and in the Computer Science and Systems Engineering Laboratory (U2IS), ENSTA Paris, ENSTA Paris. Doctoral School -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ?cole Polytechnique and ENSTA Paris are part of the Institut Polytechnique de Paris (IPP) and the Ph.D. will be at in the IPP doctoral school ( https://www.ip-paris.fr/en/home-en/education/phd-programs/ip-paris-doctoral-school/ ). Contacts and application -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To apply, please send a CV, a motivation letter and a transcript. For more information and to get the information to apply contact Sergio Mover, Cosynus Team, LIX and Ecole Polytechnique, sergio.mover polytechnique.edu Nguyen Sao Mai nguyensmai at gmail.com Researcher in Cognitive Developmental Robotics http://nguyensmai.free.fr | Youtube | Twitter | ResearchGate | Hal -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Thu Dec 10 14:37:27 2020 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Volker Steuber) Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 19:37:27 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Tier II Canada Research Chair in Complex Neural Systems Modelling at the University of Calgary Message-ID: The University of Calgary invites applications from emerging leaders in the area of Complex Neural System Modelling for a Tier II Canada Research Chair position in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary. For more information and to apply: https://science.careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/5915163-canada-research-chair-tier-ii-in-complex-neural-system-modelling-department-of-physics-and-astronomy Volker Steuber Professor of Computational Neuroscience Biocomputation Research Group School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science University of Hertfordshire College Lane, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, UK +44 (0)1707 284350 biocomputation.herts.ac.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From angelo.arleo at inserm.fr Fri Dec 11 04:07:17 2020 From: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr (angelo.arleo at inserm.fr) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 10:07:17 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Fully-funded PhD position at the Vision Institute, Sorbonne University, Paris, France Message-ID: <86900F7A-2723-4913-8B0C-A68AA000A754@inserm.fr> Fully-funded PhD position at the Vision Institute, Sorbonne University, Paris, France Job description Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD position to develop clinical endpoints of daily-life activity for low vision patients in order to assess visual restoration. The therapeutic benefits of vision restoration are usually evaluated in clinical studies using conventional functional measures such as visual field and contrast sensitivity. However, these tests are not sufficient to characterize the impact of a visual pathology on patients? quality of life and autonomy. This project will set forth a set of benchmark measures to evaluate a range of daily life functions (locomotion, spatial orientation, posture, balance, reading) in real conditions. The goal is to identify behavioral biomarkers of the benefit of vision restoration solutions (namely optogenetic therapy and retinal implants) in visually impaired patients. The PhD candidate will work hand-in-hand with clinicians of the National Hospital Center for Ophthalmology of the Quinze-Vingts and with researchers of the Vision Institute as well as the Streetlab company. The project will be supervised by Dr. Colas Authi? and Dr. Angelo Arleo. Requirements and eligibility criteria Applicants should have a quantitative background (engineering, computer science, physics, applied mathematics), and a keen interest in behavioral neuroscience. The ideal candidate should have expertise in virtual reality, motor control, and biometric data analysis. Experience in low-vision or knowledge on machine learning and programming languages (Matlab, C or Python) are a plus. Knowledge of French is important (but not mandatory). Proficiency in oral and written English is required. Successful candidates are expected to work in an interdisciplinary environment with engineers, neuroscientists, and clinicians. Applicants must be in the first four years of their research career and they must not have lived in France more than 12 months during the last 3 years. Benefits The position is funded by the Marie Curie ITN project ENTRAIN-VISION. It corresponds to a full PhD appointment (36 months) with competitive salary and working conditions, monthly mobility allowance, and family allowance. It also provides continuing education, secondments in the private sector, training modules, and transferable skills courses. Working environment The Vision Institute is one of the top international centers for integrated research on vision and eye diseases. It is located at the heart of Paris, on the campus of the National Hospital Center for Ophthalmology of the Quinze-Vingts. It includes multidisciplinary research laboratories, which share state-of-the-art platforms for human and animal experimentation. It also harbors a Clinical Investigation Center, which fosters translational research. The Streetlab provides a panel of platforms (reproducing virtual and real environments) and standardized evaluation solutions to measure autonomy, mobility, and quality of life of visually impaired people. How to apply Applications should be sent to recruitment at entrain-vision.eu by January 11th, 2021, 1PM CET (Paris time). Please see https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/585147 for details about eligibility criteria and application guidelines. For further inquiries, please contact Angelo Arleo (angelo.arleo at inserm.fr ) and Colas Authi? (colas.authie at streetlab-vision.com ). ***************************************************************** Angelo ARLEO FONTAINE, PhD Director of Research CNRS Head of the Aging in Vision and Action Lab, Director of the Chair Silversight, Institute of Vision, CNRS - INSERM - Sorbonne University, 17, rue Moreau F-75012 Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)1 53 46 26 52 Mobile: +33 (0)6 46 84 09 56 Email: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr Website: www.aging-vision-action.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stephan.chalup at newcastle.edu.au Fri Dec 11 05:18:13 2020 From: stephan.chalup at newcastle.edu.au (Stephan Chalup) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 10:18:13 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: [PhD scholarship] Estimating the Topology of Low-Dimensional Data Using Deep Neural Networks Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We have a PhD scholarship available for a student to start in 2021. The scholarship is part of an ARC Discovery Project with title: Estimating the Topology of Low-Dimensional Data Using Deep Neural Networks The PhD project would suit a candidate with a computational, mathematical or similar background. Further details are available at https://www.newcastle.edu.au/study/research/phd-scholarships/phd-scholarships/estimating-the-topology-of-low-dimensional-data-using-deep-neural-networks Please forward to anyone interested or let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Kind regards, Stephan ----------------------------------------------------- Associate Professor Stephan Chalup Deputy Director, Priority Research Centre for Computer-Assisted Research Mathematics and Its Applications (CARMA) Discipline of Computing and Information Technology The University of Newcastle Callaghan NSW 2308, Australia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Donald.Adjeroh at mail.wvu.edu Fri Dec 11 12:17:36 2020 From: Donald.Adjeroh at mail.wvu.edu (Donald Adjeroh) Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2020 17:17:36 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fw: 2020 IEEE BIBM-LncRNA Workshop -- few days away; Fellowships still available In-Reply-To: References: , , , , , , , , Message-ID: Apologies if you receive multiple copies. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The program for the 2020 IEEE BIBM LncRNA Workshop is now available. Please check the workshop webpage at: http://community.wvu.edu/~daadjeroh/workshops/LNCRNA2020/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Highlights: Keynotes from two respected researchers on LncRNAs: * John Rinn, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado * Rory Johnson, University of Bern, Switzerland One Special Invited Speaker : Kaifu Chen, Harvard Medical School One "round-table" panel of experts in the field Presentation of accepted papers Complementary registration for one student author for each accepted paper ! Limited Workshop Fellowships still available !! More details below .... IEEE BIBM 2020 Workshop on Long Non-Coding RNAs: Mechanism, Function, and Computational Analysis (BIBM-LncRNA) to be held in conjunction with the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE BIBM 2020), Dec. 16 - 19, 2020 (to be held online/virtual). BIBM-LncRNA: http://community.wvu.edu/~daadjeroh/workshops/LNCRNA2020/ IEEE BIBM 2020: http://ieeebibm.org/BIBM2020/index.html The recent application of high throughput technologies to transcriptomics has changed our view of gene regulation and function. The discovery of extensive transcription of large RNA transcripts, termed long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), provide an important and new perspective on the centrality of RNA in gene regulation. LncRNAs are involved in various biological and cellular processes, such as genetic imprinting, chromatin remodeling, gene regulation and embryonic development. LncRNAs have been implicated in several chronic diseases, such as cancers, and heart disease, etc. Given the abundance of lncRNAs, tens of thousands still need to be functionally characterized. Various types of genomic data on lncRNAs are currently available, including sequences, secondary/tertiary structures, transcriptome data, and their interactions with related proteins or genes. The key challenge is how to integrate data from myriad sources to determine the functions and the regulatory mechanism of these ubiquitous lncRNAs. Computational studies of lncRNA secondary, tertiary structure, and lncRNA interactions with other molecules are in their infancy, and more work is still needed. Research topics: The potential topics include, but not limited to, the following: ncRNA detection and biomarker discovery CLIP-Seq and RIP-Seq data analysis Prediction of physical binding between lncRNA and DNA, RNA and protein. Understanding the interaction between lncRNA, miRNA and mRNA Function Prediction for lncRNAs Deep learning approaches to lncRNA/RNA binding protein prediction Computational approaches to analyzing lncRNA lncRNA 3D secondary structures lncRNA-protein interactions lncRNA in epigenetic regulation lncRNA associated diseases network lncRNAs in plant genomics lncRNAs in phenotype-genotype problems CRISPR/Cas9 and Genome editing in lncRNAs Workshop Fellowships: Funds are available for limited fellowships to support the participation of students, postdocs, and of researchers from underrepresented minority groups in the workshop. Please apply by Dec. 9, 2020. Important Dates: Dec. 9, 2020: Deadline for application for workshop fellowship. Dec. 16, 2020 (9am - 6pm, Seoul, South Korean Time): LncRNA Workshop (Online/Virtual) (i.e., Dec. 15, 7pm - Dec. 16, 4am, New York Time) Dec 16-19, 2020, (Seoul, South Korean Time): BIBM Conference (Online/Virtual) BIBM-LncRNA Workshop home page: http://community.wvu.edu/~daadjeroh/workshops/LNCRNA2020/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar Sat Dec 12 07:21:39 2020 From: axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar (Axel Soto) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 09:21:39 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Request_for_Proposals_=E2=80=94_Bid_on_?= =?utf-8?q?ACM_IUI_2023_=28deadline_extended=29?= Message-ID: Request for Proposals ? Bid on ACM IUI 2023 (deadline extended) --------------------------------------------------------------- Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) is the premier conference series sponsored by ACM (SIGCHI and SIGAI) and has been held annually since 1993 as the principal international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces. To involve the greater IUI community in conference organization and better plan for the conference, we request proposals for hosting and organizing IUI two years ahead of time. We regularly rotate the conference locations to engage with IUI research communities around the globe. Below shows the location and time of the three most recently scheduled IUI conferences: IUI 2020 Cagliari, Italy March 17-20 IUI 2021 College Station, Texas April 13-17 IUI 2022 Helsinki, Finland March 22-26 Why host IUI? There are several benefits of hosting and organizing an IUI conference. First, conference hosts/organizers have an opportunity to publicize their work, build relationships, and interact with the international IUI community. Second, this is a great opportunity for the organizers/hosts to introduce their students and colleagues to the IUI community and help grow the community as a whole. Third, hosts/organizers can use the opportunity to build local IUI communities, connecting representatives from both academia and industries. Bid Requirements All proposals must be written in English with a readable font not smaller than 12 point and margins not less than one inch on all sides. The proposal should address each aspect outlined below but not exceed 15000 characters (approx. 5-6 pages). Based on the merits of the proposals and factors such as ensuring a diversity of conference locations, the board will choose the top candidates and then a finalist will be chosen and announced at IUI 2021. Please note that the bid requirements have been modified from previous years. Please read the requirements below carefully before writing up your bid. Hosts/Organizers The conference hosts/organizers should have knowledge of the IUI community, such as having attended and published regularly at IUI, and have experience with conference organization. One of the main IUI goals is to bring together people from diverse backgrounds. For that reason, the bid proposal must suggest ONLY the conference general chairs. The IUI steering committee will work with the selected bid proposers on building the conference organizing team. We especially encourage that the key conference organizers consist of people from both industry and academia, representing both AI and HCI since the work presented at IUI is at the intersection of these disciplines. Please include short bios of the proposed conference general chair(s). Location Since IUI is an international forum, we expect that attendees will travel from different parts of the world to the conference location. It is important that the proposed location is conveniently located for all attendees to reach by available means of transportation. Time IUI conferences have been held at various times during late winter through early spring, most typically in March though earlier times will be considered. Your bid should include a proposed time with key dates (e.g., paper submission and notification). The choice of time should also take into account the weather conditions of the proposed location to avoid potential weather-caused travel delays and potential conflicts with other conferences and their submission deadlines. Virtual Attendance and the Impact of COVID-19 We hope that by the time of the 2023 conference that it will be possible to hold a physical conference similar to those held before 2020. Organizers should still prepare for decreased attendance and to offer virtual participation options for those who may not yet be comfortable traveling long distances. Conference Venue Please describe the proposed conference venue, including the following aspects: * Capacity. In recent years, IUI has typically had around 250 attendees, though IUI 2018 had a record high of over 350 participants and IUI 2019 had a similar number. No conference has been held since COVID, however current ACM recommendations are to anticipate a 30-40% decrease in attendance in the near term. IUI has typically taken place over four days, the first of which consists of workshops and tutorials hosted in parallel separate rooms (10-20 people). To encourage interaction among the attendees, during the main conference, it is also desirable to have additional space at the venue to put up IUI posters for the attendees to visit during coffee breaks. * Facilities. The venue should provide basic conference facilities, such as high speed internet access that can support the participants in parallel effectively and LCD projectors. * Location. The venue should be centrally located for attendees to reach quickly by ground transportation and have access to other amenities (e.g., restaurants). * Accessibility. The venue should be accessible to attendees with disabilities. * Reception and poster session dinner. Traditionally, IUI opens with a welcome reception on the night before the 1st day of the conference. The first night of the conference features a dinner reception with the poster and demo session. The location(s) of the receptions are not required to be co-located with the venue, however the location criterion above should still be used to minimize the travel for the attendees. * Social event. Traditionally, IUI has a social event + dinner on the second day of the main conference * Special events. Traditionally, during the conference the ?test of time? paper award is given to the most influential IUI paper, which is accompanied by a plenary talk session for its authors. TiiS papers published in the last year are also integrated into the technical program, there is a ?town hall meeting? where IUI community issues are discussed, and there is IUI steering committee lunch with current and upcoming conference and program chairs. These events need to be considered while planning the conference Accommodation Most attendees will need accommodation during the conference period. One of the responsibilities of the conference hosts/organizers is to locate and reserve a bulk of affordable lodging for attendees. Please describe the proposed accommodation options, including the price range of the hotel rooms and the distance to the main venue. Provisionary Budget Plan The proposal should also include a provisional budget, outlining the cost of major items, including the rental of the conference venue, cost/per person for the reception and banquet, and the estimated conference registration fee. Please consider including meals for participants in the budget, especially if there are limited food options near the conference venue. Important Dates Jan 29, 2021 (Extended): Bids are due. Please submit your bid to steering-chair at iui.acm.org Feb 26, 2021 (Extended): Notifications are sent to all submissions. For further information, please contact: jeff at jeffreynichols.com From jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn Sun Dec 13 05:09:37 2020 From: jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn (=?UTF-8?B?6JKL5Yas5qKF?=) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 18:09:37 +0800 (GMT+08:00) Subject: Connectionists: Call for ICMI 2021 Multimodal Grand Challenges Message-ID: <62258966.1a9b.1765b93bceb.Coremail.jiangdm@nwpu.edu.cn> Dear Colleagues, Please find below the first ICMI 2021 Call for Multimodal Grand Challenges. All the best wishes, Dongmei *************************************** ICMI 2020: Call for Multimodal Grand Challenges http://icmi.acm.org/2021/index.php?id=challenges 18-22 Oct 2021, Montreal, Canada *************************************** We are calling for teams to propose one or more ICMI Multimodal Grand Challenges. The International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) is the premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction, interfaces, and system development. Developing systems that can robustly understand human-human communication or respond to human input requires identifying the best algorithms and their failure modes. In fields such as computer vision, speech recognition, computational (para-) linguistics and physiological signal processing, for example, the availability of datasets and common tasks have led to great progress. We invite the ICMI community to collectively define and tackle the scientific Grand Challenges in our domain for the next 5 years. ICMI Multimodal Grand Challenges aim to inspire new ideas in the ICMI community and create momentum for future collaborative work. Analysis, synthesis, and interactive tasks are all possible. Challenge papers will be indexed in the main proceedings of ICMI. We invite organizers from various fields related to multimodal interaction to propose and run Grand Challenge events. We are looking for exciting and stimulating challenges including but not limited to the following categories: - Dataset-driven challenge: This challenge will provide a dataset that is exemplary of the complexities of current and future multimodal problems, and one or more multimodal tasks whose performance can be objectively measured and compared in rigorous conditions. Participants in the Challenge will evaluate their methods against the challenge data in order to identify areas of strengths and weaknesses. - Use-case challenge: This challenge will provide an interactive problem system (e.g. dialog-based or non-verbal-based) and the associated resources, which can allow people to participate through the integration of specific modules or alternative full systems. Proposers should also establish systematic evaluation procedures. - Health challenge: This challenge will provide a dataset that is exemplary of a health related task, whose analysis, diagnosis, treatment or prevention can be aided by Multimodal Interactions. The challenge should focus on exploring the benefits of multimodal (audio, visual, physiological, etc) solutions for the stated task. - Policy challenge: Legal, ethical, and privacy issues of Multimodal Interaction systems in the age of AI. The challenge could revolve around opinion papers, panels, discussions, etc. Prospective organizers should submit a five-page maximum proposal containing the following information: 1.Title 2.Abstract appropriate for possible Web promotion of the Challenge 3.Distinctive topics to be addressed and specific goals 4.Detailed description of the Challenge and its relevance to multimodal interaction 5.Length (full day or half day) 6.Plan for soliciting participation 7.Description of how submissions (challenge?s submissions and papers) will be evaluated, and a list of proposed reviewers 8.Proposed schedule for releasing datasets (if applicable) and/or systems (if applicable) and receiving submissions 9.Short biography of the organizers (preferably from multiple institutions) 10.Funding source (if any) that supports or could support the challenge organization 11.Draft call for papers; affiliations and email address of the organisers; summary of the Grand Challenge; list of potential Technical Program Committee members and their affiliations, important dates Proposals will be evaluated based on originality, ambition, feasibility, and implementation plan. A Challenge with dataset(s) or system(s) that has had pilot results to ensure its representativity and suitability to the proposed task will be given preference for acceptance; an additional 1 page description must be attached in such case. Continuation of or variants on the 2019 challenges are welcome, though we ask for submissions of this form to highlight the number of participants that attended during the previous year and describe what changes (if any) will be made from the previous year. The ICMI organizers will offer support with basic logistics, which includes rooms and equipment to run the Workshop, coffee breaks can be offered if synchronised with the main conference. Important Dates and Contact Details Proposals due: January 27, 2021 Proposal notification: February 3, 2021 Paper camera-ready: August 17, 2021 Grand challenge date: October 18 or 22, 2021 Proposals should be emailed to both ICMI 2021 Multimodal Grand Challenge Chairs, Jean-Marc Odobez and Dirk Heylen via icmi2021-challenge-chairs at acm.org. Prospective organizers are also encouraged to contact the co-chairs if they have any questions. Proposals are due by January 13, 2021. Notifications will be sent on February 3, 2021. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dongmei Jiang Professor, Head of Dept. Computer Information Engineering, School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi'an China. Tel: +86-29-88431532 Email: jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From suashdeb at gmail.com Fri Dec 11 23:26:40 2020 From: suashdeb at gmail.com (Suash Deb) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 09:56:40 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Welcome to ISCMI21 (Cairo) Message-ID: Dear esteemed colleagues, Trust all of you are safe & fine and are doing well. Welcome to the *2021 ISCMI (technically sponsored by IEEE Africa Council & Egypt Chapter of IEEE CIS), the annual flagship event of IICCI,* to be held in *Cairo, Egypt *during *Nov. 21-22, 2021*. Since the year 2017, this conference is being organized in the *memory of life & work of Prof. Lotfi Zadeh*. We do hope that ISCMI21 can be held in traditional physical mode next year. For more info, pls. visit http://iscmi.us/index.html The leaflet of the same is also attached. I solicit your support in sharing the same with your peers & students & motivate them to submit manuscripts for possible presentation at the conference. Hope to meet many of you in Cairo next year. With my advanced greetings for a very happy holiday season & a wonderful 2021 for all of you and your near and dear ones. Thanks & rgds, Suash General Chair, ISCMI21 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: ISCMI2021-Leaflet.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 622045 bytes Desc: not available URL: From angelo.arleo at inserm.fr Sat Dec 12 12:29:58 2020 From: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr (angelo.arleo at inserm.fr) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 18:29:58 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Second fully-funded PhD position at the Vision Institute, Sorbonne University, Paris, France Message-ID: Second fully-funded PhD position at the Vision Institute, Sorbonne University, Paris, France Job description Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD position to develop data-analytic and computational modeling tools aiming at the early automated detection of biomarkers and risk assessment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other eye diseases. AMD was ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a priority eye disease, and it is the main cause of blindness in western countries. Despite the prevalence, rate of growth, and impact of AMD, its diagnosis is made too late: 69% AMD patients ignore their condition and 78% have irreversible loss when first diagnosed. The main objective of this doctoral project is to cross-link cellular changes in the deep retina with visual symptoms of AMD patients. The project will combine state-of-the-art live high-resolution retinal imaging using adaptive optics, electroretinogram recordings, and fine metrics of AMD-related functional visual losses in order to discover potential biomarkers of AMD onset and/or stage evolution. This project relies on a tight collaboration between visual neuroscientists and clinical ophthalmologists and it builds on the existing integration of basic vision science expertise at the Vision Institute and clinical research expertise in the Clinical Investigation Center of the Quinze-Vingt National Hospital. Requirements and eligibility criteria Applicants should have a quantitative background (engineering, computer science, physics, applied mathematics), a keen interest in vision and be open to the possibility of conducting experiments with human patients. The ideal candidate is expected to have a strong expertise in computational models of vision, image analysis and programming (Matlab, C or Python). Previous experience in experimental data analysis and/or machine learning is a plus. Knowledge of French is desired (but not mandatory). Proficiency in oral and written English is required. Successful candidates are expected to work in an interdisciplinary environment with engineers, neuroscientists, and clinicians. Benefits The position corresponds to a full PhD appointment (36 months) with competitive salary and working conditions. It is funded by IHU FOReSight and AVIESAN-UNADEV. Working environment The Vision Institute is one of the top international centers for integrated research on vision and eye diseases. It is located at the heart of Paris, on the campus of the National Hospital Center for Ophthalmology of the Quinze-Vingts. It includes multidisciplinary research laboratories, which share state-of-the-art platforms for human and animal experimentation. It also harbors a Clinical Investigation Center, which fosters translational research. How to apply Applications should be sent to Angelo Arleo (angelo.arleo at inserm.fr ) and Denis Sheynikhovich (denis.sheynikhovich at sorbonne-universite.fr ). Angelo ARLEO FONTAINE, PhD Director of Research CNRS Head of the Aging in Vision and Action Lab, Director of the Chair Silversight, Institute of Vision, CNRS - INSERM - Sorbonne University, 17, rue Moreau F-75012 Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)1 53 46 26 52 Mobile: +33 (0)6 46 84 09 56 Email: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr Website: www.aging-vision-action.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bruna at cims.nyu.edu Sat Dec 12 22:06:48 2020 From: bruna at cims.nyu.edu (Joan Bruna Estrach) Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 22:06:48 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Flatiron Institute (Simons Foundation) Research Scientist and Postdoctoral Postions on Mathematics of ML Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I would like to bring to your attention two open positions at the Flatiron Institute (part of the Simons Foundation) in the Center for Computational Mathematics, focusing on broad areas at the interface of Machine Learning, Computational Science, Statistics and Applied Mathematics. Deadline for applications is January 1st. Flatiron Research Fellow, Machine Learning and Computational Statistics, CCM https://simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/ccmcareers/job/162-Fifth-Avenue/Flatiron-Research-Fellow--Machine-Learning-and-Computational-Statistics--CCM_R0000701 Research Scientist / Data Scientist, Open Rank, CCM https://simonsfoundation.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/ccmcareers/job/162-Fifth-Avenue/Research-Scientist---Data-Scientist--Open-Rank--CCM_R0000702-2 All the best, Joan Bruna Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Data Science and Mathematics (affiliated) Courant Institute of Mathematical Science, Center for Data Science, New York University Visiting Scholar, Flatiron Institute -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn Sun Dec 13 05:11:39 2020 From: jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn (=?UTF-8?B?6JKL5Yas5qKF?=) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 18:11:39 +0800 (GMT+08:00) Subject: Connectionists: Calls for ICMI 2021 Workshops Message-ID: *********************************************************************************** ICMI 2021: Call for Workshops https://icmi.acm.org/2021/index.php?id=CfW *********************************************************************************** The International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2021) will be held in in Montreal, Canada, October 18-22nd, 2021. ICMI is the premier international conference for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction analysis, interface design, and system development. ICMI has developed a tradition of hosting workshops in conjunction with the main conference to foster discourse on new research, technologies, social science models and applications. Examples of recent workshops include: - Media Analytics for Societal Trends - Neuromanagement and Intelligent Computing - Multi-sensorial Approaches to Human-Food Interaction - Multimodal e-Coaches - Group Interaction Frontiers in Technology - Modeling Cognitive Processes from Multimodal Data - Human-Habitat for Health - Multimodal Analyses enabling Artificial Agents in Human-Machine Interaction - Investigating Social Interactions with Artificial Agents - Child Computer Interaction - Insights on Group & Team Dynamics - Multimodal Interaction for Education We are seeking workshop proposals on emerging research areas related to the main conference topics, and those that focus on multi-disciplinary research. We would also strongly encourage workshops that will include a diverse set of keynote speakers (factors to consider include: gender, ethnic background, institutions, years of experience, geography, etc.). The content of accepted workshops are under the control of the workshop organizers. Workshops may be of a half-day or one day in duration. Workshop organizers will be expected to manage the workshop content, solicit submissions, be present to moderate the discussion and panels, invite experts in the domain, conduct the reviewing process, and maintain a website for the workshop. Workshop papers will be indexed by ACM Digital Library in an adjunct proceedings, and a short workshop summary by the organizers will be published in the main conference proceedings. Submission Prospective workshop organizers are invited to submit proposals in PDF format (Max. 3 pages). Please email proposals to the workshop chairs: Akane Sano and Emily Mower Provost (icmi2021-workshop-chairs at acm.org) The proposal should include the following: - Workshop title - List of organizers including affiliation, email address, and short biographies - Workshop motivation, expected outcomes and impact - Tentative list of keynote speakers - Workshop format (by invitation only, call for papers, etc.), anticipated number of talks/posters, workshop duration (half-day or full-day) including tentative program - Planned advertisement means, website hosting, and estimated participation - Paper review procedure (single/double-blind, internal/external, solicited/invited-only, pool of reviewers, etc.) - Paper submission and acceptance deadlines - Special space and equipment requests, if any Important Dates: Workshop proposal submission: Monday, February 8, 2021 Notification of acceptance: Monday, February 22, 2021 Workshop papers due: End of July, 2021 (suggested) Workshop Date: October 18-22, 2021 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dongmei Jiang Professor, Head of Dept. Computer Information Engineering, School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University Xi'an China. Tel: +86-29-88431532 Email: jiangdm at nwpu.edu.cn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cognitivium at sciencebeam.com Mon Dec 14 02:09:28 2020 From: cognitivium at sciencebeam.com (Mary) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 10:39:28 +0330 Subject: Connectionists: Online Course - EEG/ERPs Recording and Analyses Message-ID: <202012140709.0BE79V17063396@scs-mx-02.andrew.cmu.edu> Dear Researchers, Science Beam institute would like to take the opportunity to invite you for ?EEG/ERPs Recording and Analyses, A multifaceted approach to EEG signals? Online Course to be held on January-February 2021. This is going to be a 6-session course which is coming after the ?EEG/ERPs Recording and Analyses? WEBINAR lectured by Dr. Rapha?l Fargier on December 1st, 2020. You can watch the introductory recorded webinar using the link below: https://sciencebeam.com/raphael-fargier-webinar/ Due to many positive feedbacks that we received from the registrants of the webinar, we have planned to organize a complete and detailed course with Dr. Rapha?l Fargier in order to cover all the details and methods included in EEG/ERP recording and analyses as a multifaceted approach to EEG signals. This is our honor to be the organizer of such a valuable course with one of the best instructors in the field. Dr. Rapha?l Fargier, PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, Universit? Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France, is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience with 10 years of experience and his research is focused on semantic cognition and on the neurobiology of language. Click here to learn more about his background and researches. EEG/ERPs Recording and Analyses course is designed for researchers, scientists and students who are new to this topic and those who already have some experience with EEG-ERPs and would like to improve their existing knowledge. Registration includes workshop materials and a certificate of attendance upon completion of the course. During this course you will learn: ? Neural signals from theory to practice ? Basics of EEG/ERP experimental designs in cognitive neuroscience and recordings ? EEG pre-processing ? Event-related potentials ? Microstates/Spatio-temporal dynamics of stable electrophysiological patterns ? Brain oscillatory dynamics ? Case studies: Theoretical and experimental issues in electrophysiology of language Dr. Raphael Fargier?s approach: ? Skill-based pedagogy ? Neural signals from theory to practice ? Tutorials on EEG signal processing ? Interactive mentoring for research on cognitive/language electrophysiology For more information and registration please visit the link below: https://sciencebeam.com/eeg-erps-recording-and-analyses/ You don?t want to miss this opportunity If you need more information please don?t hesitate to contact us: workshop at sciencebeam.com WhatsAppNo: 008613380781282 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Sun Dec 13 22:35:39 2020 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (smart at neuralcorrelate.com) Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2020 22:35:39 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Congratulations to the Winners of the 2020 Best Illusion of the Year Contest! In-Reply-To: <053301d6d1c8$62afef90$280fceb0$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <053301d6d1c8$62afef90$280fceb0$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <05c401d6d1ca$347fd480$9d7f7d80$@neuralcorrelate.com> Voters around the globe chose the Best Illusions of the Year from the Top 10 Finalists competing in the 16th edition of Best Illusion of the Year Contest (hosted by the Neural Correlate Society and supported by the Museum of Mind). The TOP 3 winning illusions were revealed on Friday, December 11th. First Prize and a $3,000 award went to ?3D Schr?der Staircase,? by Kokichi Sugihara, Japan. Second Prize and a $2,000 award went to ?The Real Thing??? by Matt Pritchard, United Kingdom. Third Prize and a $1,000 award went to ?Impossible grid typography,? by Dani?l Maarleveld, The Netherlands. If you enjoyed the spectacular illusions that competed in 2020, please make an end-of-year tax-deductible donation to the Best Illusion of the year Contest. We rely on your generous help to continue to share the wonders of illusion with people of all ages and backgrounds, all over the world. On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse ---------------------------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Author, Champions of Illusion and Sleights of Mind Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience 2014 Society for Neuroscience?s Science Educator Award 2014 Empire Innovator Scholar State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Sciences University 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Mon Dec 14 05:41:48 2020 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 11:41:48 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [meetings] Call for paper for IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning ICDL 2021 (11th edition of the ICDL-EPIROB Conference) Message-ID: <005901d6d205$ba38ea90$2eaabfb0$@gmail.com> CALL FOR PAPERS IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) 2021 (11th ICDL-EPIROB) Conference dates: August 23rd-26th, 2021 Web page: https://icdl-2021.org/ An IEEE Computational Society-sponsored conference Location: Beijing, China (Due to the influence of COVID-19, IEEE ICDL 2021 may be held virtually.) Paper Submission Deadline: February 15th, 2021 Tutorial and Workshops Submission Deadline: February 1st, 2021 Journal Track Submission Deadline: April 28th, 2021 ==== Overview ==== The IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), previously referred to as ICDL-EpiRob, is the premier gathering of professionals dedicated to the advancement of cognitive and developmental learning. As such, ICDL is a unique conference gathering researchers from computer science, robotics, psychology and developmental science. We invite submissions for the conference in 2021 to explore, extend, and consolidate the interdisciplinary boundaries of this exciting research field, in the form of full papers, workshop and tutorials and of submissions to the journal track. We also invite your participation in the REAL 2021 competition. ==== Topics ==== The primary list of topics of interest include (but are not limited to): . General principles of development and learning; . Development of skills in biological systems and robots; . Nature VS nurture, critical periods and developmental stages; . Models on active learning; . Architectures for cognitive development and life-long learning; . Emergence of body knowledge and affordance perception; . Analysis and modelling of human motion and state; . Models for prediction, planning and problem solving; . Models of human-human and human-robot interaction; . Emergence of verbal and non-verbal communication skills; . Epistemological foundations and philosophical issues; . Models of child development from experimental psychology. ==== Full Papers ==== Papers of at most 6 pages in IEEE double column format will undergo peer-review, and accepted and presented submissions will be included in the conference proceedings published by IEEE Xplore. The authors of the best conference papers will be invited to extend their contributions for a Special Issue of IEEE Transaction on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (IEEE TCDS). The detailed instructions for the submission can be found here: https://icdl-2021.org/submission/ ==== Workshops and Tutorials === We invite experts in different areas to organize either a tutorial or a workshop to be held on the first day of the conference. The submission should be of maximum two pages including title, list of speakers, concept and target audience. It should include also a description of the structure of the event, the indication of the duration (half day or full day) and it should state whether the event is open to paper/poster submissions. If possible, a link to the event website should be provided. The detailed instructions for the submission can be found here: https://icdl-2021.org/submission/#tutorial ==== Journal Track and Competition ==== We highly recommend the submission in Journal Track to discuss important results related to cognitive and developmental systems recently published as journal articles, but not been previously presented as conference papers. All submissions must include in a single PDF the details of the original journal paper and a cover letter to explain why the authors believe that the paper is central for ICDL. The detailed instructions for the submission can be found here: https://icdl-2021.org/submission/#journal We also strongly expect your participation in the REAL 2021 competition. The REAL competition addresses open-ended learning with a focus on "Robot open-Ended Autonomous Learning" (REAL)", that is, on systems that: (a) acquire sensorimotor competence that allows them to interact with objects and physical environments; (b) learn in a fully autonomous way, i.e. with no human intervention. Find all the details here: https://icdl-2021.org/competition/ ==== Important Dates ==== Conference dates: August 23rd-26th, 2021 Paper Submission deadline: February 15th, 2021 Paper Author notification: April 15th, 2021 Camera ready due: May 15th, 2021 Tutorial and Workshops Submission Deadline: February 1st, 2021 Tutorial and Workshops Author notification: April 15th, 2021 Journal Track Submission Deadline: April 28th, 2021 Journal Track Notification: May 20th, 2021 ================= Best regards, Program Chairs Alessandra Sciutti (Italian Institute of Technology, Italy) Jing Chen (Peking University, China) Publication Chair Weiwei Wan (Osaka University, Japan) General Chairs Dingsheng Luo (Peking University, China) Angelo Cangelosi (University of Manchester, UK) ---------------------------------------- Alessandra Sciutti (PhD) Researcher Tenure Track - P.I. CONTACT Unit Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - Genova, Italy tel: +39 010 2897 327 ************* Currently editing a Research Topic on Affective Shared Perception Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience and Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Interested in submitting? https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/16086/affective-shared-perceptio n ************* website: https://www.iit.it/people/alessandra-sciutti ERC website: https://www.whisperproject.eu/ TEDx talk (Italian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=e0eMayWU_lc twitter: @alefreedot -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From poirazi at imbb.forth.gr Mon Dec 14 08:46:47 2020 From: poirazi at imbb.forth.gr (Yiota Poirazi) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 15:46:47 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in dendritic computations (Poirazi lab) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The Poirazi lab at IMBB-FORTH, in Crete, Greece is recruiting *two PhD students *as part of the Marie Sk?odowska Curie Innovative Training Network ?SmartNets ? The objective of SmartNets is to provide high-level training into the functioning of biological networks to a new generation of early stage researchers, to provide them with the skills necessary for thriving careers in a burgeoning area that underpins innovative technological development across a range of diverse disciplines. This goal will be achieved by a unique combination of ?hands-on? research training, non-academic placements (industrial and non-profit organisations) and courses and workshops on both scientific and complementary -so-called ?soft?- skills facilitated by the academic-non-academic composition of the consortium. SmartNets brings together neuroscientists, behavioural and cognitive scientists, physicists, computer scientists, and non-profit stakeholders in order to train the next generation of data scientists that will: 1) develop a fundamental understanding of the relationship between structure and function in biological networks and 2) translate this knowledge into novel technological solutions. ESRs will develop a unique interdisciplinary set of skills that will make them capable of analyzing networks at many levels and for many systems. *Mobility Rule*: PhD students must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the host for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date. Compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays, and time spent as part of a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention, are not taken into account. For more information about the positions and how to apply click below: Project 1: Role of dendritic nonlinearities in V1 network properties after visual learning Project 2: Role of dendritic nonlinearities in hippocampal network properties after contextual and spatial learning - Vacancy terms: Full Time, Fixed Term starting from 1st of April 2021 for 1 year (renewable for 2 more years). - Living allowance: 34,800 ? per annum (approximately 22,800 ? Net). Depending on family status, successful candidates will also have mobility (600 ? per month) and/or family (250 ? per month) allowance, as provided by MSCA grants. - Deadline: midnight, 28th of February 2021. Shortlisted applicants will be invited for an (online) interview. For questions please contact Panayiota Poirazi, poirazi at imbb.forth.gr -- Panayiota Poirazi, Ph.D. Research Director Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) Vassilika Vouton, P.O.Box 1385, GR 70013, Heraklion, Crete GREECE Tel: +30 2810 391139 Fax: +30 2810 391101 ?mail: poirazi at imbb.forth.gr Lab site: www.dendrites.gr -- Panayiota Poirazi, Ph.D. Research Director Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) Vassilika Vouton, P.O.Box 1385, GR 70013, Heraklion, Crete GREECE Tel: +30 2810 391139 Fax: +30 2810 391101 ?mail: poirazi at imbb.forth.gr Lab site: www.dendrites.gr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From timvogels at gmail.com Mon Dec 14 09:05:43 2020 From: timvogels at gmail.com (Tim Vogels) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 15:05:43 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Worldwideneuro Seminars, jobs, and worldwideneuro mail list subscription. Message-ID: <97065C21-237A-4955-AD21-02F688862093@gmail.com> Dear colleagues, Please forgive the announcement. for the seminars on worldwideneuro.com . I wanted to quickly let you know that you can easily receive the full weekly programme by subscribing to our mailing list. We send one email per week, on Monday mornings, so, very low spam levels. To join, send a blank email to worldwideneuro+subscribe at googlegroups.com Please let us know if you are interested in hosting a seminar series on worldwideneuo, It?s easy and a matter of minutes to add your series. Also: If your are looking for a job, or you are looking to fill one, consider posting it on world-wide.org/jobs Finally, while you are reading this, please note that World Wide Neuro is hosting 26 (great) seminars this week + next Monday, across 23 series. Please find the details below and mark the dates. All the best, Tim Vogels ------------ Tim Vogels Professor vogelslab.org @tpvogels +43 2243 9000 2170 Talks this week: ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 10:00 GMT Prof Fabrice Crivello > Institut des Maladies Neurod?g?n?ratives - CNRS UMR 5293 - Universit? de bordeaux ? Defining new multimodal neuroimaging marker for grey matter characterization hosted by ICM Paris Brain Institute ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 12:00 GMT Dr Johanna Jackson > UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London ? Targeting the synapse in Alzheimer?s Disease hosted by Imperial Centre for Neurotechnology ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 12:00 GMT Professor Gloria Patricia Cardona-G?mez > School of Medicine at University of Antioquia, Medell?n, Colombia ? Phospholipid regulation in cognitive impairment and vascular dementia hosted by IIBCE on Brain Science ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 13:00 GMT Professor Elaine Del-Bel > Professor of Physiology,Department of Morphology, Physiology and Basic Pathology, School of Dentistry, Ribeir?o Preto (FORP), University of S?o Paulo. ? What about antibiotics for the treatment of the dyskinesia induced by L-DOPA? hosted by IIBCE on Brain Science ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 15:00 GMT Israel Nelken > Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, Jerusalem, Israel ? Contextual effects in the representation of complex sounds: from the inferior colliculus to higher-order cortical fields hosted by LOOPS de Hoz - Hechavarria ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 15:30 GMT Ziad Hafed > Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, T?bingen, Germany ? https://www.world-wide.org/seminar/1391 hosted by LOOPS de Hoz - Hechavarria ? Monday, December 14, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Dr. G?rard Karsenty > Columbia University ? Blurring the boundaries between neuroscience and organismal physiology hosted by Brain-Body Interactions ? Tuesday, December 15, 2020 ? 10:00 GMT Prof Wu Li > Beijing Normal University ? Learning-induced changes in visual cortical processing hosted by BIU Vision Science ? Tuesday, December 15, 2020 ? 13:30 GMT Prof Elizabeth Heller-Mesznik > University of Pennsylvania ? https://www.world-wide.org/seminar/1821 hosted by IST Neuroscience ? Tuesday, December 15, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Prof Giuseppe Testa > ? Rethinking neuroconstructivism through brain organoids at single cell resolution hosted by NeuroDev Disorders ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 08:00 GMT Virtual Opening > European University for Brain and Technology (NeurotechEU) ? European University for Brain and Technology Virtual Opening hosted by Ad hoc ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 14:20 GMT PhD Charley Wu > Max Planck ? Generalization guided exploration hosted by CompCogSci Darmstadt ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Moritz Helias > Juelich Research Center ? Correlations, chaos, and criticality in neural networks hosted by WWTNS ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Prof Xinyu Zhao > University of Wisconsin?Madison ? Targeting stem cells for neurodevelopmental disorders hosted by Seaver Autism Center ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 17:00 GMT Dr Melissa Coleman > Claremont McKenna ? Neural Mechanisms of Coordination in Duetting Wrens hosted by Systems Neuroecology ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 17:00 GMT Prof Dirk Isbrandt > Deutsches Zentrum fur Neurodegenerative Erkrankunngen ? Vulnerable periods of brain development in ion channelopathies hosted by Experimental Epilepsy ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 17:15 GMT Prof Gina Poe > University of California, Los Angeles, Integrative Biology & Physiology ? Sleep features for memory consolidation and network building across the lifespan hosted by Boston Sys Neuro ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 19:00 GMT Amanda McQuade > UC Irvine ? Human TREM2 knockout microglia fail to activate towards Alzheimer?s disease pathology hosted by NeuroLaunchpad ? Wednesday, December 16, 2020 ? 19:30 GMT Dr. Erez Geron > NYU ? Retrieval spikes: a dendritic mechanism for retrieval-dependent memory consolidation hosted by NeuroLaunchpad ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 12:00 GMT Prof Gyorgy Buzsaki > NYU Neuroscience Institute, Langone Medical Center ? Ways to think about the brain hosted by Champalimaud Colloquia ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Udai Pandey > University of Pittsburgh ? https://www.world-wide.org/seminar/1528 hosted by Neurodegeneration in Flies ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Matthew Cobb > ? https://www.world-wide.org/seminar/1308 hosted by WWNDev ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 16:00 GMT Dr Mohamed Abdelhack > Washington University in St. Louis ? Top-down Modulation in Human Visual Cortex hosted by SONA ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 18:00 GMT Dr Sydney Trask > University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee ? https://www.world-wide.org/seminar/1838 hosted by Next Gen Neuro ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 18:00 GMT Prof Daphna Shohamy > Columbia University ? How Memory Guides Value-Based Decisions hosted by Caltech SocDecNeuro ? Thursday, December 17, 2020 ? 20:00 GMT Prof Antonio Verdejo-Garc?a > Monash University, Australia ? In-Love with Addiction Neuroscience hosted by ISAM-NIG In-love with Addiction Neuroscience World Wide Neuro is kindly supported by -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From decebalmocanu at gmail.com Mon Dec 14 09:25:49 2020 From: decebalmocanu at gmail.com (Decebal Mocanu) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 15:25:49 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Deep Learning: Sparse Training and Autonomous Driving Message-ID: Dear all, We are happy to announce an open 4-years PhD position on the theoretical and practical aspects of sparse training for sparse neural networks at Eindhoven University of Technology. For a gentle introduction please see: https://numenta.com/blog/2020/10/30/case-for-sparsity-in-neural-networks-part-2-dynamic-sparsity An example of our work on the topic is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04316-3 The PhD candidate is expected to contribute to: - developing novel sparse-to-sparse training algorithms - achieving theoretical understanding of dynamic sparsity in neural networks - studying both cloud computing and low-resource device settings - translating research findings into the application domain of autonomous driving More details and the application procedure can be found here (the application deadline is 31 January 2021): - https://jobs.tue.nl/en/vacancy/phd-position-in-ai-deep-learning-sparse-training-and-autonomous-driving-868256.html Best wishes, Decebal Mocanu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lmuller2 at uwo.ca Mon Dec 14 09:21:25 2020 From: lmuller2 at uwo.ca (Lyle Muller) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:21:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Tenure-track_faculty_position_in_Mathem?= =?utf-8?q?atical_Biology_=28Western_Uni=10versity=29?= Message-ID: The Departments of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at Western University are pleased to announce a search for a full-time, probationary (tenure-track) position in Mathematical Biology at the rank of Assistant Professor. Consideration of applications will begin on December 16, 2020 and will continue until the position is filled. The anticipated start date will be July 1, 2021. For more details, please see the announcement: https://www.uwo.ca/facultyrelations/careers/pdf/Science_Mathematics-and-Applied-Mathematics_Probationary-Tenure-Track_2020.pdf. -- Lyle Muller http://mullerlab.ca -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Tony.Pipe at brl.ac.uk Mon Dec 14 16:39:44 2020 From: Tony.Pipe at brl.ac.uk (Tony Pipe) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 21:39:44 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Research Associate/Research Fellow in Connected Autonomous Vehicle Simulation for Safety Assurance Message-ID: <8455694f-ddcb-59d5-4f44-8198483d01f8@brl.ac.uk> Research Associate/Research Fellow in Connected Autonomous Vehicle Simulation for Safety Assurance Full Description of post and application via: https://bit.ly/3kZ8kh2 Location:?????????????????????????? Frenchay Campus, Bristol, UK Job reference???????????????????? R01866 Hours:?????????????????????????????? Full Time Contract Type:?????????????????? Fixed-Term/Contract for 12 months Application closing date??? 23/12/2020 Salary??????????????????????????????? Grade F salary - ?30,046-?33,797 & Grade G salary - ?33,797-?35,845. Job Type??????????????????????????? Academic, Research About us and the context: Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) is the most comprehensive academic centre for multi-disciplinary robotics research in the UK. It is a collaborative partnership between the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) and the University of Bristol, and home to a vibrant community of over 250 academics, researchers and industry practitioners. Together, they are world leaders in current thinking on service robotics, intelligent autonomous systems and bio-engineering. The state-of-the-art facilities covers an area of over 3,500 sq. metres (over 37,000 sq. feet) and BRL is an internationally recognised Centre of Excellence in Robotics. This post is for a UWE Bristol researcher role. We are looking to appoint at either the level of Research Associate or at Research Fellow. The latter is a more senior appointment level but the post holder will be part of a large project team and we will adjust the expected level of work output and of managerial supervision to suit the level at which we appoint. UWE Bristol is an ambitious university. Together, our people are working hard to advance knowledge, inspire people and transform futures. At either appointment level, we are looking for people with the skills and ambition to help us achieve those aims. The Innovate UK funded CAV Forth project is motivated by the opportunity to gain significant socioeconomic benefit in the Public Service Vehicle sector by automation of a bus service. The prime objective of the project, therefore, is to evaluate a commercially operational extended pilot service involving buses that will be either partially or fully autonomously (with supervision) over a 10-mile route, taking passengers across the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh. One of our main contributions to the project overall, is to build on expertise developed in collaboration with researchers at the University of Bristol during previous Connected Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) projects, to develop a simulation-based test-bench for the route using state-of-the-art vehicle simulator software and hardware. Using simulation, we are designing scenarios that stretch the vehicle?s control systems and, where it is important to do so, test human participants? reactions to selected scenarios. Clearly these situations can be much more easily varied in a known way so as to identify more critical scenario conditions than those which can safely be tested in the real world. The project is part way through its execution period and this limits the period of employment to 12 months. About you: Although there will be significant interaction with those at BRL and others working on the CAV-Forth project, this position is focused predominantly on developing and using the simulation platform to investigate and discover the, so called, ?corner cases? (the most safety-critical situations) that need to be tested in the real-world, and to carry out simulator-based tests with participants. Thus, we will guide the focus for, and maximise the benefits from, the expensive and risky real-world testing to be carried out prior to implementing the 20-mile pilot driving route. To achieve this, you will utilise the results of recent research, carried out in Bristol, on simulation-based verification and validation techniques for autonomous vehicles. You will focus, in collaboration with the CAV-Forth partners, on a variety of autonomy functions and use case scenarios. More details of required or desirable knowledge, expertise, skills, job purpose and responsibilities for each of the two levels of appointment can be found in the Job Descriptions associated with this advertisement. In addition to progressive pay rates, UWE Bristol offers a wide range of staff benefits including: ??????? a generous holiday allowance ??????? ? up to 12.5 bank holiday/closure days per year in addition ??????? ? flexible working ??????? ? excellent defined benefit pension schemes ??????? ? option to participate in the cycle to work scheme ??????? ? family friendly policies ??????? ? onsite nursery at our Frenchay Campus. This post is based in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory that is situated at our lively Frenchay campus where we have invested in the latest facilities and resources to give our students access to everything they need to succeed ? with ?300m having been spent recently on new state-of-the-art learning spaces and accommodation to enhance our offer even further. Frenchay campus is within close proximity to excellent motorway links and within walking distance of two train stations, making UWE Frenchay Campus the ideal place to work for those wishing to commute to Bristol. Further information: This is a full time, fixed term contract for 12 months and not available on a job share basis, due to the tight interlinked nature of the project?s goals and inter-partner schedule. If you would like an informal discussion, please contact Prof. Tony Pipe at: Tony.Pipe at brl.ac.uk. UWE is committed to supporting and promoting equality and diversity to create an inclusive working environment. We believe this can be achieved through attracting, developing, and retaining a diverse range of staff from many different backgrounds who share our ambition to be a university recognised for the success and impact of our practice-oriented programmes; our strong industry networks and our inclusive global outlook. From 1 January 2021 we will be able to sponsor candidates for this role under the Home Office Tier 2 Points Based System (skilled worker route). Please read the attached guide at the full application link on the new criteria to assess if you will be eligible to be sponsored under the criteria. Please also refer to the Home Office Right to Work Checklist which provides details of which documents are acceptable. Should you be shortlisted you will be asked to bring your right to work documents with you to your interview so they can be copied and verified at that stage. The interviews are planned for early January 2021. -- ? Tony Pipe, Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems Bristol Robotics Laboratory T-Building University of the West of England Frenchay Campus Bristol UK BS16 1QY Tel: +44 (0)117 3286330 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From interdonatos at gmail.com Mon Dec 14 11:32:35 2020 From: interdonatos at gmail.com (Roberto Interdonato) Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2020 17:32:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: "Digging into Feature-Rich Networks: unveiling connections in Big Data", Special Issue of Frontiers in Big Data Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS Frontiers in Big Data Special Issue on "Digging into Feature-Rich Networks: unveiling connections in Big Data" https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/16784/digging-into-feature-rich-networks-unveiling-connections-in-big-data GUEST EDITORS: Roberto Interdonato, CIRAD - UMR TETIS, Montpellier, France (roberto.interdonato at cirad.fr) Sabrina Gaito, Universit? degli Studi di Milano, Italy (gaito at di.unimi.it) Andrea Tagarelli, University of Calabria, Italy (andrea.tagarelli at unical.it) TOPIC SUMMARY: The recent progress of methodologies and technologies in the fields of Big Data Analytics, from one side, and Machine/Deep Learning, from another side, has given a new impulse to research on complex real-world behaviors and phenomena, which can be conveniently modeled as feature-rich networks. Such networks are designed to take the expressive power of graph data models of different types (e.g., Heterogeneous information networks, Multilayer networks, Temporal networks, Location-aware networks, Probabilistic networks) to a higher level whereby the contextual information of a target domain-specific environment are embedded into the network. The aim of this Research Topic, titled ?Digging into Feature-Rich Networks: unveiling connections in Big Data?, is to address challenging issues and emerging trends at the convergence of Network Science with Big Data Analytics and Machine/Deep Learning. The idea is to encourage the development of novel approaches based on advanced big data techniques and learning paradigms, that will enhance our understanding of complex phenomena in information networks. Moreover, we also aim to promote visionary works about alternative approaches for complex network analysis. These include not only long studied contexts such as social media and biological networks, but also less investigated or even new frontiers for network science, such as finance, engineering, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and many others. Although the use of feature-rich networks can intuitively be perceived as beneficial for most research tasks based on graph data, their expressive power has not been yet fully valued in most domains. Therefore, there is an emergence for providing insights into how the study of complex network models can pave the way for solving domain-specific problems that might not be adequately addressed by existing graph models. Within this view, we solicit contributions on advanced modeling and mining of feature-rich networks, regarding any data domain, including both theoretical and application-oriented studies. The topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to: ? Foundations of Learning and Mining in feature-rich networks ? Simplification/pruning/sampling of feature-rich networks ? Embedding and Deep Learning in feature-rich networks ? Centrality and Ranking in feature-rich networks ? Vertex similarity in multiplex and feature-rich networks ? Community Detection in feature-rich networks ? Link Prediction in feature-rich networks ? Multiplex and feature-rich networks evolution models ? Ensemble learning for feature-rich networks mining ? Pattern mining in feature-rich networks ? User Behavior Modeling in feature-rich networks ? Influence propagation in feature-rich networks ? Reputation and Trust computing in feature-rich networks ? Probabilistic and Uncertain feature-rich networks ? Time-evolving feature-rich networks ? Hypergraph-based modeling, analysis and learning problems ? Cross-Domain problems in feature-rich networks ? Mobility in feature-rich networks ? Visualization of feature-rich networks ? Modeling and Analysis of IoT-based feature-rich networks ? Smart environment and smart city management with feature-rich networks Keywords: Network Science, Big Data Analytics, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Information Networks, Feature-Rich Networks, Networks Mining Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review. IMPORTANT DATES: Abstract : 31 January 2021 Manuscripts Due: 30 April 2021 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Manuscript and abstracts can be submitted through the dedicated website at : https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/16784/digging-into-feature-rich-networks-unveiling-connections-in-big-data . The authors can choose between two different sections of Frontiers in Big Data at the moment of submission (Big Data Networks or Data Mining and Management). This does not impact on the peer reviewing process, but only on the categorization of the article in case of acceptance. -- ============================================= Roberto Interdonato, PhD Research Scientist CIRAD UMR TETIS Montpellier France email: roberto.interdonato at cirad.fr tel: +33 (0) 467558615 ============================================= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Tue Dec 15 05:08:01 2020 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 10:08:01 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE/ACM/ASA DSAA'2021: CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSALS Message-ID: <5d53f1f4-94a5-311a-0177-92a26ed6d24a@isep.ipp.pt> ====================================================================== IEEE/ACM/ASA DSAA'2021 CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSALS https://dsaa2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/calls/special-sessions ====================================================================== Important Dates ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Special Session Proposal Due: 21 February 2021 * Special Session Proposal Notification: 28 February 2021 * Paper Submission Deadline: as for the main conference 23 May 2021 * Special Session Paper Notification: as for the main conference 25 July 2021 About DSAA Special Sessions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DSAA Special Sessions are an important part of the main conference program. They bring together researchers, industry experts, practitioners, and potential users who are interested in cultivating specialized and important aspects of data science and analytics. DSAA Special Sessions are intended to promote EMERGING data science research areas that are not well established and covered in the main conference tracks, while featuring much higher quality, integrity and impact of presentations than classic workshops typically hosted in all major conferences. The same evaluation criteria and quality level apply as for the main conference, but the papers must adhere to the area of the special session they are submitted to, and the reviewers are experts in that area. Many real-world challenges call for interdisciplinary solutions and a dialog of cultures. In DSAA 2021, we particularly encourage proposals for special sessions that promote such a dialog, e.g. on statistics and data mining, pattern recognition and statistics, data mining and simulation. We welcome proposals that promote a more intensive interaction between different communities and proposals that promote cooperation to solve interdisciplinary problems. Proposals on special sessions on how interdisciplinary data science can make the world stronger against disease, outbreaks are strongly encouraged. Thus, special sessions might focus on: a) topics on the border of data science research area, b) advanced topics within the data science research area, or c) specific application areas for data science. Special Session Proposal Submission and Review ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Proposals for hosting special sessions at DSAA 2021 are welcome. The proposals must address: (1) Title (2) Aims and scope (3) Topics of interest (4) Relevance to the DSAA main conference tracks and topics (5) Organizers (6) Past special sessions or relevant experiences or track records (7) Potential committee members (8) Potential invited speakers For each organizer in (5), provide name, affiliation, country, email and a short biographical sketch, describing relevant qualifications and experience; identify at least one organizer as the contact person. For (6), list any special session or relevant events (e.g., workshops) the organizers have organized in recent years in DSAA or other major conferences; for each, list the year, the conference, number of submissions, number of papers accepted, number of participants, etc. For (7), give a list of qualified committee members who would be invited. For (8), please provide the names of one or two authoritative speakers that could open the special session, and that can deliver a comprehensive overview of the topic of interest. Special session proposals will be reviewed based on the above criteria and quality of the proposals as well as their relationship to the main conference topics. Preference may be given to timely topics that are critical for data science and analytics, inspire highly interactive discussions, and showcase the impact of data science and analytics. Proposers are encouraged to give an estimation of the number of submissions they expect. Submission of a special session: ------------------------------------------ https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/DSAA2021 Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From benoit.frenay at unamur.be Tue Dec 15 09:29:17 2020 From: benoit.frenay at unamur.be (=?UTF-8?B?QmVub8OudCBGcsOpbmF5?=) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 15:29:17 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Academic position in SE / AI at UNamur Message-ID: <53e5e6e3-f490-7365-20c1-5ae71aace126@unamur.be> Dear colleagues, If you are looking for a team of kind and passionate colleagues that value both research and teaching, the Faculty of Computer Science at UNamur has an open academic position in software engineering or artificial intelligence.? The Faculty has a long history of research in both fields and offers opportunities of collaboration between them.? It is located in Namur, an historical city at the center of Wallonia. All details can be found here: https://jobs.unamur.be/emploi.2020-11-25.9836990485/view (deadline is January 3). Best regards, Beno?t Fr?nay -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janet.hsiao at gmail.com Wed Dec 16 00:27:27 2020 From: janet.hsiao at gmail.com (Janet Hsiao) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:27:27 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-Track Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professor in Computational Neuroscience, The University of Hong Kong Message-ID: The Department of Psychology at the University of Hong Kong is recruiting a Tenure-Track Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professor in Computational Neuroscience. Details of job adv is available for viewing via HKU website: https://jobs.hku.hk/en/job/502807/tenuretrack-professorassociate-professorassistant-professor-in-computational-neuroscience ------------------------------ Applications are invited for appointment as *Tenure-Track Professor/Associate Professor/Assistant Professor in Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology*, to commence on July 1, 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter, on a three-year fixed-term basis, with the possibility of renewal and with consideration for tenure before the expiry of a second three-year fixed-term contract. Rank will be determined based on qualifications and experience. Exceptionally outstanding candidates at the Professor/Associate Professor level may be considered for appointment on tenure terms. The Department of Psychology was founded in 1968 and was the first department of psychology in Hong Kong. The Department is represented by 20 faculty members with different areas of expertise, including clinical psychology/neuropsychology, cognitive psychology/neuroscience, educational and developmental psychology, as well as social/health psychology. Our faculty members engage in a broad range of research across the discipline, from basic human neuroscience to educational policy, as these different areas of research inform and complement each other. This unique research environment enables the integration of different disciplinary areas into cohesive and empirically sound research programmes that are translated into measurable societal impact. Further information about the Department can be obtained at http://www.psychology.hku.hk. Applicants should possess a Ph.D. degree in computational neuroscience or related fields, and a strong record of research. For appointment at Associate Professor or Professor, candidates should also demonstrate a proven track record of external grants and leadership. The appointee should have interests in computational modelling of neuroscientific and psychological functioning in order to capitalise on current research trends in brain science. The appointee is expected to maintain an active research programme, and be responsible for teaching courses and supervising students at both graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as contributing to the administration of academic programmes. A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered, in addition to annual leave and medical benefits. At current rates, salaries tax does not exceed 15% of gross income. The appointment will attract a contract-end gratuity and University contribution to a retirement benefits scheme, totalling up to 15% of basic salary. Housing benefits will be provided as applicable. The University only accepts online application for the above post. Applicants should apply online at the University?s careers site ( https://jobs.hku.hk) and upload (1) an up-to-date C.V., (2) a research statement and (3) a teaching statement, and (4) state the contact information of three referees on the online application form. At least one of the referees should be able to comment on your research/teaching ability and your contribution to research/teaching in your department, while the remaining two should have knowledge of your recent academic or employment experience. Enquiries about the post can be sent to the Chair of Selection Committee (hrpsyc at hku.hk). Review of applications will commence as soon as possible and continue until *January 15, 2021*, or until the post is filled, whichever is earlier. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nsmattei at gmail.com Tue Dec 15 13:31:28 2020 From: nsmattei at gmail.com (Nicholas Mattei) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 12:31:28 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Call for Nominations: ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award 2021 Message-ID: [Apologies for multiple postings, please pass on to interested people!] Please nominate individuals for the AA Award! Note that we are interested in individuals whose past and *current work* is important to the field! We encourage mid-career nominations! Nominations are solicited for the 2021 ACM SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. This award is made for excellence in research in the area of autonomous agents. It is intended to recognize researchers in autonomous agents whose current work is an important influence on the field. The award is an official ACM award, funded by an endowment created by ACM SIGAI from the proceeds of previous Autonomous Agents conferences. The recipient of the award will receive a monetary prize and a certificate, and will be invited to present a plenary talk at the AAMAS 2021 conference in London, United Kingdom. Anyone can make a nomination. Nominations should be made by email to the chair of the award committee, Stacy Marsella (stacymarsella at gmail.com), and should consist of a short (< 1 page) statement that emphasizes not only the research contributions that the individual has made that merit the award but also how the individual?s *current work* is an important influence on the field. * 15 January 2021 -- Deadline for nominations * 12 February 2021 -- Announcement of winner * 3-7 May 2021 -- AAMAS-2021 conference in London, United Kingdom Call as a PDF: https://rebrand.ly/SIGAI-AA-Award -- *Nicholas Mattei* Assistant Professor, Tulane University nsmattei at tulane.edu | www.nickmattei.net Stanley Thomas Hall | 402B +1 504 862 8391 Department of Computer Science Tulane University 6823 St Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tomg at princeton.edu Tue Dec 15 17:37:35 2020 From: tomg at princeton.edu (Tom Griffiths) Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 22:37:35 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in machine learning and cognitive science Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Please see the ad below for a postdoctoral position, and encourage appropriate folks from your research groups or institutions to apply. I?m looking for excellent candidates who are interested in the intersection of machine learning and cognitive science broadly construed, but particularly people who want to work on problems like integrating more structure into reinforcement learning, approaches to and applications of meta-learning, or using machine learning as a tool in the analysis of large behavioral datasets (particularly decision-making). Start date is more flexible than the ad suggests. Best wishes, Tom. -- Postdoctoral position in machine learning and cognitive science The Computational Cognitive Science Lab and the Computer Science Department at Princeton University is seeking to hire a postdoctoral or more senior researcher at the intersection of machine learning and cognitive science. Positions are for one year anticipated to start in July 2021 with the possibility of renewal contingent upon satisfactory performance and continued funding. Potential research topics include hierarchical reinforcement learning, meta-learning and lifelong learning, and use of machine learning techniques to predict human decision-making. Familiarity with machine learning, statistics, or computational models of cognition as a prerequisite, but researchers with PhDs in disciplines other than computer science are eligible to apply. Applicants must apply at https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/18661 and submit a CV, research statement, and contact information for three references. This position is subject to the University's background check policy. Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. -- Tom Griffiths Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture Departments of Psychology and Computer Science Princeton University http://cocosci.princeton.edu/tom/ From kc.w at cityu.edu.hk Wed Dec 16 06:10:01 2020 From: kc.w at cityu.edu.hk (Dr. Ka Chun WONG) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:10:01 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: 8th Intl. Conference on Soft Computing & Machine Intelligence (ISCMI 2021) Message-ID: CFP: 8th Intl. Conference on Soft Computing & Machine Intelligence (ISCMI 2021) The 2021 8th Intl. Conference on Soft Computing & Machine Intelligence (ISCMI 2021) will be held in Cairo, Egypt during November 21-22, 2021. The main objective of ISCMI 2021 is to present the latest research and results of scientists related to Soft Computing & Machine Intelligence topics. This conference provides opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas face-to-face, to establish business or research relations as well as to find global partners for future collaborations. We hope that the conference results will lead to significant contributions to the knowledge in these up- to- date scientific fields. ISCMI 2021 is organized by India International Congress on Computational Intelligence(IICCI), and technically sponsored by the IEEE Africa Council and and IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (Egypt Chapter). All submissions will be peer reviewed, and all accepted papers will be published in ISCMI 2021 conference proceedings which are expected to be included in IEEE Xplore and indexed by EI Compendex, Scopus, etc. A special issue of "Neural Computing & Applications", a Springer Publication [SCIE indexed, 2019 lmpact Factor : 4.774, 5 Year Impact Factor : 4.627; ISSN: 0941-0643 (print version) ISSN: 1433-3058 (electronic version)], will publish a selected set of extended versions of ISCMI21 papers (to be shortlisted after the conference), after the usual reviewing of those papers. (ISCMI 2014 & ISCMI2015 & ISCMI2016 & ISCMI2017 & ISCMI2018 & ISCMI2019 have been included in the IEEE Xplore?) Papers of ISCMI2014 & ISCMI2015 & ISCMI2016 & ISCMI2017 & ISCMI2018 & ISCMI2019 have all been indexed by Ei Compendex and Scopus! Topics of interest for submission include, but are not limited to: Advanced Intelligent Systems Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence Artificial Immune Systems Artificial Intelligence Artificial Life Associative Memory Automatic Annotation Bioinformatics and Biological Computing Case-Based and Temporal Reasoning Cognitive Science Computational Intelligence Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Computer Vision Systems Connectionism Data Fusion Data Mining and Data Fusion Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Decision Support Systems Distributed Artificial Intelligence DNA Computing Emotional Intelligence Evaluation and Refinement of Intelligent Systems Evolutionary Computation Evolutionary Optimization Evolutionary Strategies Feature Extraction Firefly Algorithm Fuzziness in Chaotic Systems Fuzziness in Multi-Agent Systems Fuzzy Aggregation Techniques Fuzzy Control Fuzzy Decision Making Fuzzy Inference Fuzzy Logic and Systems Fuzzy Mathematics Fuzzy Optimisation Fuzzy Reconfigurable Systems Fuzzy Systems and Hardware Genetic Algorithms Human-machine Interaction Intelligent Classification Intelligent Control Intelligent Distributed Sensor Networks Intelligent Hybrid Systems Intelligent Image Processing Intelligent Information Retrieval Intelligent Information Systems Intelligent Measurement Intelligent Signal Processing Intelligent Systems Intelligent Tutoring Systems Interval Computation Knowledge Discovery Knowledge Representation Learning and Memory Logical and Probabilistic Inference Machine Learning Mechatronics Modeling the Real World through Contexts Multi-Agent Systems Multimedia Mining Natural Language Processing Neural Networks Neuro-fuzzy Systems Ontology-based Intelligent Systems Particle Swarm Optimization Pattern Recognition Probabilistic Reasoning Reinforcement Learning Robotic Technologies Rough Sets Spatio-Temporal Reasoning Statistical and Structural Pattern Recognition Support Vector Machines Swarm Intelligence Syntactic and Semantic Processing Uncertain Reasoning Web Mining Submission Methods 1.Full Paper (Presentation and Publication) Accepted full paper will be invited to give the oral presentation at the conference and be published in the conference proceeding. 2.Abstract (Presentation only) Accepted abstract will be invited to give the oral presentation at the conference, the presentation will not be published. Please log in the Electronic Submission System; ( .pdf only) to submit your full paper and abstract. http://iscmi.us/index.html http://iscmi.us/submission.html For any inquiry about the conference, please feel free to contact us at: sub at iscmi.us. Page Requirements Each paper should have no less than 4 pages normally, including all figures, tables, and references. One regular registration is within FIVE Pages. Extra pages will be charged. Submission Requests All submitted articles should report original, previously unpublished research results, experimental or theoretical. Articles submitted to the conference should meet these criteria and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We firmly believe that ethical conduct is the most essential virtual of any academic. Hence any act of plagiarism is a totally unacceptable academic misconduct and cannot be tolerated. If an author is found to commit an act of plagiarism, the following acts of sanction will be taken: 1. Reject the article submitted or delete the article from the final publications. 2. Report the authors violation to his/her supervisor(s) and affiliated institution(s) 3. Report the authors violation to the appropriate overseeing office of academic ethics and research funding agency. 4. Reserve the right to publish the authors name(s), the title of the article, the name(s) of the affiliated institution and the details of misconduct, etc. of the plagiarist?. Disclaimer: This email (including any attachments) is for the use of the intended recipient only and may contain confidential information and/or copyright material. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email and all copies from your system. Any unauthorized use, disclosure, reproduction, copying, distribution, or other form of unauthorized dissemination of the contents is expressly prohibited. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pjthomas at case.edu Wed Dec 16 11:33:22 2020 From: pjthomas at case.edu (Peter Thomas) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 11:33:22 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Virtual Graduate Program Open House (Case Western Reserve University Mathematics & Applied Mathematics) Message-ID: Dear Students, The Case Western Reserve University Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics would like to invite you to one of our Graduate Program virtual open houses, held on December 21 and January 8 at 11:30am EDT, where you can learn more about our MS and PhD programs in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. You can register to attend an open house by filling out the form here , and you can find out more about our graduate programs by visiting our website . The priority deadline for applications is 1/15/2021. We hope to see you soon! Nick Gurski, Chair of the Graduate Committee Stanislaw Szarek, Chair of the Department -- Peter J. Thomas Professor Case Western Reserve University Department of Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics. Co-Editor-in-Chief, *Biological Cybernetics. * https://link.springer.com/journal/422 homepage: http://www.case.edu/math/thomas/ g-scholar: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5ctD7qIAAAAJ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de Wed Dec 16 11:59:36 2020 From: benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de (Benjamin Lindner) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 17:59:36 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: New issue of Biological Cybernetics Vol 114 No 6 Message-ID: We are pleased to? announce a new issue of *Biological Cybernetics*. Volume 114 Number 6 In this issue Original Article The roles of ascending sensory signals and top-down central control in the entrainment of a locomotor CPG Marcello?G.?Codianni, Silvia?Daun & Jonathan?E.?Rubin ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article Control for multifunctionality: bioinspired control based on feeding in /Aplysia californica/ Victoria?A.?Webster-Wood, Jeffrey?P.?Gill, Peter?J.?Thomas & Hillel?J.?Chiel ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article Analysis of neural clusters due to deep brain stimulation pulses Daniel?Kuelbs, Jacob?Dunefsky, Bharat?Monga & Jeff?Moehlis ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article On the rate coding response of peripheral sensory neurons Willy?Wong ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article A feedback information-theoretic transmission scheme (FITTS) for modeling trajectory variability in aimed movements Julien?Gori & Olivier?Rioul ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article Importance of self-connections for brain connectivity and spectral connectomics Xiao?Gao & P.?A.?Robinson ? Abstract ? Full text PDF Original Article Optimizing enzymatic catalysts for rapid turnover of substrates with low enzyme sequestration Abhishek?Deshpande & Thomas?E.?Ouldridge ? Abstract ? Full text PDF -- Benjamin Lindner Professor for Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics BCCN Berlin Philippstr. 13, Haus 2, 10115 Berlin Room: 1.17, phone: 0049(0)302093 82492 (new number!!) Physics Dep. Humboldt University Berlin Newtonstr. 15 12489 Berlin Room: 3.412, phone: 0049(0)302093 7934 http://people.physik.hu-berlin.de/~lindner/index.html ----------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stevenweisberg at ufl.edu Wed Dec 16 14:37:35 2020 From: stevenweisberg at ufl.edu (Weisberg,Steven M) Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2020 19:37:35 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position available in the Spatial Cognition and Navigational Neuroscience Lab at the University of Florida. Message-ID: The SCANN Lab at the University of Florida is hiring a postdoctoral researcher to do cognitive neuroscience with a general focus on spatial navigation using fMRI and behavioral methods. Please see the full job ad for more information and contact Steven Weisberg (stevenweisberg at ufl.edu) for more information. We will accept applications until the position is filled. https://scannlab.psych.ufl.edu/2020/12/07/the-scann-lab-is-recruiting-a-postdoctoral-researcher/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From somidshafiei at google.com Thu Dec 17 10:33:32 2020 From: somidshafiei at google.com (Shayegan Omidshafiei) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:33:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Challenges and Opportunities in Multiagent RL: Virtual Seminar Series Message-ID: Dear all, We are excited to announce a new virtual seminar series on the Challenges and Opportunities for Multiagent Reinforcement Learning (COMARL), involving a series of invited talks leading up to the upcoming AAAI COMARL symposium in Spring 2021 . The goal of the virtual seminar series is to present the latest research in multiagent reinforcement learning and game theory. Over the last few years, momentum and discussions have been rapidly building up in these interrelated fields. Unfortunately, the current situation with COVID-19 does not allow us to easily meet face to face at conferences and related academic gatherings. Inspired by the RL Theory Seminar series, we would also like to provide a virtual venue for peers to attend high-quality talks, and most importantly, interact with other researchers in multiagent RL. As such, we will be hosting fortnightly seminars on Thursdays (generally held around 4-5pm CEST time) from early 2021 onward. The talks will be completely open for interested parties to attend, live streamed on YouTube and Google Meet, with plenty of opportunity for attendees to interact and engage with speakers! Recordings will also be made available on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/comarl-seminars/. We have a number of great speakers already lined up, including the following: - Michael Bowling (January 28th, 2021) - Craig Boutilier (February 11th, 2021) - Peter Stone (February 25th, 2021) - Jakob Foerster (March 11th, 2021) - Francisco Santos (March 18th, 2021) For additional information, please see our: - Website (includes schedule, instructions on how to join, etc.) - Twitter account (for speaker announcements and more!): @ComarlSeminars - Google Groups (to receive invitations): comarlseminars at googlegroups.com We are keen to make this a recurrent series, depending on the interest and attendance levels during this first season. We look forward to seeing you there! Best regards from the organizers, Chris Amato (Northeastern University), Marta Garnelo (DeepMind), Frans Oliehoek (TU Delft), Shayegan Omidshafiei (DeepMind), Karl Tuyls (DeepMind) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christian.hardmeier at lingfil.uu.se Thu Dec 17 10:14:25 2020 From: christian.hardmeier at lingfil.uu.se (Christian Hardmeier) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2020 15:14:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Researcher - Pronouns and MT - Uppsala University Message-ID: <26600998-48A1-4286-B91C-FF84CFD9190F@lingfil.uu.se> Postdoctoral Researcher in Computational Linguistics (18-22 months) Uppsala University Application deadline: 11 January 2021 We are offering a position for a postdoctoral researcher in Computational Linguistics at Uppsala University. The position is available for 18 months of full-time research, or up to 22 months assuming a 20% teaching load throughout the employment. The researcher will work on the development of multilingual neural models for the translation of pronouns and other referring expressions in neural machine translation as part of a project funded by the Swedish Research Council and supervised by Christian Hardmeier (https://christianhardmeier.rax.ch/). The researcher will be part of the NLP group at Uppsala University (https://cl.lingfil.uu.se/people/). The position also offers opportunities for collaboration with the NLP group at the IT University of Copenhagen. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to get in touch with me: christian.hardmeier at lingfil.uu.se More information and application link in the official job posting: https://uu.se/en/about-uu/join-us/details/?positionId=368356 N?r du har kontakt med oss p? Uppsala universitet med e-post s? inneb?r det att vi behandlar dina personuppgifter. F?r att l?sa mer om hur vi g?r det kan du l?sa h?r: http://www.uu.se/om-uu/dataskydd-personuppgifter/ E-mailing Uppsala University means that we will process your personal data. For more information on how this is performed, please read here: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/data-protection-policy From ioannakoroni at csd.auth.gr Thu Dec 17 09:08:56 2020 From: ioannakoroni at csd.auth.gr (Ioanna Koroni) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:08:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for paper abstracts for a EUSIPCO2021 Special Session proposal on 'Signal/image analysis and deep learning for drone-based infrastructure inspection and maintenance' References: <001d01d6d48c$27bb13d0$77313b70$@csd.auth.gr> Message-ID: <003c01d6d47e$2906d610$7b148230$@csd.auth.gr> Dear Drone specialist, we intend to submit the attached EUSIPCO2021 (https://eusipco2021.org/) special session proposal. If you work on such topics and you have high quality original research results, you are welcomed to send us a paper title, authors and 1-paragraph (1/2 page) abstract. Abstracts will be peerly reviewed by third persons. The best 6 of them will be included in the special session proposal. If the special session proposal is accepted, any relevant paper (certainly the ones included in the proposal plus more) will be invited through an open paper call (to come out then) to be submitted as a regular EUSIPCO special session paper and will be peerly reviewed as such. Right now, we only need a paper title, author list and abstract, to be sent to us by email. Please feel free to forward this to your students, as well as to other qualified labs you are in contact with. As the deadline is very close (22nd December 2020), I would greatly appreciate a fast contribution (till 22nd December 2020 9:00 am EET) Best regards Merry Christmas and happy vacations I. Pitas EUSIPCO2021 Special Session proposal TITLE: Signal/image analysis and deep learning for drone-based infrastructure inspection and maintenance DESCRIPTION Automated inspection and maintenance of infrastructure is extremely important to many industries, promising simplified logistics, cost reductions, increased safety for human workers, quicker response times and more accurate results, when compared to traditional procedures. Drones are highly useful in this regard thanks to their easy deployment, their aerial point-of-view and their ability to access difficult-to-reach spaces. Recent advances in aerial robotics and AI have already pushed automated drone-based inspection and maintenance closer to reality, with manipulation, processing, analysis and learning of signals being at the forefront of this revolution. This special session will consider current research in this interdisciplinary subject, aiming to bring together researchers working on signals from the perspective of various fields, having in common an application focus on automated drone-based inspection and maintenance of any kind of infrastructure (e.g., roads/highways, electric towers/power lines, railway lines, pipelines, wind turbines, bridges, etc.). Topics of interest may include, among others: Computer vision Machine learning for signal processing Localization and mapping Multimodal perception Sensor and data fusion Human/drone interaction for cooperative maintenance Human intention prediction/modelling for cooperative maintenance Fault and anomaly detection Subcentimeter-accuracy inspection NOVELTY AND MOTIVATION This special session concerns a very timely topic with high industrial potential, given that fully/semi- automated drones are slowly emerging as a viable alternative to manually teleoperated ones for infrastructure inspection and maintenance applications, thanks to recent advances in robotics and AI. A lot of underlying cognitive functionalities that enable such autonomy, particularly the ones facilitating drone perception, rely on advanced signal analysis methods for achieving their goals, making this a topic of exceptional interest for the EUSIPCO community. Still, it is a highly interdisciplinary topic strongly interwoven with aerial robotics, thus justifying the need for a dedicated special session. ORGANIZERS Prof. Ioannis Pitas (list to be completed soon) -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus From T.Nowotny at sussex.ac.uk Thu Dec 17 11:24:51 2020 From: T.Nowotny at sussex.ac.uk (Thomas Nowotny) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2020 16:24:51 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships in be.AI - University of Sussex's Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme in Biomimetic Embodied AI In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, The University of Sussex invites applications for PhD studentships within the be.AI Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme (www.sussex.ac.uk/ccnr/be_ai) which will bring together researchers from the humanities, life sciences and computing to pursue artificial intelligence (AI) in its original definition of understanding natural intelligence by emulating it in artificial systems. In our unique interdisciplinary centre, we will advance understanding of how the interaction between brain, body and environment gives rise to intelligence and how this insight can be used to build novel artificial intelligence. As a be.AI Scholar you will: * Be funded for 3.5 years with a a tax free living allowance at the standard Research Council rate ??? currently ??15,009 per year??? and UK fees * Be eligible for generous financial support of up to ??4,000 per year for training and research expenses, such as conference trips and experimental costs * Be eligible to apply for one of three 12 month postdoctoral research fellowships, available only to completing Leverhulme be.AI scholars * Benefit from supervision by world-leading researchers in many different aspects of AI * Benefit from taught courses in topics, such as ethics and data science. The Programme will fund three intakes of 6 students per year, starting in September 2021 (application deadline 31st January 2021). You will be registered within one of the participating schools (Life Sciences, Engineering and Informatics, Psychology, Philosophy, Media Film & Music) but will be encouraged to perform cross-disciplinary research with academics across Schools. In be.AI, you will work in a community of like-minded students and researchers supported by your own research seminars, invited lectures by world leading speakers, as well as student-led conferences and cohort building events. We are passionate about creating an interdisciplinary cohort of researchers, so we expect successful applicants to see beyond their disciplinary boundaries and embrace the opportunity to work at the intersection of multiple fields. For further details, including how to apply, see http://www.sussex.ac.uk/ccnr/be_ai Kind regards, Thomas Nowotny, Andrew Philippides, Paul Graham Directors of be.AI -- Prof. Thomas Nowotny CCNR, Sussex Neuroscience Phone: +44-1273-678593 Engineering and Informatics, Fax: +44-1273-877873 University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ sussex.ac.uk/informatics/tnowotny <../../owa/redir.aspx?C=9e11bb0e527242938402b42d9b5498ea&URL=http%3a%2f%2fsussex.ac.uk%2finformatics%2ftnowotny> I support the University of Sussex Community Pledge, as I continue to help those around me during the pandemic. Small acts of collaboration, kindness and integrity can make a big difference. www.sussex.ac.uk/community-pledge -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luigi.acerbi at helsinki.fi Sat Dec 19 10:05:44 2020 From: luigi.acerbi at helsinki.fi (Luigi Acerbi) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 17:05:44 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD/Postdoc positions in probabilistic machine learning (University of Helsinki) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Please find below several positions available in our group. *1) Doctoral position in Sample-Efficient Probabilistic Machine Learning (4 years, fully funded)* The Machine and Human Intelligence research group led by Assistant Professor Luigi Acerbi is looking for a PhD candidate eager to work on new machine learning methods for smart, robust, sample-efficient probabilistic inference, with applications to scientific modeling (e.g., computational neuroscience) and artificial intelligence. The candidate will join a newly established research group at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Helsinki (Finland) with strong links to the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) . The position is full-time, funded for four years and will be filled as soon as possible, with a negotiable starting date in early 2021. The starting salary is 2350-2700 euros/month, depending on previous qualifications and experience. Application deadline: *January 10, 2021*. For more details and how to apply, see: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/machine-and-human-intelligence/phd-student-position *2) Postdoctoral positions in Probabilistic Machine Learning* The Machine and Human Intelligence research group led by Assistant Professor Luigi Acerbi has several openings for co-supervised postdoc positions as part of a Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) - ICT Helsinki joint postdoc call. Projects in our group relate to sample-efficient and active-sampling approaches in probabilistic machine learning. The candidates will join a research team of other FCAI postdocs and professors based at the University of Helsinki and Aalto University (Finland). Research topics in our group include: (#23) "Data augmentation, noise and active learning - A Bayesian brain approach", co-supervised with Aapo Hyv?rinen; (#24) "Bayesian deep active learning for amortized inference of simulator models", co-supervised with Samuel Kaski & Jukka Corander; (#25) "Fast active-sampling approximate Bayesian inference for everyone", co-supervised with Aki Vehtari, Samuel Kaski & Arto Klami. Application deadline: *January 25, 2021*. For the full list of 40+ topics and how to apply, see: http://www.hiit.fi/postdocs -- Luigi Acerbi, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Machine and Human Intelligence Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki Lab: http://www.helsinki.fi/machine-and-human-intelligence -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonizhong at msn.com Fri Dec 18 21:03:54 2020 From: jonizhong at msn.com (Joni Zhong) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 02:03:54 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: [CFP] Special Issue on Human-in-the-loop Machine Learning and its Applications - NCAA Journal (Deadline Extended) In-Reply-To: References: , , , Message-ID: https://www.springer.com/journal/521/updates/17925472 ================================================================================= Call for Papers: NCAA Special Issue on human-in-the-loop machine learning and its applications ================================================================================= Deadline for submission: Jan 31, 2021 (Extended) [https://media.springernature.com/w92/springer-static/cover/journal/521.jpg] Neural Computing and Applications | Topical collection on human-in-the-loop machine learning and its applications - Springer Topical Collection on Human-in-the-loop Machine Learning and its Applications. Aims, Scope and Objective. Human-in-the-Loop (HIL) means including human feedback into ... www.springer.com Dear Colleagues, Human-in-the-Loop (HIL) means including human feedback into the training loop of the machine learning models in order to facilitate the following requirements: 1) to improve the quality of training and reduce/prevent the error of the model. When the testing error is larger than a certain threshold, the HIL learning model is able to obtain the new data-points from the users in an interactive way. In some situations, a large error produced by the model should be avoided. For instance, reinforcement learning alone is not sufficient to achieve safety if there exists an exploration policy in robot manipulation, by which some unexpected actions may be generated. In such scenarios, the data-points from human guidance are crucial during both robot?s safe execution as well as model optimization. 2) to incorporate the human user labelling to improve the pre-trained models. During the training of the state-of-the-art models, the quality of the training data-sets is extremely important. One solution to actively incorporate more data is optimizing the models by including the human users? feedback (e.g. rewards in RL) or new data points (e.g. supervised learning) to adapt the pre-trained models in different environments. This special issue will also offer the opportunity for researchers and practitioners in the diverse fields of robotics to showcase its solutions and applications where human reinforcement feedback would have a positive impact on the training processes. The inclusion of HIL would allow robots and machine learning models to use both internal and external feedback to speed up the learning process and also improve its performance. In many ways this could allow the models to learn through their own self-reflection as well as the external input from a human. Specifically, as a following-up journal publication of the special session in HIL machine learning in IEEE SMC 2020, the extended versions of the accepted paper are mostly welcomed. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Human Guided Reinforcement Learning Human-robot Collaboration Human-robot Social Interaction Dialogue Systems with Human-in-the-loop Interpretable Machine Learning with Human-in-the-loop Active Learning and Continuous Learning Learning by Demonstration Human Factors in HCI/HRI etc. Deadlines Deadline for submissions: extended to 31st January 2021 Deadline for review: 28th March 2021 Decisions: 20th April 2021 Deadline for revised version by authors: 20th May 2021 Deadline for 2nd review: 10th June 2021 Final decisions: 20th June 2021 Wish you a merry Christmas, Guest Editors Dr. Joni Zhong (Lead Guest Editor), The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, joni.zhong at ieee.org Dr. Mark Elshaw, Coventry University, UK, mark.elshaw at coventry.ac.uk Dr. Yanan Li, Sussex University, UK, yl557 at sussex.ac.uk Prof. Dr. Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg, Germany, wermter at informatik.uni-hamburg.de Prof. Xiaofeng Liu, Hohai University, China, xfliu at hhu.edu.cn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From trungdung.ngo at gmail.com Sat Dec 19 21:27:05 2020 From: trungdung.ngo at gmail.com (Ngo Trung Dung) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 22:27:05 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: [Jobs] PhD and Master positions in Robotics, Control, and AI at UPEI, Canada. Message-ID: The Morelab.org of UPEI has multiple open positions with full scholarship (tuition fees and living expenses). Applicants with solid background in Engineering or Computer Science (Robotics, Control Engineering, Robot Vision and AI) are preferable. Excellent knowledge in Math and practical experience in Computer Programming are required. Hands-on skills in ROS and Matlab are highly expected. Admission requirements: English score (IELTS >= 6.5) and GPA (>75%). You will have opportunities to access the high-end research equipment, 2500sqft lab space, and work in a friendly and open working atmosphere. You can the demonstration of our research projects at: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMoreThanOne/videos Contact the lab director (morelab.org at gmail.com) for more information. Please send your CV, degrees and transcripts, samples of your research work along with a research statement. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aihuborg at gmail.com Fri Dec 18 10:02:10 2020 From: aihuborg at gmail.com (AIhub) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 15:02:10 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: AIhub - launch of focus series on UN sustainable development goals Message-ID: AIhub - launch of focus series on UN sustainable development goals AIhub is a non-profit dedicated to connecting the AI community to the public by providing free, high-quality information through AIhub.org ( https://aihub.org/). We help researchers publish latest AI news, summaries of their work, opinion pieces, tutorials and more. We are supported by many leading scientific organizations in AI, namely AAAI , NeurIPS , ICML , AIJ /IJCAI , ACM SIGAI , CLAIRE and RoboCup . We launched at the beginning of 2020 and have posted over 240 articles from over 90 contributors from across the world. We?ve also covered over 20 conferences. We are excited to announce the launch of a focus series on ?AI for Good: UN sustainable development goals?. Each month we will pick a different sustainable development goal (SDG) and highlight work in that area. To start the series we will be publishing articles on the SDG ?good health and well-being?. Contributions are still welcome. You will be able to find all the articles related to this issue as we publish them at this link: https://aihub.org/tag/focus-on-good-health-and-well-being/ Please let us know if we can help spread the word about your work. If you would like to get involved then please do get in touch at: aihuborg at gmail.com. You can follow us on Twitter (@aihuborg), LinkedIn (aihuborg) and Facebook (aihuborg). Our webpage: https://aihub.org/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk Fri Dec 18 09:31:23 2020 From: ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk (Chris Williams) Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 14:31:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: ML Lecturer/Reader (Asst/Assoc Prof), Informatics, U Edinburgh, 14 Jan deadline Message-ID: [please direct informal enquiries to Prof Iain Murray, i.murray at ed.ac.uk] Dear all, We welcome applications to the following machine learning faculty position: https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/mljob Deadline: 14 January 2021, 5pm UTC Applications are invited for a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer or Reader in Machine Learning at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, as part of substantial University expansion in machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence. A lectureship is a full-time academic position roughly equivalent to an assistant professorship in other countries; senior lecturer and reader are roughly equivalent to associate professor. We seek candidates with research interests in the development of cutting-edge machine learning methods. Candidates will have a research interests in principled approaches to machine learning, novel developments in deep learning, machine learning for new or important tasks, and/or the development of novel methods of wide applicability and with state-of-the-art capability. The University of Edinburgh has one of the largest academic machine learning research groups in Europe. We also benefit from close links to groups in Maths and Statistics, and other active areas of artificial intelligence in the School, including natural language processing, speech processing, robotics, and computer vision. The School of Informatics is host to the UKRI/EPSRC Centres for Doctoral Training in Data Science, in Biomedical Artificial Intelligence, in Natural Language Processing, and in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. The adjacent Thomas Bayes Centre for Data Technology is the home for data-driven applied and translational research at Edinburgh. The University is one of the five founding partner universities in the UK's Alan Turing Institute for Data Science, providing opportunities to interact with Turing PhD students, research fellows and senior researchers. In addition, the University has just established one of the first ELLIS units, which are recognized centres of excellence in AI research across Europe. In addition, there are many opportunities to engage with other parts of the University and beyond in order to further the candidate's research agenda. The successful candidate(s) will have a PhD; experience as an established researcher in the theory and application of machine learning methods; enthusiasm to undertake original research including leading a research group; ability to engage with undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and academic supervision. Lecturer Grade: UE08 (?41,526 - ?49,533) Senior Lecturer or Reader Grade: UE09 (?52,559 - ?59,135) Deadline: 14 January 2021, 5pm UTC For full details and to apply, see: https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/mljob -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From cskemp at gmail.com Fri Dec 18 14:42:20 2020 From: cskemp at gmail.com (Charles Kemp) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 06:42:20 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Toronto-Melbourne PhD positions in computational cognitive linguistics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Lea Frermann (Melbourne), Charles Kemp (Melbourne) and Yang Xu (Toronto) have funding for two PhD students as part of a Toronto-Melbourne partnership in the area of Computational Cognitive Linguistics. The titles of the projects are 1. A computational analysis of library classification through time https://toronto.research.unimelb.edu.au/2020/12/15/a-computational-analysis-of-library-classification-through-time/ 2. A computational analysis of conceptual combination through time https://toronto.research.unimelb.edu.au/2020/12/15/a-computational-analysis-of-conceptual-combination-through-time/ More information about both projects is below, and information about how to apply is at https://toronto.research.unimelb.edu.au/2020/12/16/how-to-apply/ Both students will spend roughly two years in Toronto and two years in Melbourne over the course of their PhDs. Applicants must be ready to start a PhD some time in 2021, and applications will be considered as soon as they are received. Please contact any one of us for more information. Lea ( lea.frermann at unimelb.edu.au ) Charles ( c.kemp at unimelb.edu.au ) Yang ( yangxu at cs.toronto.edu ) Individual Project advertisements 1. A computational analysis of library classification through time This PhD project jointly offered by the University of Toronto (UofT) and the University of Melbourne (UoM) will provide training and research opportunities for a student applicant in the area of computational cognitive linguistics. The student will work under the joint supervision of faculty members from both institutions (PI at UoM: Charles Kemp, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences; PI at UofT: Yang Xu, Department of Computer Science and Cognitive Science Program) and will spend two years at each institution. The project is a large-scale computational analysis of human categorization. We will take library classification as a case study, and will draw on data from thousands of libraries to explore how book classifications have emerged over time. The first part of the project will explore the extent to which existing models of categorization and cultural evolution can account for library classification. The second part will focus on classification bias, and will use computational methods to identify ways in which classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal system can be adjusted to better represent the diversity of materials in library collections worldwide. The PhD program will commence in 2021 and has an expected duration of 4 to 4.5 years, with full financial support including tuition, stipend, and relevant travelling expenses. The student will begin coursework and research at UofT for an initial period of 2 years, and then proceed to further research and dissertation work at UoM to complete the program. The applicant should have obtained a Bachelor?s or Master?s degree by January 2021 in an area related to the project (e.g. computer science, cognitive science, psychology, or linguistics). The applicant should have a general interest in the area of cognitive linguistics, and strong programming skills are essential. A background in natural language processing is desirable but not essential. UofT and UoM are both committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion and applicants from diverse and underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply. 2. A computational analysis of conceptual combination through time This joint PhD project from the University of Toronto (UofT) and the University of Melbourne (UoM) will provide training and research opportunities for a student applicant in the area of computational cognitive linguistics. The student will work under the joint supervision of faculty members from both institutions (PI at UofT: Yang Xu, Department of Computer Science and Cognitive Science Program; PI at UoM: Lea Frermann, School of Computing and Information Systems) and spend two years at each institution. The proposed PhD project will develop a computational approach to investigate the process of conceptual combination, particularly how compound words are formed over time in natural languages. The goal of this project is to characterize the regularities in compound formation, and the extent to which they might inform the principles and automated processing of emergent compounds across languages. The PhD program will commence in 2021 and has an expected duration of 4 to 4.5 years, with full financial support including tuition, stipend, and relevant travelling expenses. The student will begin coursework and research at UofT for an initial period of 2 years, and then proceed to further research and dissertation work at UoM to complete the program. The applicant should have obtained a Bachelor?s or Master?s degree by January, 2021 in computer science or cognitive science. The applicant should have a general interest in the area of cognitive linguistics, with proficiency in programming and computational skills in probabilistic modelling and natural language processing. UofT and UoM are both committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion and applicants from diverse and underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Sun Dec 20 10:46:15 2020 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 15:46:15 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: New publication of computational modelling of antisaccade performance in early Huntington's disease In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I would like to bring to your attention a recent paper of ours entitled "NEURAL MODELLING OF ANTISACCADE PERFORMANCE OF HEALTHY CONTROLS AND EARLY HUNTINGTON'S DISEASE PATIENTS" published in Chaos journal. Questions, comments, criticism are most welcome. A brief description of our research work and its findings follow: Antisaccade task, a behavioral response inhibition paradigm, involves suppression of the reflex to look towards a newly presented target (error prosaccade response) and instead directs the eyes to a position diametrically opposite to target?s position (correct antisaccade response). Failure to suppress the error prosaccade response results in a direction error. ?wo processes usually take place during this task: (1) suppression of an error prosaccade towards the peripheral stimulus, and (2) generation of an antisaccade to the diametrically opposite direction. Participants have been observed to express any of the following three eye movement behaviors during a trial: (1) Participant fails to suppress the error prosaccade resultingin a direction error, (2) Participant makes an antisaccade, or (3) Participant makes an error prosaccade and corrects with a corrected antisaccade in the same trial. The current accepted dogma in the antisaccade task is that a third top-down inhibitory signal is needed to suppress the error prosaccade in favor of the antisaccade. In line with this dogma past modelling studies of the antisaccade task in health and Huntington disease (HD) required the presence of a third STOP decision signal to suppress in trials the erroneous response. These models although they provided a successful mechanistic view of decision making in the antisaccade task, they failed to capture all aspects of antisaccade performance. Our research work described in our paper offers an alternative view, which succeeds for the first time to: 1. Capture all aspects of the antisaccade performance of both healthy controls and early HD patients 2. Offer a mechanistic view of processes taking place in the antisaccade paradigm 3. Decipher the mechanisms which give rise to the observed slowed and more variable antisaccade latencies and increased error rates in HD patients relative to healthycontrols. The model shows that the poor HD antisaccade performance is not due to a deficit in the top-down inhibitory control of the erroneous responseas many speculated, but instead is a productof a competition between two different neuronal populations each coding for a different decision signal: one coding for the erroneous prosaccade decision and the other one for antisaccade decision. The model accurately reproduces the error rates, response latencies and latency distributions of antisaccades, error prosaccades and corrected antisaccades of both healthy controls and HD participants. Our model shows that the increased variability in the antisaccade and corrected antisaccade RT distributions of HD participants are due to a slower and noisier accumulation of information (? and ?), but the HD patients? confidence level required before commitment to a particular course of action is not affected by the disease. Our results have major implications in clinical and pharmaceutical research. Furthermore, our results illustrate the benefits of tightly integrating psychophysical studies with computational neural modelling, because the two methods complement each other and they may provide together a strong basis for hypothesis generation and theory testing regarding the neural basis of decision making in health and in disease. Kind regards, Vassilis Cutsuridis University of Lincoln UK -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dayan at tue.mpg.de Sat Dec 19 11:51:03 2020 From: dayan at tue.mpg.de (Peter Dayan) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 17:51:03 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?iso-8859-1?q?Computational_Psychiatry_Professor?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_position=2C_T=FCbingen?= In-Reply-To: <20201103213040.GA17023@tuebingen.mpg.de> References: <20201103213040.GA17023@tuebingen.mpg.de> Message-ID: <20201219165103.v64kjmqwxhobckdx@tuebingen.mpg.de> The University of T?bingen and the University Medical Center, T?bingen are seeking a full (W3) professor in Computational Psychiatry: Please see: https://www.academics.com/jobs/full-professor-w3-for-computational-psychiatry-university-of-tuebingen-faculty-of-medicine-tuebingen-1033847#SPCoR1V4MGdRZz0sLA== [the closing date for applications is 28th January 2021] There is the opportunity for close links between this position and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics - and also with the highly active wider neuroscience, psychiatry and machine learning communities across T?bingen. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 4936 bytes Desc: not available URL: From laurenz.wiskott at rub.de Sat Dec 19 08:49:18 2020 From: laurenz.wiskott at rub.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 14:49:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Open position for a PhD-student in Computational Neuroscience with Prof. Laurenz Wiskott at the Institute for Neural Computation, Bochum, Germany Message-ID: <20201219134918.GO2083@curry> ____________________________________________________________________________ Open position for a PhD-student with Prof. Laurenz Wiskott at the Institute for Neural Computation, Bochum, Germany ____________________________________________________________________________ Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum is one of the leading research universities. The university draws its strengths from both the diversity and the proximity of scientific and engineering disciplines on a single, coherent campus. This highly dynamic setting enables students and researchers to work across traditional boundaries of academic subjects and faculties. The Institute for Neural Computation is a central research institute at the Ruhr-University Bochum, see https://www.ini.rub.de/. It focuses on the dynamics and learning of perception and behavior on a functional level but is otherwise very diverse, ranging from neurophysiology and psychophysics over computational neuroscience to machine learning and technical applications. We are looking for an excellent PhD student (m/f/d) for the following research topic: The project has the goal to understand the neural basis of navigation in rodents. Building on existing models the PhD student (m/f/d) shall develop a model of the hippocampus for storing episodic sequences and apply it to navigational experience. The load of teaching will be calculated according to ?3 of Lehrverpflichtungsverordnung (state of North Rhine-Westphalia). The appointment will be for three years with an option for extension. Anticipated starting date is April 1, 2021. Salary is 29,87 h/w of salary scale TV-L E12/13. Informal inquiries can be addressed to Prof. Dr. Laurenz Wiskott . Applications (CV, transcript of records for MSc and BSc, statement of purpose) should be sent as a single pdf file to Prof. Dr. Laurenz Wiskott . Travel expenses for interviews cannot be refunded. https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/en/information-collection-personal-data-application-process At Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, we wish to promote careers of women in areas in which they are underrepresented, and we would therefore like to encourage female candidates to send us their applications. Applications by suitable candidates with severe disabilities and other applicants with equal legal status are likewise most welcome. From laurenz.wiskott at rub.de Sat Dec 19 08:25:50 2020 From: laurenz.wiskott at rub.de (Laurenz Wiskott) Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2020 14:25:50 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Two open positions for a PhD-student in Machine Learning at the Institute for Neural Computation, Bochum, Germany Message-ID: <20201219132550.GL2083@curry> ____________________________________________________________________________ Two open positions for a PhD-student with Prof. Tobias Glasmachers and Prof. Laurenz Wiskott at the Institute for Neural Computation, Bochum, Germany ____________________________________________________________________________ The Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum is one of the leading research universities. The university draws its strengths from both the diversity and the proximity of scientific and engineering disciplines on a single, coherent campus. This highly dynamic setting enables students and researchers to work across traditional boundaries of academic subjects and faculties. The Institute for Neural Computation is a central research institute at the Ruhr-University Bochum, see https://www.ini.rub.de/. It focuses on the dynamics and learning of perception and behavior on a functional level but is otherwise very diverse, ranging from neurophysiology and psychophysics over computational neuroscience to machine learning and technical applications. There are two open positions for PhD students (m/f/d) for a research project in the field of Machine Learning in the groups of Prof. Dr. Tobias Glasmachers and Prof. Dr. Laurenz Wiskott. The project has the goal to develop a system for transparent and structured data analysis with methods from machine learning. The system shall enable non-ML-experts, who have good knowledge of the application domain, to make a sensible and targeted data analysis. This project is embedded in a large competence center for AI in the work sciences and will be conducted with colleagues at the RUB and industrial partners. If the position is funded by third-party funds the employee has no teaching obligation. The appointment will be for three years with an option of extension. Anticipated starting date is March 1, 2021. Salary is 80% of salary scale TV-L E12/13. Applications (CV, transcript of records for MSc and BSc, statement of purpose) should be sent by January 17, 2021 as a single pdf file to laurenz.wiskott at rub.de and tobias.glasmachers at ini.rub.de. Travel expenses for interviews cannot be refunded. Ruhr-University Bochum is committed to equal opportunity in employment and gender equality in its working environment. We therefore look forward to applications from qualified women. Applications from appropriately qualified handicapped persons are also encouraged. From chiara.boldrini at iit.cnr.it Sun Dec 20 11:00:01 2020 From: chiara.boldrini at iit.cnr.it (Chiara Boldrini) Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2020 17:00:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PMC Special Issue: IoT for Fighting COVID-19 [few days left] Message-ID: <20201220160001.Pu5KV%chiara.boldrini@iit.cnr.it> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR PAPERS Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC) Journal - (2019 IF: 2.725) Special Issue on IoT for Fighting COVID-19 ***** Submission Deadline: December 21st, 2020 [EXTENDED] ***** https://www.journals.elsevier.com/pervasive-and-mobile-computing/call-for-papers/special-issue-on-iot-for-fighting-covid-19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Throughout history, pandemics have ravaged humanity with plagues and infections that created humanitarian crises, severed social interactions, hindered economic growth, and caused human lives loss. With the most recent COVID-19 outbreak, researchers and practitioners across various domains such as medical and life sciences, economics, and engineering are coming together to put forward solutions to counter such a threat and aid the society in coping with the fallbacks. In the same context, the computing community in general and IoT researchers and practitioners in particular face a challenge about how IoT-based systems can be exploited to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. This special issue aims to find answers to some fundamental questions such as what IoT systems, technologies, and infrastructures can be exploited for data and knowledge-driven management of the pandemics, how IoT can enable innovative and unconventional solutions for mitigating outbreaks (through mechanisms such as context-sensitive contact tracing and symptomatic detection, smart lockdowns, crowd-sensed discovery of the emerging clusters), and how IoT can contribute to increased public awareness and safety, and counter the negative emotional and social impact. This special issue invites technical papers that focus on theoretical and applied research contributions that present original ideas, modeling and simulation results, prototypes, and real-world experiences in the context of IoT for countering pandemics. Interdisciplinary works are most welcome. This special issue will focus on (but will not be limited to) the following topics: * Engineering of IoT Systems to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: IoT-driven smart lockdown; context-sensitive contact tracing and symptomatic detection; crowd-sensed identification of the pandemic hotspots; IoT-driven smart health in the time of pandemics; IoT-driven detection of transmission pathways and dose-response effect; data engineering for pandemic IoT systems. * Algorithms for IoT Systems to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: Context modeling and reasoning applied to pandemics; activity and well-being recognition for early detection of symptoms and monitoring of disease progression; data mining, machine learning and causal reasoning applied to IoT systems to fight pandemics; social and complex networks of IoT devices during pandemics. * Empirical Research on IoTs to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: Industrial findings and experience reports; validation and evaluation research; measurement studies; systematic mapping studies, or systematic literature reviews. * Reference Architectures, Infrastructures, and Tools for IoT Systems to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: IoT-driven pandemic management; architectural patterns and styles for pandemic tracing; prototypes and tool support; mobile cloud computing, fog and edge computing; development environments, frameworks, and tools; technological IoT innovations; trust, security, and privacy. * Analytical models of IoT Systems to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: performance models of IoT-driven containment and mitigation strategies; analytical studies of required IoT penetration to achieve control of the epidemic; data-driven IoT models and estimation of key parameters to feed into theoretical models. * Application of IoT Systems to Counter the COVID-19 Pandemic: smart healthcare; smart emergency response systems; smart community and crowd management; food security; smart lockers and innovative choice, pack and delivery methods; unconnected infrastructure and IoT systems. * IoT Systems beyond COVID-19: experience reports, applied solutions, frameworks, prototypes, simulations, and validation research to detect, manage, and counter epidemics like Dengue, Ebola, SARS, Zika, etc. Timeline -------- Submission deadline: 21 December 2020 (EXTENDED) First notification: February 2021 Guest Editors ------------- Chiara Boldrini, Lead Guest Editor IIT-CNR, Italy Aakash Ahmad University of Ha?il, Saudi Arabia & TeraBlu IoT Systems, Pakistan Mahdi Fahmideh University of Wollongong, Australia Rabie Ramadan Cairo University, Egypt & University of Ha?il, Saudi Arabia Mohamed Younis University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA Submission Guidelines --------------------- All submissions have to be prepared according to the Guide for Authors as published in the Journal website at https://www.journals.elsevier.com/pervasive-and-mobile-computing. Authors should select ?VSI: IoT-COVID19?, from the ?Choose Article Type? pull-down menu during the submission process. To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified, for consideration by the special issue, the authors should indicate in the cover letter that the manuscript has been submitted for the special issue ?IoT for Fighting COVID-19?. All contributions must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A submission based on one or more papers that appeared elsewhere has to comprise major value-added extensions over what appeared previously (at least 40% new material). Authors are requested to attach to the submitted paper their relevant, previously published articles and a summary in the cover letter explaining the enhancements made in the journal version. For further information, please contact the guest editors. From antona at alleninstitute.org Mon Dec 21 20:39:00 2020 From: antona at alleninstitute.org (Anton Arkhipov) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 01:39:00 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Scientist position at the Allen Institute: modeling using reconstructed cortical tissue Message-ID: Join us to analyze world-class experimental data and build the next generation of brain models! This opening is in the lab of Anton Arkhipov at the Allen Institute (Seattle, WA). One position is already taken, but one is still available: Scientist I - Bio-realistic Modeling of Reconstructed Cortical Tissue See details and apply here: https://alleninstitute.hrmdirect.com/employment/job-opening.php?req=1415274 The Scientist will focus on data analysis and modeling of structure, activity, and computations in mouse cortical circuits. This project will take advantage of unprecedented experimental datasets from the Allen Institute that contain a systematic characterization of synaptic connections between the cell types (https://portal.brain-map.org/explore/connectivity/synaptic-physiology) and a connectome of individual neurons coupled with dense recordings of activity in the mouse visual cortex (https://microns-explorer.org). The Scientist will work collaboratively with colleagues to integrate these data into new, highly realistic network models of cortical circuits, use the models to explore theoretical predictions, and provide them as a resource to fuel future theoretical, modeling, and experimental work in the community. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moritz.grosse-wentrup at univie.ac.at Wed Dec 23 08:42:10 2020 From: moritz.grosse-wentrup at univie.ac.at (Moritz Grosse-Wentrup) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2020 14:42:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Announcing the 2nd Brain-Computer Interface Un-Conference (2nd BCI-UC) In-Reply-To: <591cf8aa-c57b-8aad-1e57-23e2c7fbe9fc@univie.ac.at> References: <591cf8aa-c57b-8aad-1e57-23e2c7fbe9fc@univie.ac.at> Message-ID: <5f10ced6-8983-5142-7a2c-a9d27911305e@univie.ac.at> We cordially invite you to the 2nd BCI Un-Conference (BCI-UC) on February 10 and 11, 2021, from 03:00 pm to 08:00 pm (CET)! https://bciunconference.univie.ac.at/2nd-bci-uc/ The BCI-UC is an online un-conference that provides rapid dissemination of novel research results in the BCI community. The BCI-UC does not publish conference proceedings. As such, submitted abstracts can report novel as well as already published work. The BCI-UC does not have a program committee that reviews submitted abstracts. Instead, all registered participants can vote which of the submitted abstracts they would like to see presented at the un-conference. Registration and attendance are free-of-charge. The second BCI-UC will feature keynotes by Marco Congedo [3] on Riemannian transfer learning and by Camille Jeunet on user-centered BCI design [4]. All presentations of the first BCI-UC, which >300 participants attended, can be re-watched at [2]. Registration and abstract submission are open as of today [1]. Voting on submitted abstracts begins on January 13th. Abstract submission remains open until January 25th, 11:59 pm (CET). The voting phase ends on January 27th, 11:59 pm (CET). We will invite the authors of the top-voted abstracts to present their work at the un-conference. For the 2nd BCI-UC, we solicit two types of submissions: * _Presentations_ are applications for 20 minutes slots by a single presenter. * _Mini-symposia_ are applications for 60 minutes slots by multiple presenters on a coherent topic, possibly including a panel discussion. Submissions are text-only. The length and format of the submissions are up to the authors -- use whatever format you consider best for attracting up-votes! Voting procedures will not distinguish between the two submission types, i.e., the community decides on the fraction of presentations vs. mini-symposia. Join us in supporting this novel community-driven dissemination of research results! The BCI-UC committee: Moritz Grosse-Wentrup Anja Meunier Philipp Raggam Jiachen Xu Links: 1. https://bciunconference.univie.ac.at/register-vote/ 2. https://bciunconference.univie.ac.at/1st-bci-uc/ 3. https://sites.google.com/site/marcocongedo 4. https://camillejeunet.wordpress.com/ -- Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup Research Group Neuroinformatics Faculty of Computer Science University of Vienna H?rlgasse 6, A-1090 Wien, Austria moritz.grosse-wentrup at univie.ac.at +43-1-4277-79610 http://neural.engineering/ From axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar Tue Dec 22 14:40:26 2020 From: axel.soto at cs.uns.edu.ar (Axel Soto) Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:40:26 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: IUI Workshop on Exploratory Search and Interactive Data Analytics (ESIDA) - Deadline extension Message-ID: Fourth IUI Workshop on Exploratory Search and Interactive Data Analytics (ESIDA) https://sites.google.com/view/esida2021/home 13 April 2021, Virtual Important Dates (submission deadline extended): Submission deadline: January 6, 2020 (midnight Hawaii time) Acceptance notification: January 31, 2021 Final manuscript due: February 15, 2021 Workshop: April 13, 2021 Workshop Description: This workshop will be part of the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces 2021 Conference (http://iui.acm.org/2021/). The workshop focuses on systems that personalize, summarize and visualize the data for supporting interactive information seeking and information discovery, along with tools that enable user modeling and methods for incorporating the user needs and preferences into both analytics and visualization. Our aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on different personalization aspects and applications of exploratory search and interactive data analytics. This will allow us to achieve four goals: (1) propose new strategies for systems that need to convey the rationale behind their decisions or inference, and the sequence of steps that lead to speci?c (search) results; (2) develop new user modeling and personalization techniques for exploratory search and interactive data analytics; (3) develop a common set of design principles for this type of systems across platforms, contexts, users and applications; (4) develop a set of evaluation metrics for personalization in exploratory search. The workshop aims to solicit submissions in the following areas of personalized interactive data analytics and exploratory search: Personalized interactive exploration via interactive data analytics: ? personalization aspects in systems for exploratory search. ? cross-domain/ context-aware/ cross-platform exploratory search systems. ? interactively modelling the user?s information needs for high-recall information retrieval. ? new applications of exploratory search and interactive data analytics. Data analytics: ? interactive interfaces for data-intensive platforms. ? interaction degrees of freedom. ? preprocessing vs. online processing. ? interactive data visualization evaluation of interactive systems for exploratory search and data analytics. Metrics for explainable intelligent systems: ? metrics for explainable exploratory search. ? explainability and transparency in expert vs. non-expert systems. ? human-in-the-loop analytics systems. ? ef?cient vs. explainable analytics. ? user perception of explainability and transparency in interactive intelligent systems. Organisers: Dorota Glowacka, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki (Finland), glowacka[at]cs.heelsinki.fi Evangelos Milios, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Canada), eem[at]cs.dal.ca Axel J. Soto, Institute for Computer Science and Engineering, UNS - CONICET (Argentina), axel.soto[at]cs.uns.edu.ar Fernando V. Paulovich, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University (Canada), paulovich[at]dal.ca Denis Parra, Department of Computer Science, Pontificia Universidad Cat?lica (Chile) , dparra[at]ing.puc.cl Osnat (Ossi) Mokryn, Department of Information and Knowledge Management, University of Haifa (Israel), omokryn[at]univ.haifa.ac.il Submission Information: We encourage submissions of work in progress, concept papers, case studies, ongoing research projects, reports on recently completed PhD dissertations or recently accepted journal papers, and generally material that will stimulate discussion, generate useful feedback to the authors, encourage research collaborations and vigorous exchange of ideas on promising research directions, in one of the following formats: -full papers (up to 8 pages in ACM sigconf format), which will presented either as contributed talks or posters -extended abstracts (up to 4 pages in ACM sigconf format), which will be presented as posters with a possibility to be accompanied by a demo. Papers can be submitted through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=esida21 From li.zhaoping at tuebingen.mpg.de Thu Dec 24 04:06:00 2020 From: li.zhaoping at tuebingen.mpg.de (Li Zhaoping) Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2020 10:06:00 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline soon: Postdoc in human psychophysics/fMRI with potential for a long term/permanent position in Tuebingen, Germany In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2f2e15b4-c27b-4d39-c816-f2a6e5afca1a@tuebingen.mpg.de> Application deadline for this position is coming soon on Dec. 31, 2020, but we will keep accepting applications until this position is filled. Details on the postdoc position: https://webdav.tuebingen.mpg.de/agzl/data/Postdoc_Psychophysics_July_2020.pdf This position starts with a fixed term of 2-3 years, and the postdoc can then apply for? an? extension or for a permanent staff scientist position in the lab. We also have a Ph.D. position in the lab, see https://webdav.tuebingen.mpg.de/agzl/data/Postdoc_Psychophysics_July_2020.pdf Possible projects include, but are not limited to, visual attention (e.g., in visual search or object recognition experiments), visual recognition/discrimination (e.g., in color vision, stereo/dichoptic vision, illusions in central and/or peripheral vision), and visual adaptation. We use a variety of techniques including eye tracking, fMRI, EEG, TMS, and other psychology and neuroimaging methods. From wachtler at biologie.uni-muenchen.de Wed Dec 23 11:58:23 2020 From: wachtler at biologie.uni-muenchen.de (Thomas Wachtler) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:58:23 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ANDA 2021 - G-Node Advanced Neural Data Analysis Course, April 19-29, 2021 In-Reply-To: References: <653a738c3e45bfdc9ee42c46df908e47@biologie.uni-muenchen.de> <19172da72d729f87e144662a16f9d7f7@biologie.uni-muenchen.de> Message-ID: <954643a5099c55bc54385161460e41f4@biologie.uni-muenchen.de> ANDA 2021 - G-Node Advanced Neural Data Analysis Course April 19 - 29, 2021 _Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this 4th ANDA course will be held as an online course_ Techniques to record neuronal data from populations of neurons are rapidly improving. Simultaneous recordings from hundreds of channels are possible while animals perform complex behavioral tasks. Analysis of such massive and complex data becomes increasingly challenging. This advanced course aims at providing training in state-of-the-art analysis approaches in systems neuroscience. The course is addressed to excellent master and PhD students and young researchers who are interested in learning advanced techniques in data analytics and in getting hands-on experience in the analysis of electrophysiological data. Internationally renowned researchers will give lectures on statistical data analysis and data mining methods with accompanying exercises. Students will define and perform their own analyses on provided data to solve a challenge. Participants are required to have a strong interest in data analysis, a background in a mathematical or related field, knowledge of algebra, matrix operations, and statistics, and need to have solid programming experience (preferably in Python). Faculty ? Michael Denker, J?lich Research Center, Germany ? Udo Ernst, Univ. Bremen, Germany ? Sonja Gr?n, J?lich Research Center, Germany ? Bj?rn Kampa, RWTH Aachen Univ., Germany ? Adam Kohn, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA ? Jakob Macke, TU Munich, Germany ? Luca Mazzucato, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, USA ? Martin Nawrot, Univ. of Cologne, Germany ? Yifat Prut, Hebrew Univ. Jerusalem, Israel ? Hansj?rg Scherberger, German Primate Center, G?ttingen, Germany ? Thomas Wachtler, LMU Munich, Germany Topics covered Single neuron properties and statistics ? Stochastic processes ? Surrogate methods ? Detection of spatio-temporal patterns ? Unitary Events ? Statistical analysis of massively parallel spike data ? Higher-order correlation analyses ? Elephant toolbox ? Spike-LFP relationship ? Population coding ? State space analysis ? Machine learning ? Data mining ? Research data management and reproducibility Application deadline: January 31, 2021 For further information see http://www.g-node.org/anda -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ Comp-neuro mailing list Comp-neuro at neuroinformatics.be http://www.tnb.ua.ac.be/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro From marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com Thu Dec 24 11:09:05 2020 From: marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com (Marc Dymetman) Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2020 17:09:05 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ICLR-2021 Workshop on Energy Based Models --- Call for Papers Message-ID: <3DA7F77C-7CC4-4335-8C1B-62B6798EFC53@naverlabs.com> We are pleased to announce the ICLR-2021 Workshop: Energy Based Models: Current Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities, to be held virtually on May 8, 2021 Workshop page (please consult for up-to-date information): https://sites.google.com/d/1aQ_ABKq-njBwddYvvcBpKEVGlGu3KlYa/p/1EGCboUNr8zqSOTpgngecxZ0Z8n6DNI4t/edit ABOUT THE WORKSHOP: Energy-Based Models (EBMs) are a learning framework that assigns a quality score to any given input, its energy; contrary to probabilistic models, there is no a priori requirement that these scores be normalized (i.e. sum to one). Energies are typically computed through a neural network, and training an EBM corresponds to shaping the energy function such that data points nearby the underlying data manifold are associated with lower energies than data points that are far from it. Not imposing normalization affords a great power and flexibility to the modelling process, e.g. in terms of combining energies, on conditioning on certain variables, of computing global scores on complex structured objects, or on expressing prior knowledge. However, this freedom comes with significant technical challenges, in terms of learning and inference. A strong comeback of EBMs is currently underway. The goals of this Workshop are: ? To provide a forum for discussing cutting-edge research on different EBM approaches (e.g for continuous vs. discrete problems, strategies to shape the energy function, etc.), and to position these in the broader ML landscape (MCMC, GANs, RL, Variational Inference, etc.) ? To bring together different communities, not only from core ML, but also from application domains such as vision, nlp, biology, neuroscience, etc. ? To learn and exchange ideas about current and potential applications of EBMs, and to provide insights which may inspire novel EBM developments. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: We welcome submissions on (non exhaustive list): ? Techniques for high-dimensional continuous EBMs (e.g. in Vision, Neuroscience) and for discrete EBMs (e.g. in NLP, Biology). ? Probabilistic (e.g. advanced MCMC and variational inference) and non-probabilistic (e.g. contrastive learning) approaches for training EBMs. ? Comparisons, connections and combinations with other ML approaches and frameworks (Autoregressive models, GANs, Variational Auto-Encoders, Reinforcement Learning, ... ). ? Multidisciplinary applications of EBMs to different domains. ? Applications of EBMs to unsupervised, self-supervised and latent models. ? Emerging models of computation exploiting Energy characteristics in physical processes. ? Opinion pieces in favor or against EBMs. Submissions will be either short papers (between 4 and 6 pages, excluding references) or extended abstracts (2 pages, excluding references). We welcome submissions that are work in progress, as well as submissions that are currently under review at other venues, as long as that fit the format above. Submissions should follow ICLR2021 submission format (LaTeX,Overleaf). Submissions will be evaluated by a Programme Committee to be announced later. Accepted papers will be presented during poster sessions, with a few contributed talks. They will be posted on the workshop site, under a non-archival status. Submission A link for submitting will be provided soon on the workshop page. The review process will be double-blind. Authors should make sure to anonymise their submissions by removing names and affiliations. Available grants The workshop will provide ICLR registrations for authors of a few selected papers. TIMELINE: February 24, 2021 : Submission Deadline (11:59PM Anywhere on Earth) March 26, 2021: Notification of acceptance TBD: Camera-ready papers due TBD: Presentation recordings due May 8, 2021: Workshop INVITED SPEAKERS/PANELISTS: Benjamin Scellier, Mila, Universit? de Montr?al Debora Marks, Harvard University Simon Osindero, DeepMind Stefano Ermon, Stanford Will Grathwohl, University of Toronto Yann Le Cun, Facebook AI Research Yingszhen Li, Microsoft Research ORGANIZERS: Adji Bousso Dieng, Google Brain Hady Elsahar, Naver Labs Europe Igor Mordatch, Google Brain Marc Dymetman, Naver Labs Europe Marc?Aurelio Ranzato, Facebook AI Research PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: To be announced -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jtouboul at brandeis.edu Thu Dec 24 15:41:23 2020 From: jtouboul at brandeis.edu (Jonathan Touboul) Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2020 15:41:23 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position in theoretical neuroscience at Brandeis University In-Reply-To: <3641F3B3-63B9-44C5-9BF1-C182A5B35C61@brandeis.edu> References: <3641F3B3-63B9-44C5-9BF1-C182A5B35C61@brandeis.edu> Message-ID: <67A5B870-EA97-4602-829C-898DF163F268@brandeis.edu> I am reposting this ad with the correct application link - the initial link was pointing to our tenure-track position? A postdoctoral position is available in the Department of mathematics at Brandeis University under the mentoring of Jonathan Touboul to work on probability or dynamical problems arising in mathematical biology. Research topics include randomly connected networks and dynamical systems, and applications include synaptic plasticity, Parkinson?s disease, embryonic development, stochastic neural networks, ecological models. The techniques we use in the lab include dynamical systems (with delays, jumps and/or multiple timescales), probabilities and statistical physics (stochastic networks, random matrices, large deviations techniques). See http://blogs.brandeis.edu/mathneuro for more information. All projects will involve collaboration with experimental groups in Boston area, Paris and abroad. The position is up to 2 year term, contingent upon satisfactory progress, with competitive salary and benefits packages. The fellow will participate to the vibrant scholar life in the Boston area. The successful candidates will join the Mathematics Department at Brandeis University (http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/mathematics/) with strong ties to the Neuroscience group (http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/). Opportunities to teach in the math department could be available and are encouraged. Candidates should have a Ph.D. in mathematics, applied math, (computational) neuroscience, physics or engineering and have an excellent track record of scholarship, have experience in dynamical systems and/or stochastic models, and be familiar with computational programing. Applications from under-represented groups are strongly encouraged (see statement below). Candidates should send their CV (including a publication list), a cover letter indicating their research interests and professional goals, as well as at least two reference letters, through mathjobs.org: https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/16928 Please do not hesitate to contact Jonathan Touboul jtouboul at brandeis.edu for further information. Applications will be processed on an ongoing basis. At Brandeis, we believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential components of academic excellence. Because diversity, equity, and inclusion are at the core of Brandeis? history and mission, we value and are seeking candidates with a variety of social identities, including those that have been underrepresented in higher education, who possess skills that spark innovation, and who, through their scholarly pursuits, teaching, and/or service experiences, bring expertise in building, engaging, and sustaining a pluralistic, unified, and just campus community. Brandeis University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status,disability or veteran status. From marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com Fri Dec 25 13:54:46 2020 From: marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com (Marc Dymetman) Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2020 19:54:46 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ICLR-2021 Workshop on Energy Based Models --- Call for Papers In-Reply-To: <1CF04FAD-716D-4C0E-8BAC-903CD740448E@naverlabs.com> References: <1CF04FAD-716D-4C0E-8BAC-903CD740448E@naverlabs.com> Message-ID: We are pleased to announce the ICLR-2021 Workshop: Energy Based Models: Current Perspectives, Challenges, and Opportunities, to be held virtually on May 8, 2021 Workshop page (please consult for up-to-date information): https://sites.google.com/view/ebm-workshop-iclr2021 ABOUT THE WORKSHOP: Energy-Based Models (EBMs) are a learning framework that assigns a quality score to any given input, its energy; contrary to probabilistic models, there is no a priori requirement that these scores be normalized (i.e. sum to one). Energies are typically computed through a neural network, and training an EBM corresponds to shaping the energy function such that data points nearby the underlying data manifold are associated with lower energies than data points that are far from it. Not imposing normalization affords a great power and flexibility to the modelling process, e.g. in terms of combining energies, on conditioning on certain variables, of computing global scores on complex structured objects, or on expressing prior knowledge. However, this freedom comes with significant technical challenges, in terms of learning and inference. A strong comeback of EBMs is currently underway. The goals of this Workshop are: ? To provide a forum for discussing cutting-edge research on different EBM approaches (e.g for continuous vs. discrete problems, strategies to shape the energy function, etc.), and to position these in the broader ML landscape (MCMC, GANs, RL, Variational Inference, etc.) ? To bring together different communities, not only from core ML, but also from application domains such as vision, nlp, biology, neuroscience, etc. ? To learn and exchange ideas about current and potential applications of EBMs, and to provide insights which may inspire novel EBM developments. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: We welcome submissions on (non exhaustive list): ? Techniques for high-dimensional continuous EBMs (e.g. in Vision, Neuroscience) and for discrete EBMs (e.g. in NLP, Biology). ? Probabilistic (e.g. advanced MCMC and variational inference) and non-probabilistic (e.g. contrastive learning) approaches for training EBMs. ? Comparisons, connections and combinations with other ML approaches and frameworks (Autoregressive models, GANs, Variational Auto-Encoders, Reinforcement Learning, ... ). ? Multidisciplinary applications of EBMs to different domains. ? Applications of EBMs to unsupervised, self-supervised and latent models. ? Emerging models of computation exploiting Energy characteristics in physical processes. ? Opinion pieces in favor or against EBMs. Submissions will be either short papers (between 4 and 6 pages, excluding references) or extended abstracts (2 pages, excluding references). We welcome submissions that are work in progress, as well as submissions that are currently under review at other venues, as long as that fit the format above. Submissions should follow ICLR2021 submission format (LaTeX, overleaf). Submissions will be evaluated by a Programme Committee to be announced later. Accepted papers will be presented during poster sessions, with a few contributed talks. They will be posted on the workshop site, under a non-archival status. Submission A link for submitting will be provided soon on the workshop page. The review process will be double-blind. Authors should make sure to anonymise their submissions by removing names and affiliations. Available grants The workshop will provide ICLR registrations for authors of a few selected papers. TIMELINE: February 24, 2021 : Submission Deadline (11:59PM Anywhere on Earth) March 26, 2021: Notification of acceptance TBD: Camera-ready papers due TBD: Presentation recordings due May 8, 2021: Workshop INVITED SPEAKERS/PANELISTS: Benjamin Scellier, Mila, Universit? de Montr?al Debora Marks, Harvard University Simon Osindero, DeepMind Stefano Ermon, Stanford Will Grathwohl, University of Toronto Yann Le Cun, Facebook AI Research Yingszhen Li, Microsoft Research ORGANIZERS: Adji Bousso Dieng, Google Brain Hady Elsahar, Naver Labs Europe Igor Mordatch, Google Brain Marc Dymetman, Naver Labs Europe Marc?Aurelio Ranzato, Facebook AI Research PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: To be announced -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com Fri Dec 25 14:01:04 2020 From: marc.dymetman at naverlabs.com (Marc Dymetman) Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2020 20:01:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Urgent: Correction about previous mails ( ICLR-2021 Workshop on Energy Based Models ) Message-ID: <43632C95-D411-4630-BE50-1469B3558B8A@naverlabs.com> Dear Connectionnists Moderators, I just sent you a mail with the subject: ICLR-2021 Workshop on Energy Based Models --- Call for Papers This mail corrects a previous mail with the same subject (sent yesterday, Dec. 23rd) which contained some errors. Can I please ask you to circulate today?s mail, and not the older mail ? Thanks a lot for your service to the community and my apologies for the additional work! Kind regards, Marc Dymetman Principal Scientist, Naver Labs Europe. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From suashdeb at gmail.com Sat Dec 26 09:35:15 2020 From: suashdeb at gmail.com (Suash Deb) Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2020 20:05:15 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Extension of deadline (ISMSI21, Seychelles, Victoria) Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Warm holiday greetings & my best wishes for a bright, sunny, healthy & very productive 2021 for all of you. This is about *2021* 5*th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Metaheuristics & Intelligent Systems (ISMSI21). * The conference is slated to be held in *Victoria, Seychelles *during *April 10-11, 2021* http://ismsi.org/ However, in case the prevailing global pandemic situation does not improve, the same may be held as a full-fledged virtual conference, as was for ISMSI20. *EURO ( The Association of European Operational Research Societies) /its spl. interest group on Metaheuristics* being the *technical sponsors* of the ISMSI21. Due to the festive season and based on the requests from our peers we have extended the submission deadline. *Extended Submission Deadline* 25th Jan, 2021 *Proceedings* As in the previous 4 editions, the proceedings of ISMSI21 will be published by *ICPS of ACM and published papers will be indexed by Ei Compendex & Scopus.* Apart from the scope there is scope for a selected & subset of papers, after being extended, to be considered for publication at a special issue of the *NCAA journal (a Springer publication with 2019 Impact Factor & 5 year Impact Factor of 4.774 & 4.627 respectively) * https://www.springer.com/journal/521). Some papers may also be considered for *EJOR, an Elsevier Publication ( 2019 Impact Factor & 5 year Impact Factor of 4.213 & 4.729 respectively)* https://www.journals.elsevier.com/european-journal-of-operational-research *Keynote Speeches* Leading scientists from USA & Europe will deliver the Keynote Speeches at the conference http://ismsi.org/keynote.html We hope to receive your manuscript(s) in the coming days. Best regards, Suash Deb General Chair, ISMSI21 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cognitivium at sciencebeam.com Sat Dec 26 09:37:30 2020 From: cognitivium at sciencebeam.com (Mary) Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2020 18:07:30 +0330 Subject: Connectionists: You are Invited! Message-ID: <202012261437.0BQEbX6P096856@scs-mx-03.andrew.cmu.edu> Dear List, ScienceBeam is organizing a FREE webinar on ?Modeling electrophysiological activities: from single neuron to nervous tissue? Date and Time: January 6, 2021. 8:00 AM CET Lecturer: Dr. Damien Depannemaecker ? Post-Doc researcher at Department of Integrative and Computational Neuroscience, Paris Saclay Institute of Neuroscience, France The purpose of this webinar is to learn: ? From recording to computational models ? Single neuron model ? From single neurons to networks ? Large scale models ? Applications in research and clinic So, we would be glad if you could join and participate. To save your seat, please register using the link below and feel free to share it with your friends: https://sciencebeam.com/modeling-electrophysiological-activities/ I hope to see you there! If you need more information please contact us: workshop at sciencebeam.com WhatsAppno: 008613380781282 Mary Neuroscience Department Manager www.sciencebeam.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From albrecht.haase at unitn.it Sun Dec 27 09:57:24 2020 From: albrecht.haase at unitn.it (Albrecht Haase) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2020 15:57:24 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline prolonged for postdoc position in functional neuroimaging Message-ID: <100e990c-b4c0-82cc-c9d5-50299f4f59d9@unitn.it> Applications are still possible until 13 January 2021 for the following exciting project: *Characterization of a new transgenic animal model for in vivo whole-brain imaging at single-neuron resolution.* *Research goals and tasks:* The project is a collaboration between the University of Trento, the University of D?sseldorf, and the CNRS, Paris, to characterize the first transgenic honeybee model expressing a pan-neuronal calcium sensor (GCaMP6). This will allow minimally invasive functional imaging of 3D activity patterns and their dynamics at high spatial and temporal resolution using in vivo two-photon microscopy. It will grant simultaneous access to the entire brain to study neuronal correlates of a rich behavioural repertoire that includes odour discrimination and learning, navigation, and social communication. The research fellow?s tasks will be, in collaboration with our partners, to optimize the maintenance of the recently generated first transgenic bee colonies and to contribute to the extension of the genetic toolkit. At the same time, she/he will conduct the first experiments of two-photon functional imaging in these transgenic bees to record and analyse activity patterns in different brain regions in response to different external stimuli (olfactory, visual, combinatorial). Furthermore, she/he will perform the first continuous long-term imaging experiments to study learning and memory formation. * * *About us:* The Neurophysics Group (https://r.unitn.it/en/cimec/nphys) is an interdisciplinary research laboratory jointly operated by the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC) and the Department of Physics at the University of Trento, Italy. Our University is currently ranked 1st in the National Research Assessment Evaluations (RAE)for medium universities. Also the center has recently been recognized as the leading cognitive neuroscience research department in Italy. CIMeC's goal is to foster cutting-edge research on cognition and its neural underpinnings and to support the dissemination of these findings internationally and within the local community. As an interdisciplinary research and teaching center, it draws on faculty from several departments, including Psychology and Cognitive Science, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, and Information Engineering and Computer Science. CIMeC?s faculty members originate from Argentina, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Israel, New Zealand, UK, USA, and beyond.* * *Duration of the fellowship: *24 months *Expected starting date: *February 2021 *Required qualifications:* * a PhD in biology, neuroscience, engineering, or related disciplines * appropriate scientific curriculum, documenting the scientific and professional experience required to carry out the described research * advanced experience in microscopy and post-processing and analysis of imaging data * experience in beekeeping is an advantage, the preparedness to learn it is required * excellent English language skills *Applications: * * ?via email to albrecht.haase at unitn.it * attaching a CV and contact details to at least 2 references * deadline: 13 January 2021 -- Dr. Albrecht Haase Associate Professor of Applied Physics Head of the Neurophysics Group, Center for Mind/Brain Sciences - CIMeC Head of the Laboratory for Biophotonics and Neurophysics, Department of Physics University of Trento Piazza Manifattura 1, Building 14, 38068 Rovereto (TN), Italy Tel office: +39 0464 808699 https://r.unitn.it/en/cimec/nphys @NeurophysicsT -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From daniel.polani at gmail.com Sun Dec 27 21:06:56 2020 From: daniel.polani at gmail.com (Daniel Polani) Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 02:06:56 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentship: Discovery of Structure and Dynamical Laws Message-ID: ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// PhD Studentship DISCOVERY OF STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICAL LAWS Adaptive Systems Research Group Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research School of Engineering and Computer Science University of Hertfordshire, UK Contact: Daniel Polani (d.polani at herts.ac.uk) ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Application deadline 11. January 2021 Bursary GBP 15,285 p.a. A PhD studentship is available at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, under the supervision of Daniel Polani for the discovery of structure and dynamical laws; the candidate will use information theory to extract structural properties of both observed data and data from actively manipulated environments. Applying for above PhD studentship, you will be interested in principled AI approaches, with special focus on information-theoretical methods, to extract and identify structural and dynamical laws of given systems, both under passive observation as well as active manipulation. Possible fields of applications will include topics such as principled and systematic approaches towards model construction by agents, robotics, intelligent methods for system identification and reduction and similar. You will have an excellent first degree and a very keen interest and motivation in delving into highly innovative, challenging and topical area of AI. An excellent background in one of the following or a related field is essential: Computer Science, Computational/Cognitive Robotics, Physics, Mathematics, Statistics or any other relevant discipline with a considerable quantitative/computational component. Prior experience with topics such as Bayesian modeling, information theory, control theory, dynamical systems theory, or statistical learning is highly desirable, but not essential if the quantitative background is otherwise very strong. Excellent programming skills in at least one major computer language are essential. Your work will be embedded in the research of the SEPIA (Sensor Evolution, Processing, Information and Actuation) group which has a particular specialization on developing methods dealing with fundamental issues of Artificial Intelligence, and then applying them in various contexts, such as in robotics, biological modelling, games and other. The SEPIA group is part of the encompassing Adaptive Systems Research Group which includes a highly interdisciplinary team of researchers and is itself part of the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire, UK. There will also be the opportunity to collaborate with the School?s successful humanoid robot RoboCup team, the Bold Hearts, and a wide range of additional projects. To learn more about the project, please contact: Prof. Dr. Daniel Polani d.polani at herts.ac.uk //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Research in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire has been recognized as excellent by the latest Research Assessment Exercise, with 50% of the research submitted being rated as internationally excellent or world leading. The University of Hertfordshire provides a very stimulating environment, offering a large number of specialised and interdisciplinary seminars as well as general training and researcher development opportunities. The University is situated in Hatfield, in the green belt just north of London. Hatfield is close to Central London (less than 25 minutes by direct train to Kings Cross), with convenient access to Stansted, Luton and Heathrow airports, and, via the nearby historic town of St. Albans, also to Gatwick airport. Application forms and submission instructions are available under https://www.herts.ac.uk/study/schools-of-study/engineering-and-computer-science/researchin-engineering-and-computer-science/the-phd-programme-in-computer-science Please note: You must download the application form to your computer before you complete it. If you complete the form in the browser window, the information you have entered may be lost when the form is saved. Eligibility ----------- Applicants must submit or obtain: - a completed application form, which can be obtained here; - a research statement stating past experience/research background and interest and motivation/research ambition for current project - two academic references - copies of qualification certificates and transcripts - a copy of your passport Please note: You must download the application form to your computer before you complete it. If you complete the form in the browser window, the information you have entered may be lost when the form is saved. UK or EU students are eligible for this studentship. The application form should be returned to: doctoralcollegeadmissions at herts.ac.uk The short-listing process will begin on 11. January 2021. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r.herzallah at aston.ac.uk Sun Dec 27 04:22:20 2020 From: r.herzallah at aston.ac.uk (Herzallah, Randa) Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2020 09:22:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Quantum control Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Please see below the link to the advert in relation to a postdoctoral position and encourage appropriate researchers from your research groups or institutions to apply. I am looking for excellent candidates who are interested in the intersection of quantum physics and control theory sciences, broadly described. More details about the job are given in the job description document which can be accessed by clicking at the below link. Applicants must apply online by clicking the ?Apply Online? button at the end of the following web page https://jobs.aston.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?ref=R200352 Best wishes, Randa. ____________________________________________ Dr Randa Herzallah Systems Analytics Research Institute Aston University Aston Triangle Birmingham, B4 7ET UK tel: +44 121 204 3674 fax: +44 121 204 3685 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fmschleif at googlemail.com Mon Dec 28 09:17:19 2020 From: fmschleif at googlemail.com (Frank-Michael Schleif) Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 15:17:19 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Professorship positions to be filled in artificial intelligence / machine learning (Deadline 03.01.21) Message-ID: Dear all, we are creating a new center on artificial intelligence in Wuerzburg, Germany (CAIRO) with multiple open positions (right now we announced 4 positions) https://www.fhws.de/service/stellenausschreibungen-der-fhws/online-stellenportal-fuer-professuren-und-lehrpersonal/ (english translation available - just scroll down; You do not have to provide German translations to the system - English documents are fine) << If the position may not fit for you please forward this email to other colleagues which may be interested - thanks. >> The positions are research professorships (German W2 level, maybe comparable to reader status or kind of assistant professor, well paid and tenured life long positions) and will establish a center for AI (CAIRO) in Wuerzburg - do research & attract projects - have some minimal administrative duties - have only 9 x 45 min teaching duties per week (9 SWS) during the terms - will be involved in the new created MSc program on Artificial Intelligence Additional funding to establish a group is also available. This is an exciting moment and chance (deadline 03.01.2021) The positions are located here in Wuerzburg and the curriculum will be (so far) in English only (it may be necessary to learn some German in the first years). To be eligible it is mandatory to have 5 years working experience after MSc including at least 3 years of industrial experience (can be spread and industry related research (institutes) also count). The positions announced right now have the following topics: - Reasoning and Acting in AI / Foundations of Cognitive Computing - Representation and Learning in AI - Semantic Data Processing and Cognitive Computing - Robotics and AI (also linked to the Center Robotics and Intelligence (CERI) Please spread the word - would be happy to see many applications. If you have any questions fell free to contact me. Frank -- ------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil. Frank-Michael Schleif School of Computer Science University of Applied Sciences W?rzburg-Schweinfurt Sanderheinrichsleitenweg 20 Raum I-3.35 Tel.: +49(0) 931 351 18127 97074 W?rzburg Honorable Research Fellow The University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom - email: frank-michael.schleif at fhws.de http://promos-science.blogspot.de/ https://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~fschleif/ ------------------------------------------------------- From yoshikawa at irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp Thu Dec 31 01:50:32 2020 From: yoshikawa at irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp (Yuichiro Yoshikawa) Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:50:32 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doc Position at Intelligent RoboticsLaboratory (Ishiguro Lab.), Osaka University Message-ID: Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (Ishiguro Lab.), Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University starts new research and development project for ?The Realization of an Avatar-Symbiotic Society where Everyone can Perform Active Roles without Constraint (PM: Professor Ishiguro)? towards Moonshot Goal 1 in Moonshot Research and Development Program in Cabinet Office (Realization of a society in which human beings can be free from limitations of body, brain, space, and time by 2050). In this project, we aim to realize a human-centered avatar symbiotic society by 2050, in which everyone can express themselves by using multiple avatars and play active roles freely. The current research area includes multi-disciplinary field of studies about human communication and cognition such as interactive robots and agents, virtual reality, and augmented reality. The laboratory is seeking an academic staff member who has a flexible attitude and can contribute to developing and harnessing the strength of the laboratory?s research. Inquiries regarding this position are welcome. * Please see the Program Information: https://www.jst.go.jp/moonshot/en/program/goal1/ --------------------------------------------------- [Position and number of positions] 1~3 positions for Specially Appointed Associate Professor (Full-time) and Specially Appointed Associate Professor (Lecturer) (Full-time) 1~3 positions for Specially Appointed Assistant Professor (Full-time) [Affiliation] Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University [Work Location] Toyonaka Campus (1-1 Machikaneyama-cho, Toyonaka-City, Osaka, Japan) [Responsibilities] Research and development in ?the Realization of an Avatar-Symbiotic Society where Everyone can Perform Active Roles without Constraint? [Qualifications] Applicants must have: (1) A doctoral degree (2) Excellent research achievements in the related field/s (3) Business level or above Japanese or English language proficiency [Starting Date] April 1, 2021 (or as soon as possible thereafter) [Term of Employment] >From the starting date to March 31st, 2022 *Following completion of the term, the contract may be extended subject to evaluation (the extension limit is 10 years from the starting date). [Probationary Period] 6 months [Employment Form] Based on ?37. Regulations Pertaining to Working Hours, Holidays and Leave for National University Corporation Osaka University Limited Term Staff? https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/guide/information/joho/kitei_shugyou.html *The Discretionary Labor System, Special Work Type will be applied (deemed working hours: 8 hours a day) [Salary and Benefits] Based on ?46. Salary Regulations for National University Corporation Osaka University Limited Term Staff (Specially Appointed Staff, etc.) Subject to Annual Salary System? https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/guide/information/joho/kitei_shugyou.html Remuneration: 6,086,400?7,537,200 JPY per annum. (Monthly payments of one-twelfth of annual salary) for Specially Appointed Associate Professor (Full-time) and Specially Appointed Associate Professor (Lecturer) (Full-time) 5,125,200?6,086,400 JPY per annum. (Monthly payments of one-twelfth of annual salary) for Specially Appointed Assistant Professor (Full-time) Commuting allowance *Bonuses and allowances for housing, dependency, and retirement are included in the above-mentioned annual salary and will not be paid separately. [Insurance] Medical insurance and employee?s pension insurance of the Federation of National Public Service Personnel Mutual Aid Associations, Employment Insurance and Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance [Application Documents] Applications must be written in English or Japanese and include the following 1. A Curriculum Vitae *Please use the university form for educational/research positions available at the following website: https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/news/employ 2. A list of research achievements (original papers, review papers, books, patents, presentations at international conferences) 3. Reprints of major original papers (4 copies, photocopies acceptable) 4. A list and an outline of awards and prizes 5. An outline of research and education achievements (within two A4 pages) 6. A research plan and educational aspirations (within two A4 pages) 7. Name, affiliation, and contact information of two professional referees who are willing to be contacted about the applicant *Personal information in the application documents will only be used for the purpose of screening and hiring procedures, and will not be disclosed to any third party. *Submitted application documents will not be returned. [Sending Address and Contact Information] If submitted by e-mail: yoshikawa at irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp *Write ?Application for Specially Appointed Associate Professor in Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University? in the subject line. *Attach the application documents in PDF format (password protected). *Please send the password in a separate e-mail. [Application Deadline] Until the position is filled [Selection Process] Document screening will be followed by interviews. Selected applicants will be notified within two weeks after the application deadline. *Travel and accommodation fees necessary for interviews are to be covered by the applicant. For applicants residing overseas, the applicant may request an online interview. *Please note that unsuccessful applicants will not be contacted. [Additional Information] Concerning work conditions other than above-mentioned, please refer to ?35.Work Regulations for National University Corporation Osaka University Limited Term Staff? and/or related regulations. https://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en/guide/information/joho/kitei_shugyou.html Please note the above-mentioned work conditions are as of the day this employment offer is posted, and subject to change. We welcome applications from highly motivated female candidates. Osaka University is committed to promoting gender equality and providing various supports for female academic staff members. http://www.danjo.osaka-u.ac.jp/en_lp/ *Osaka University campuses and related facilities are smoke-free, except for designated areas? [Contact Person] Yuichiro Yoshikawa E-mail: yoshikawa at irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp ----------------------------------------------- Yuichiro Yoshikawa, Associate Professor Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University Dept. of Systems Innovation yoshikawa at irl.sys.es.osaka-u.ac.jp TEL, FAX: 06-6850-6361 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From avellido at cs.upc.edu Tue Dec 29 08:20:21 2020 From: avellido at cs.upc.edu (Alfredo Vellido) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 14:20:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 1st CFP, IEEE IJCNN 2021 special session on Transparent and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Health In-Reply-To: References: <5117f588-082c-b0bb-b6ad-5eaf6ce5faef@lsi.upc.edu> Message-ID: Apologies for cross-posting =================== 1st CALL FOR PAPERS =================== IEEE IJCNN 2021 Special Session on Transparent and Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) for Health July 18-22, 2021, Virtual Event. https://www.cs.upc.edu/~avellido/research/conferences/IJCNN2021-ssTranspXAI4Health.html Aims & Scope ------------ From the widespread implementation and use of electronic health records to basic research in pharma, and from the popularization of health wearables to the digitalization of procedures at the point of care, the domains of medicine and healthcare are bringing data to the fore of their practice. The abundance of data in turn calls for methods that allow transforming such raw information into novel knowledge that is truly usable, including high stakes decision support. Machine Learning (ML) is enjoying unprecedented attention in healthcare and medicine, riding the current wave of popularity of deep learning (DL) and the umbrella concept of Big Data. But such attention may bear little fruit unless data scientists effectively address one major limitation that is particularly sensitive in the medical domain: the lack of interpretability of many ML approaches and, particularly, DL methods, leading in turn to limited explainability. This may limit ML to niche applications and poses a significant risk of costly mistakes without the mitigation of a sound understanding of the flow of information in the model. Domains where decision-making impacts our health motivate this special session, to which we invite current research on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI). The goal of XAI is the design of techniques and approaches that still retain model performance, while being able to explain their outputs in human-understandable terms. With these capabilities, clinical practitioners will be able to integrate the models into their own reasoning, gaining insights about the data and checking compatibility with working guidelines at the point-of-care. This session aims to explore such performance-versus-explanation trade-off space for medical and healthcare applications of ML. We aim to bring together researchers from different fields to discuss key issues related to the research and applications of XAI methods and to share their experiences of solving problems in medicine and healthcare. Applications leading towards routine clinical practice are particularly welcome. Topics that are of interest to this session include but are not limited to: * Interpretable ML Models in medicine and healthcare: theoretical and practical development * XAI for electronic health records * Integration of XAI in medical devices * Human-in-the-loop ML: bridging the gap between data and medical experts * Interpretability through Data Visualization * Interpretable ML pipelines in medicine and healthcare * Query Interfaces for DL * Active and Transfer learning * Relevance and Metric Learning * Deep Neural Reasoning * Interfaces with Rule-Based Reasoning, Fuzzy Logic and Natural Language Processing * Assessment of bias and discrimination in databased models Important Dates --------------- Paper submission: January 15, 2021 Paper decision notification: March 15, 2021 Session Chairs -------------- Alfredo Vellido (Universitat Polit?cnica de Catalunya, Spain) Paulo J.G. Lisboa (Liverpool John Moores University, U.K.) Jos? D. Mart?n (Universitat de Val?ncia, Spain) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com Mon Dec 28 16:02:24 2020 From: christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com (Christos Dimitrakakis) Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2020 22:02:24 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post Doc position in Secure and Private Machine Learning Message-ID: <534bc73e-7c08-63bf-dbb2-62d691326f37@gmail.com> ???????? Post Doc position in Secure and Private Machine Learning ???????? https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=9089 ?????????? Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden We are looking for an excellent, motivated, self-driven post-doctoral researcher to work in the area of information security and cryptography. More precisely, we envision secure and privacy-preserving machine learning algorithms for artificial intelligence applications in everyday life that can provide confidentiality and integrity guarantees. In particular the main aims of the project are to: (i) Safeguard the privacy of individuals that participate by either providing their data to build the AI system or being end-users of the system, (ii) safeguard the integrity of the system by ensuring its robustness to adversarial inputs and cryptographically limiting the possible points of adversarial manipulation. You will be working with Prof. Mitrokotsa and Prof. Dimitrakakis. Full-time employment for*three years*. *Your Profile:* ?* A PhD degree in Cryptography with connections to Machine learning; ?* Publications ?* Strong mathematical and algorithmic CS background; ?* Excellent programming skills; ?* Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English * Starting date:*Beginning of 2021 or by mutual agreement. *Contact:*Katerina Mitrokotsa aikmitr at chalmers.seor Christos Dimitrakakis ? *Apply online: *https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=9089 **Final Deadline for applications:*3 January 2021* ** From marcin at amu.edu.pl Wed Dec 30 07:20:05 2020 From: marcin at amu.edu.pl (Marcin Paprzycki) Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2020 13:20:05 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for technical Sessions -- FedCSIS 2021 In-Reply-To: <474614c1-573c-8681-e064-7777c63600cc@ibspan.waw.pl> References: <474614c1-573c-8681-e064-7777c63600cc@ibspan.waw.pl> Message-ID: <0b7c63a2-2d3f-4c6b-38d0-9fd21599f40d@amu.edu.pl> Call for Technical Sessions 16th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems (FedCSIS 2021) Sofia, Bulgaria, 6-9 September 2020 www.fedcsis.org The 16th Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems (FedCSIS 2021) cordially invites you to contribute a Technical Session (symposium, workshop, consortium meeting, project dissemination meeting, special session, etc.). The FedCSIS conferences consist of five Tracks that contain Technical Sessions. Many of them are recurring yearly events, but we solicit and welcome proposals for new Technical Sessions, until January 21, 2021. Moreover, existing events that would like to join the FedCSIS conference series, are also welcome. The Technical Sessions can run over any span of time within the conference dates; from half-day to three days. FedCSIS is a large rigorous scientific conference staged across Europe. Annually, it attracts ~300 submissions from ~30 countries from around the world. Papers are accepted in three categories: regular (full and short), position, and communication. All regular, presented, papers are submitted to IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and many are offered post-publication opportunities (journals, Springer volumes, etc.) after appropriate extensions and changes. Position and communication papers are published in separate volumes of the Annals of Computer Science and Information systems series. All papers are published with ISBN, ISSN and DOI numbers, and submitted to, and indexed in, most influential indexing services. Since 2012, FedCSIS Proceedings are indexed in SCOPUS and Web of Science. Any newly proposed Technical Session will be evaluated on the basis of scientific/technical interest and/or its relevance to practitioners in its topics, the clarity of the proposal in addressing the requested information, the innovativeness of the topics, and a ?value-added? to the denoted FedCSIS track, i.e.: * Artificial Intelligence and Applications * Computer Science and Systems * Network Systems and Applications * Information Technology for Management, Business & Society * Software and Systems Development Call for Papers, for Technical Sessions, will be announced by three means: (1) by FedCSIS Chairs in generic Calls for Conference Papers, to reach out to the computer science and information system researchers at large; (2) by Track Chairs in Calls for Track Papers, to reach out to the researchers specifically interested in track topics; (3) by Technical Session Chairs in Calls for Technical Session Papers, to reach out to the professional communities involved in research addressed by the Technical Session. All papers will have to be submitted to the FedCSIS Conference System. However, in all cases, paper submitters will have to select a Technical Session (event) within which their paper will be reviewed for acceptance. Technical Session proposals should include the following information (3 pages maximum): 1. The nature of the Technical Session (symposium, workshop, consortium meeting, project dissemination meeting, special session, etc.). 2. The title and acronym of the Technical Session, and a list of topics. 3. A brief explanation of why the proposed session will fit into the FedCSIS aims and program. 3. The contact information of the Technical Session chairs, including a link to their personal websites, and an overview of previous experiences with organization of scientific events. 4. Preliminary list of PC members who have agreed (or are likely to agree) to join. 5. Indication of the expected number of papers/attendees. 6. Information of expected post-publications of extended and revised papers in high-quality journals, edited volumes, etc. Technical Session organizers should email their proposals (in a single pdf file) by January 21, 2021 to the FedCSIS Secretariat at: secretariat at fedcsis.org More information concerning FedCSIS and its scientific, organization and financial rules can be found at: https://www.fedcsis.org -- Ta wiadomo?? zosta?a sprawdzona na obecno?? wirus?w przez oprogramowanie antywirusowe Avast. https://www.avast.com/antivirus From ross.s.williamson at pitt.edu Tue Dec 29 15:49:46 2020 From: ross.s.williamson at pitt.edu (Williamson, Ross S) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 20:49:46 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Postdoctoral_fellow_=E2=80=93_Systems_N?= =?utf-8?q?euroscience_of_Alzheimer=E2=80=99s_Disease?= Message-ID: <698BACB3-9766-47DC-9D0D-B778AB6BF1E0@pitt.edu> Dear all, Apologies for the cross-posting. A postdoctoral position is available in the Williamson and Thathiah laboratories at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to investigate the links between hearing loss and the pathophysiology of Alzheimer?s disease (AD). The information from our senses is used throughout everyday life to guide the decisions we make and the actions that we take. For example, the sound of sirens when driving leads to a decision regarding an appropriate motor action (whether or not, and where, to pull over). The neural circuits that underlie these cognitive processes (accumulation of sensory evidence, short-term memory, perception decision-making, etc.) can be severely altered by disease. Hearing loss is prevalent in >40% of individuals older than 60 years and is considered to be the most heavily contributing modifiable risk factor to dementia. It is our hope that by identifying and studying the neural circuits involved, we will provide insight to drive subsequent therapeutic intervention strategies that may lead to the repair (or prevention) of damage. The Williamson Laboratory uses a variety of state-of-the-art tools to probe the neural circuits of awake mice, including two-photon calcium imaging and high-channel count electrophysiology (both with single-cell optogenetic perturbations), head-fixed virtual reality behaviors, and statistical approaches for neural characterization. A significant focus of the lab is to understand how sensory information is used to guide purposeful behavior in models of health and disease. Details on the research focus and approaches of the Williamson laboratory can be found here: https://www.williamsonlaboratory.com/research/ The Thathiah Laboratory uses molecular, cellular, and behavioral approaches along with optogenetic tools to investigate the mechanisms of AD pathogenesis. Recently, the Thathiah lab teamed up with the Williamson lab to investigate the putative causal relationship between hearing loss, disease pathogenesis, and cognitive impairment using our complementary research approaches in AD mouse models. Details on the research focus of the Thathiah laboratory can be found here: https://www.neurobio.pitt.edu/people/amantha-thathiah Both laboratories are embedded within the Departments of Neurobiology and Otolaryngology, are members of the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute, the Pittsburgh Hearing Research Center, and are affiliated with the Center for Neuroscience (CNUP) and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). The Thathiah laboratory is a member of the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (PIND), the Alzheimer?s Disease Research Center (ADRC), and the Aging Institute. Postdoctoral fellows will be part of a highly supportive and diverse research environment with excellent career development opportunities. The University of Pittsburgh was ranked third in terms of total NIH funding received in 2018. The Global Livability Index (The Economist) recently ranked Pittsburgh as the second most livable city in America. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to job requirements, genetic information, military service, or other protected status. Requirements: Applicants must have a Ph.D. in Neuroscience or a relevant field and must be eligible for employment in the US. We are looking for individuals with an excellent record of research achievements and expertise at the intersection of two or more of the following areas: electrophysiology, two-photon imaging, quantitative behavior, and computational neuroscience. Experience with molecular and biochemical techniques is preferred but not required. Excellent verbal and written communication skills, technical expertise, and scientific creativity are essential. Applications will continue until the position is filled. Contact: Interested candidates should send a brief statement of research interests, a current CV, and the names and contact information of three references to: Dr. Ross Williamson: rsw at pitt.edu Dr. Amantha Thathiah: amantha at pitt.edu Thanks, Ross ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ross S. Williamson, Ph.D. | Assistant Professor | Otolaryngology, Neurobiology Pittsburgh Hearing Research Center | Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition University of Pittsburgh | Biomedical Science Tower | W1448 www.williamsonlaboratory.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From george at cs.ucy.ac.cy Wed Dec 30 09:36:32 2020 From: george at cs.ucy.ac.cy (George A. Papadopoulos) Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2020 16:36:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 8th International Symposium on End-User Development (IS-EUD 2021): First Call for Papers Message-ID: *** First Call for Papers *** 8th International Symposium on End-User Development (IS-EUD 2021): "Democratizing AI Development" July 6-8, 2021, Atlantica Miramare Beach Hotel 4*, Limassol, Cyprus http://cyprusconferences.org/iseud2021/ End-user development (EUD) aims at empowering end users to develop and adapt systems at a level of complexity that is adequate to their expertise, practices, and skills. EUD may occur along the entire software lifecycle, with the purpose of making users able to participate in their artifact development, not only at design time, but also during actual use. Originally, EUD was conceived as a more general concept than end-user programming; thus, scholars proposed methods, techniques and tools that allow end users to modify or extend software artifacts, such as spreadsheets, web applications, video games, and mobile applications. In the co-called Internet of Things era, end-user development moved on to address the problem of defining and modifying the behavior of smart environments, including smart objects, pervasive displays, smart homes, smart cities, and so on. Therefore, the term "end-user development" acquired a broader meaning covering approaches, frameworks and socio-technical environments that allow end users to express themselves in crafting digital artifacts that encompass both software and hardware technology. Recent research and technological trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Cyber-Security, Robotics, and Industry 4.0, have contributed to renew the vision of end-user development, by providing tools and platforms that allow end users to harness the power of AI to create solutions involving Computer Vision, Image Processing, Conversational User Interfaces, as well as solutions for smart environments. Such developments lower the threshold for creating AI solutions, and expand the programmer base for such solutions, by extending AI application both for professional and discretionary use. IS-EUD is a bi-annual event for researchers and practitioners with an interdisciplinary approach to EUD, including: Human-Computer Interaction, Software Engineering, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Human-Work Interaction Design, and related areas. IS-EUD 2021 Theme: Democratizing AI Development The 2021 edition of IS-EUD focuses on EUD for AI-based systems, where end users are called on to become end-user developers of intelligent agents, digital twins, collaborative and social robots. This edition would like to discuss the adoption of EUD in new fields, the proposal of novel EUD paradigms, and the impact of AI-based EUD in terms of user acceptability and appropriation. One of the most interesting topics in human-AI interaction is explainability of AI-based systems: research submissions presenting end- user oriented solutions to this problem will be particularly welcome. Theoretical and empirical work analyzing pros and cons of this new EUD wave, identifying requirements for end-user development of AI and acceptance of related solutions is invited. Software infrastructures and eco- systems supporting the reuse of solutions and the emergence of meta- design practices are of particular interest to this community, linking the challenges relating AI to topics central to the IS-EUD community. Conference Topics The conference welcomes contributions that: ? describe new, simple and efficient environments for end-user development ? describe new processes, methods and techniques for empowering users to create, modify and tailor digital artifacts ? present case studies and design implications on challenges and practices of end-user development ? develop theoretical concepts and foundations for the field of end-user development Specific topics include (but are not limited to) the following ones: ? User-oriented orchestration of AI-based devices ? Conversational interfaces for end-user development ? End-user development for big data visualization and exploration ? End-user development for collaborative robotics ? End-user development for social robotics ? End-user development in Industry 4.0 ? End-user development and explainable AI-based systems ? Cybersecurity and end-user development ? End-user development in daily life ? Technologies and infrastructures for end-user development ? Empirical studies of end-user development ? Recommender systems to support end-user development ? Cultures of participation and meta-design approaches ? Technology acceptance and adoption studies of end-user development technologies ? Evaluation of end-user development technologies ? Supporting creative work through end-user development Submissions We invite two types of paper submissions: 1. Regular papers, up to 16 pages, describing original unpublished research making a substantial contribution to the research field 2. Short papers, up to 8 pages, describing original unpublished research, making a small but solid contribution to the field All submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee. The review process for this category is double-blind, thus submissions must be anonymized. Accepted papers (both regular and short) will appear in the archival proceedings of IS-EUD 2021, published by Springer in the Lecture Notes on Computer Science (LNCS) series, and will be presented in plenary sessions of the conference. Workshop proposals are invited (max 6 pages) aligned to the themes of the conference. Workshops provide an informal setting where participants have the opportunity to discuss specific topics in an atmosphere that fosters the active exchange of ideas. Workshops can be half day or one-day long and will be held on July 6, 2021. Accepted workshop proposals will be included in the IS-EUD 2021 adjunct proceedings, which will be submitted to CEUR-WS.org for online publication. Submissions of regular papers, short papers and workshop proposals should indicate in the title page "Regular", "Short" or "Workshop" respectively. Demonstration and Work in Progress papers are also welcomed. A Demonstration paper (max 6 pages) should be structured according to the following: ? Abstract (150 words maximum) ? Topics to be covered and their relevance to the EUD community ? Detailed description of the planned demonstration activity ? Diagrams or screenshots (if relevant) ? Supporting documentation (e.g., project website) ? References Work in Progress submissions (max 6 pages) are intended for presenting preliminary results or tentative findings and position papers. The authors of accepted contributions will have the opportunity to give an oral presentation during parallel sessions. Finally, the IS-EUD Doctoral Consortium is intended to bring together PhD students working on theory and application of EUD. We particularly encourage students that are about half-way through their doctoral research to submit doctoral consortium contributions (max 6 pages) describing the topic of their PhD, their approach and a summary of their progress. Demonstration, Work in Progress and Doctoral Consortium submissions should indicate in the title page "Demo", "WiP" or "DC" respectively. Accepted submissions will be included in IS-EUD 2021 adjunct proceedings, which will be submitted to CEUR-WS.org for online publication. Submissions of all types should be carefully formatted according to the Springer LNCS format: https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines and should be submitted through the Easy Chair system at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iseud2021 Important Dates ? Regular and Short papers submission: March 8, 2021 ? Notification: March 30, 2021 ? Camera-ready: April 30, 2021 ? Workshop proposal submission: March 8, 2021 ? Notification: March 15, 2021 ? Camera-ready: April 30, 2021 ? Demonstration and Work in Progress submission: April 7, 2021 ? Notification: April 21, 2021 ? Camera-ready: April 30, 2021 ? Doctoral Consortium submission: April 7, 2021 ? Notification: April 30, 2021 ? Camera-ready: May 15, 2021 Organizers General Chairs ? Panos Markopoulos (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) ? George A. Papadopoulos (University of Cyprus, Cyprus) Program Chairs ? Daniela Fogli (University of Brescia, Italy) ? Daniel Tetteroo (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) Short papers Chairs ? Barbara Rita Barricelli (University of Brescia, Italy) ? Simone Borsci (University of Twente, The Netherlands) Work in Progress Chairs ? Jelle Van Dijk (University of Twente, The Netherlands) ? Carmen Santoro (ISTI-CNR, Italy) Demonstration Chair ? Stefano Valtolina (University of Milan, Italy) Workshop Chairs ? Styliani Kleanthous (Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus) ? Simone Stumpf (City University London, UK) Doctoral Consortium Chairs ? Monica Maceli (Pratt Institute, USA) ? Antonio Piccinno (University of Bari, Italy) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu Wed Dec 30 09:42:48 2020 From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (Wang, Deliang) Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2020 14:42:48 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, Jan. 2021 Message-ID: Neural Networks - Volume 133, January 2021 https://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks Editorial: Maintaining the Publication Infrastructure in a Worldwide Pandemic Kenji Doya, DeLiang Wang Advanced deep learning methods for biomedical information analysis: An editorial to special issue Yu-Dong Zhang, Francesco Carlo Morabito, Dinggang Shen, Khan Muhammad An EEG channel selection method for motor imagery based brain-computer interface and neurofeedback using Granger causality Hesam Varsehi, S. Mohammad P. Firoozabadi Learning interaction dynamics with an interactive LSTM for conversational sentiment analysis Yazhou Zhang, Prayag Tiwari, Dawei Song, Xiaoliu Mao, ... Hari Mohan Pandey Multiple graphs learning with a new weighted tensor nuclear norm Deyan Xie, Quanxue Gao, Siyang Deng, Xiaojun Yang, Xinbo Gao CEGAN: Classification Enhancement Generative Adversarial Networks for unraveling data imbalance problems Sungho Suh, Haebom Lee, Paul Lukowicz, Yong Oh Lee Unsupervised feature learning for self-tuning neural networks Jongbin Ryu, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Jongwoo Lim Adversarial symmetric GANs: Bridging adversarial samples and adversarial networks Faqiang Liu, Mingkun Xu, Guoqi Li, Jing Pei, ... Rong Zhao PM2.5 concentration modeling and prediction by using temperature-based deep belief network Haixia Xing, Gongming Wang, Caixia Liu, Minghe Suo FMixCutMatch for semi-supervised deep learning Xiang Wei, Xiaotao Wei, Xiangyuan Kong, Siyang Lu, ... Wei Lu Echo Memory-Augmented Network for time series classification Qianli Ma, Zhenjing Zheng, Wanqing Zhuang, Enhuan Chen, ... Jiabing Wang Consensus guided incomplete multi-view spectral clustering Jie Wen, Huijie Sun, Lunke Fei, Jinxing Li, ... Bob Zhang DMMAN: A two-stage audio-visual fusion framework for sound separation and event localization Ruihan Hu, Songbing Zhou, Zhi Ri Tang, Sheng Chang, ... Edmond Q. Wu Prespecified-time synchronization of switched coupled neural networks via smooth controllers Shao Shao, Xiaoyang Liu, Jinde Cao Improved approach to the problem of the global Mittag-Leffler synchronization for fractional-order multidimension-valued BAM neural networks based on new inequalities Jianying Xiao, Shouming Zhong, Shiping Wen Reverse graph self-attention for target-directed atomic importance estimation Gyoung S. Na, Hyun Woo Kim Structural plasticity on an accelerated analog neuromorphic hardware system Sebastian Billaudelle, Benjamin Cramer, Mihai A. Petrovici, Korbinian Schreiber, ... Karlheinz Meier Model-free motion control of continuum robots based on a zeroing neurodynamic approach Ning Tan, Peng Yu, Xinyu Zhang, Tao Wang AutoTune: Automatically Tuning Convolutional Neural Networks for Improved Transfer Learning S.H. Shabbeer Basha, Sravan Kumar Vinakota, Viswanath Pulabaigari, Snehasis Mukherjee, Shiv Ram Dubey Gradient-based training and pruning of radial basis function networks with an application in materials physics Jussi Maatta, Viacheslav Bazaliy, Jyri Kimari, Flyura Djurabekova, ... Teemu Roos FPGAN: Face de-identification method with generative adversarial networks for social robots Jiacheng Lin, Yang Li, Guanci Yang ClsGAN: Selective Attribute Editing Model based on Classification Adversarial Network Ying Liu, Heng Fan, Fuchuan Ni, Jinhai Xiang -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Pavis at iit.it Tue Dec 29 10:28:06 2020 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2020 15:28:06 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position on deep learning for online 2D/2.5D/ 3D scene understanding from images - MEMEX H2020 EU project - (2000002K) In-Reply-To: <897524a0b63d430ba3d706aeaa3707c3@iit.it> References: , <897524a0b63d430ba3d706aeaa3707c3@iit.it> Message-ID: <837db17e72324bacba9e3bef9dc8b626@iit.it> Postdoc position on deep learning for online 2D/2.5D/ 3D scene understanding from images - MEMEX H2020 EU project (2000002K) Genova, Italy The Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision (PAVIS) research line at IIT invites qualified applicants to submit their CV?s for a Postdoc position in Genoa under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Del Bue. PAVIS research line is actively developing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure to understand our physical space and the human behaviors within it. The focus of the group is on creating intelligent systems that jointly accomplish two main goals: Spatial AI: Perceive and understand autonomously the real physical world, both static and dynamic, with its corresponding spatial semantic (where are things, what is their function, which is the dynamic of the scene). Social AI: Perceive and understand humans and their behaviors as observed by cameras in relation to the physical spaces they are interacting with. This open position, up to two years, is financed in the context of the H2020 European Project MEMEX (MEMories and EXperiences for inclusive digital storytelling ? Grant Agreement 870743 -https://www.memexproject.eu) ? an interdisciplinary effort to provide Augmented Reality (AR) systems to impact the European society at large. The candidate will have the opportunity to work on realistic problems involving leading European research centers and companies with the aim to create a novel AR platform able to understand the semantic scene structure of the environment using an RGB video stream from a smartphone. The research topics on 3D scene understanding are related to the recent PAVIS achievements on Spatial AI related to 3D semantic mapping, object 3D localization, graph neural networks (GNNs) for scene modelling and active visual reasoning by integrating deep learning models with multi-view geometry approaches. Such methods will leverage massive worldwide geolocalised data as provided by project partners to finally deploy a mobile app that understands, localizes and reason about the semantic elements present in a generic scene. A relevant scientific track record on major computer vision conferences/journals (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, TPAMI, IJCV, etc.) is a criteria for the selection as well as experience on DNN models and in particular related to GNN. Experience on multi-view geometry is considered a plus for this position. At the time of the application, eligible candidates should have a Ph.D. degree in Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Robotics or related fields. The successful candidate will be offered a competitive salary commensurate to qualifications and experience. Please submit your application using the online form https://iit.taleo.net/careersection/ex/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=2000002K including a detailed curriculum vitae with publication list brief description of research interests and main accomplishments and names and contacts of 2 referees. The call will remain open until the position is filled but a first deadline for evaluation of candidates will be January 15, 2021. Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IIT - was founded with the objective of promoting Italy?s technological development and further education in science and technology. In this sense, IIT is committed to achieving its scientific program, which sees a major inspirational principle in the integration between basic scientific research and the development of technical applications. Research activities at IIT cover areas of high innovative content, representing the most advanced frontiers of modern technology with wide application possibilities in various fields from medicine to industry, from computer science to robotics, life sciences and nanobiotechnology. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is an Equal Opportunity Employer that actively seeks diversity in the workforce. Please note that the data that you provide will be used exclusively for the purpose of professional profiles? evaluation and selection, and in order to meet the requirements of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Your data will be processed by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, based in Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as Data Controller, in compliance with the rules on protection of personal data, including those related to data security. Please also note that, pursuant to articles 15 et. seq. of European Regulation no. 679/2016 (General Data Protection Regulation), you may exercise your rights at any time by contacting the Data Protection Officer (phone +39 010 71781 - email: dpo[at]iit.it). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: