CFP: 25th Conference of the SEPLN (Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing)

. Thursday, December 18, 2008
1 comments

September 8-10, 2009
Palacio Miramar, Donostia - San Sebastián
http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/sepln2009/

INTRODUCTION

The 25th edition of the Annual Conference of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing (SEPLN) will take place in the Miramar Palace in San Sebastian on September 8, 9 and 10, 2008.

We also expect to organise three satellite workshops during the week of the conference (see list of workshops).

The huge amount of information available in digital format and in different languages demands systems that enable us to access this vast library in an increasingly more structured way.

In this same area, there is a renewed interest in improving information accessibility and information exploitation in multilingual environments. Many of the formal foundations for dealing appropriately with these necessities have been, and are still being established in the area of Natural Language Processing and its many branches:

  • Information extraction and retrieval, Questions answering systems,
  • Machine Translation, Automatic analysis of textual content, Text
  • Generation, and Speech recognition and synthesis.

The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for discussion and communication where the latest research work and developments in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be presented by scientific and business communities. The conference also aims at exposing new possibilities of real applications and R&D projects in this field.

Moreover, as in previous editions, there is the intention of identifying future guidelines or paths for basic research and foreseen software applications, in order to compare them against the market needs. Finally, the conference intends to be an appropriate forum in helping new professionals to become active members in this field.


TOPICS

Researchers and companies are encouraged to send communications, project abstracts or demonstrations related to any of the following language technology topics:
  • Linguistic, mathematic and psycholinguistic models of language
  • Corpus linguistics
  • Development of linguistic resources and tools
  • Grammars and formalisms for morphological and syntactic analysis
  • Semantics, pragmatics and discourse
  • Lexical ambiguity resolution
  • Machine Learning in NLP
  • Monolingual and multilingual text generation
  • Machine translation
  • Speech synthesis and recognition
  • Monolingual and multilingual information extraction and retrieval
  • Question answering systems
  • Automatic textual content analysis
  • Text summarization
  • NLP-based generation of teaching resources
  • NLP for languages with limited resources
  • NLP industrial applications

STRUCTURE OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference will last three days, and will consist of sessions devoted to presenting papers, posters, ongoing research projects, prototype product demonstrations or products connected with topics addressed in the conference. Besides, we expect to organize three satellite workshops during the week of the conference.


SUBMISSIONS

The proposal must be submitted earlier than April 24, 2009 and they must meet certain format and style requirements.

Both the delivery and revision of proposals will be done exclusively in PDF electronic format via the Myreview system. We recommend using the LaTeX and Word templates that can be downloaded from the conference webpage.

Besides, the proposals will have to comply the following requirements, depending if they are communications, demos or projects.


COMMUNICATIONS

Authors are encouraged to send theoretical or system-related proposals.

The proposals must include the following sections:

  • A title of the communication.
  • The complete names of the authors, their affiliations, address, and e-mail (anonymous in the submitted proposal).
  • An abstract in English and Spanish (maximum 150 words), including a list of keywords or related topics.
  • The proposal can be written and presented in Spanish or English, and its overall maximum length will be 8 pages, excluding references, which can take up an additional whole page at the most.
  • The documents must not include headings or footnotes.

The papers proposed will be assessed at least by three reviewers, and can be accepted to be presented either as posters or as communications, depending on the program necessities. However, no distinction will be made between communications and posters in the printed version of the SEPLN magazine.


PROJECTS AND DEMOS

As in previous editions, the organizers encourage participants to give oral presentations of R&D projects and demos of systems or tools related to the NLP field. For oral presentations on R&D projects to be accepted, the following information must be included:

  • Project title
  • Name, affiliation, address, e¬mail and phone number of the project director
  • Funding institutions
  • Groups participating in the project
  • Abstract (2 pages maximum)

For demonstrations to be accepted, the following information is mandatory:

  • Demo title
  • Name, affiliation, e-mail and phone number of the authors
  • Abstract (2 pages maximum)
  • Time estimation for the whole presentation

IMPORTANT DATES

  • April 24, 2009: Deadline for submitting papers, projects and demos
  • May 25, 2009: Notification of acceptance
  • June 19, 2009: Deadline for submitting the final version
  • July 15, 2009: Deadline for early registration
  • Sept. 7, 2009: Workshops
  • Sept. 8, 9 & 10: 25th SEPLN Conference

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Chairman: Kepa Sarasola (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)

Members:

* Itziar Aduriz (Universitat de Barcelona)
* José Gabriel Amores (Universidad de Sevilla)
* Jose Maria Arriola (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* Xabier Artola (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* Toni Badía (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
* Manuel de Buenaga (Universidad Europea de Madrid)
* Irene Castellón (Universitat de Barcelona)
* Arantza Díaz de Ilarraza (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* Víctor Díaz Madrigal (Universidad de Sevilla)
* Antonio Ferrández (Universitat d'Alacant)
* Mikel Forcada (Universitat d'Alacant)
* Ana García-Serrano (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
* Alexander Gelbukh (Instituto Politécnico Nacional. México)
* Koldo Gojenola (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* Xavier Gómez Guinovart (Universidade de Vigo)
* Julio Gonzalo (UNED)
* José Miguel Goñi (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
* José Carlos González (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
* Montserrat Marichalar (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* José Mariño (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
* M. Antonia Martí (Universitat de Barcelona)
* María Teresa Martín (Universidad de Jaén)
* Patricio Martínez (Universitat d'Alacant)
* Paloma Martínez (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid)
* Raquel Martínez (UNED)
* Ruslan Mitkov (Universidad de Wolverhampton)
* Manuel Montes y Gómez (Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y
Electrónica. México)
* Lidia Moreno (Universitat Politècnica de València)
* Lluís Padró (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
* Ramón López Cózar (Universidad de Granada)
* Manuel Palomar (Universitat d'Alacant)
* Ferrán Pla (Universitat Politècnica de València)
* German Rigau (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
* Horacio Rodríguez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
* Leonel Ruiz Miyares (Centro de Lingüística Aplicada de Santiago de
Cuba)
* Emilio Sanchís (Universitat Politècnica de València)
* Kepa Sarasola (Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)

* Mariona Taulé (Universitat de Barcelona)
* L. Alfonso Ureña (Universidad de Jaén)
* Felisa Verdejo (UNED)
* Manuel Vilares (Universidad de A Coruña)
* Luis Villaseñor-Pineda (Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y
Electrónica. México)


CONTACT INFORMATION

All the information about the Conference is available in the 25th SEPLN Conference website: http://ixa2.si.ehu.es/sepln2009/ E-mail: sepln2009@ehu.es

CFP: 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09)

. Monday, December 08, 2008
1 comments

The IJCAI-09 Program Committee invites submissions of technical papers for IJCAI-09, to be held in Pasadena, CA, USA, July 11-17, 2009. Submissions are invited on significant, original, and previously unpublished research on all aspects of artificial intelligence.

The theme of IJCAI-09 is "The Interdisciplinary Reach of Artificial Intelligence," with a focus on the broad impact of artificial intelligence on science, engineering, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities. The conference will include invited talks, workshops, tutorials, and other events dedicated to this theme.
  • Important dates for authors of technical papers:
  • Electronic abstract submission: January 7, 2009 (11:59PM, PST)
  • Electronic paper submission: January 12, 2009 (11:59PM, PST)
  • Author feedback period: March 13-16, 2009 (11:59PM, PDT). Please note: Daylight savings time starts on March 8.
  • Author notification of acceptance/rejection: March 31, 2009
  • Camera-ready copy due: April 14, 2009
  • Technical sessions: July 13-17, 2009

Submission Details

Submitted papers must be formatted according to IJCAI guidelines and submitted electronically through the IJCAI-09 paper submission site. Full instructions for submission, including formatting guidelines and electronic templates for paper submission, are available on the IJCAI-09 website: http://www.ijcai-09.org (see the link titled Submission Details). Submitting authors will be required to register with the IJCAI-09 paper submission software (this will be linked from the IJCAI-09 website during the first week of December, 2008).

Papers may be accepted for either oral or poster presentation; papers accepted for either form of presentation will not be distinguished in the conference proceedings, nor will designation of oral or poster presentation be made on the quality of the contribution. Instead, these distinctions will be made in the interests of overall program coherence and quality.

To facilitate review, the paper title, author names, contact details, and a brief abstract must be submitted electronically by Jan. 7, 2009 (11:59 PST). No paper will be accepted for review unless an accompanying abstract is received by the deadline. Technical papers are due electronically on Jan. 12, 2009 (11:59 PST). Authors bear full responsibility for compliance with submission standards. Submissions received after the deadline or that do not meet the length or formatting requirements will not be accepted for review. No email or fax submissions will be accepted. Notification of receipt of the electronically submitted papers will be emailed to the designated contact author soon after receipt. If there are problems with the electronic submission, the program chair will contact the designated author by email. The last day for inquiries regarding lost submissions is Jan. 19, 2009. Notification of acceptance or rejection of submitted papers will be emailed to the designated author by March 31, 2009. The opportunity to respond to preliminary reviews will be made available to authors prior to this date, during the period March 13-16, 2009.

Guidelines for such responses, along with details of the reviewing process will be posted on the IJCAI-09 website. Camera-ready copy of accepted papers must be received by the publisher by April 14, 2009. Note: at least one author of each accepted paper is required to attend the conference to present the work. Authors will be required to confirm their acceptance of this requirement at the time of submission.

Authors who do not have access to the web should contact the program chair at pcchair09@ijcai.org no later than December 15, 2008 for alternate submission instructions.

Content Areas

To facilitate the reviewing process, authors will be required to choose two to four appropriate content area keywords from the list provided by the IJCAI-09 submission software, which will be part of the online paper registration process. Authors are encouraged to select the most specific keywords that accurately describe the main aspects of their contributions. General categories should only be used if specific categories do not apply or do not accurately reflect the main contributions. Each keyword is placed within one of ten 10 major themes; however, many of the keywords cut across multiple themes, and authors should feel free to select any keyword descriptive of the contribution, even if the major theme within which is it categorized is not the most appropriate. A list of keywords is appended to the end of this call.

The major themes are:

Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems
Constraints, Satisfiability, and Search
Knowledge Representation, Reasoning and Logic
Machine Learning
Multidisciplinary Topics And Applications
Natural Language Processing
Planning and Scheduling
Robotics and Vision
Uncertainty in AI
Web and Knowledge-based Information Systems

Policy on Multiple Submissions

IJCAI will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is under review for or has already been published or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference. Authors are also required not to submit their papers elsewhere during IJCAI's review period. These restrictions apply only to journals and conferences, not to workshops and similar specialized presentations with a limited audience and without archival proceedings. Authors will be required to confirm that their submissions conform to these requirements at the time
of submission.

Paper Length and Format

Submitted technical papers must be no longer than six pages, including all figures and references, and must be formatted according to posted IJCAI-09 guidelines. Specifically, papers must be formatted for "letter-size" (8.5" x 11") paper, in double-column format with a 10pt font. Electronic templates for the LaTeX typesetting package, as well as a Word template, that conform to IJCAI-09 guidelines will be made available at the conference website (see above) during the first week of December, as will further details on formatting.

Authors are required to submit their electronic papers in PDF format. Files in Postscript (ps), or any other format will not be accepted.

Submitted papers must not exceed six (6) formatted pages, including references and figures. This six-page limit will be strictly enforced: over-length papers will not be considered for review. Each accepted paper will be allowed six pages in the proceedings; up to two additional pages may be purchased at a price of $275 per page. In order to make blind reviewing possible, authors must omit their names and affiliations from the paper. Also, while the references should include all published literature relevant to the paper, including previous works of the authors, it should not include unpublished works. When referring to one's own work, use the third person rather than the first person. For example, say "Previously, Foo and Bar [7] have shown that...", rather than "In our previous work [7] we have shown that..." For accepted papers, such identifying information can be added to the final camera-ready version for publication.

Review Process

Papers will be subject to blind peer review. Selection criteria include accuracy and originality of ideas, clarity and significance of results and quality of the presentation. Each paper will be assigned to three Program Committee members, one Senior Program Committee member and one Area Chair for review. The reviewing process will include a short period for the authors to view reviews and respond to technical questions on the submitted work raised by the reviewers before final decisions are made. The decision of the Program Committee will be final and cannot be appealed.

Papers accepted for the conference will be scheduled for oral or poster presentation and will be printed in the proceedings. At least one author of each accepted paper will be required to attend the conference to present the work.

Please send inquiries about paper submissions to ijcai09@aaai.org.

Inquiries about the conference program can be directed to:

Craig Boutilier
Program Chair, IJCAI-09
Department of Computer Science
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, M5S 3H5, CANADA
Email: pcchair09@ijcai.org

For further information please visit the conference web site: http://www.ijcai-09.org

List of keywords:

Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems
  • Agent/AI Theories and Architectures
  • Agent-based Simulation and Emergent Behavior
  • Agent Communication
  • Argumentation
  • Auctions And Market-Based Systems
  • Coordination And Collaboration
  • Distributed AI
  • E-Commerce
  • Game Theory
  • Information/Mobile/Software Agents
  • Multiagent Learning
  • Multiagent Planning
  • Multiagent Systems (General/other)
  • Negotiation And Contract-Based Systems
  • Social Choice Theory

Constraints, Satisfiability, and Search
  • Applications
  • Constraint Optimization
  • Constraint Satisfaction (General/other)
  • Distributed Search/CSP/Optimization
  • Dynamic Programming
  • Search, SAT, CSP: Evaluation and Analysis
  • Global Constraints
  • Heuristic Search
  • Search, SAT, CSP: Meta-heuristics
  • Meta-Reasoning
  • Quantifier Formulations
  • Satisfiability (General/other)
  • SAT and CSP: Modeling/Formulations
  • Search (General/other)
  • SAT and CSP: Solvers and Tools

Knowledge Representation, Reasoning and Logic
  • Action, Change and Causality
  • Automated Reasoning and Theorem Proving
  • Belief Change
  • Common-Sense Reasoning
  • Computational Complexity of Reasoning
  • Description Logics and Ontologies
  • Diagnosis and Abductive Reasoning
  • Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning
  • Knowledge Representation Languages
  • Knowledge Representation (General/other)
  • Logic Programming
  • Many-Valued And Fuzzy Logics
  • Nonmonotonic Reasoning
  • Preferences
  • Qualitative Reasoning
  • Reasoning with Beliefs

Machine Learning
  • Active Learning
  • Case-based Reasoning
  • Classification
  • Cost-Sensitive Learning
  • Data Mining
  • Ensemble Methods
  • Evolutionary Computation
  • Feature Selection/Construction
  • Kernel Methods
  • Learning Graphical Models
  • Learning Preferences/Rankings
  • Learning Theory
  • Machine Learning (General/other)
  • Neural Networks
  • Online Learning
  • Reinforcement Learning
  • Relational Learning
  • Time-series/Data Streams
  • Transfer, Adaptation, Multi-task Learning
  • Semi-Supervised/Unsupervised Learning
  • Structured Learning

Multidisciplinary Topics And Applications
  • AI and Natural Sciences
  • AI and Social Sciences
  • Art And Music
  • Autonomic Computing
  • Cognitive Modeling
  • Computational Biology
  • Computer Games
  • Computer-Aided Education
  • Database Systems
  • Philosophical and Ethical Issues
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Intelligent User Interfaces
  • Interactive Entertainment
  • Personalization and User Modeling
  • Real-Time Systems
  • Security and Privacy
  • Validation and Verification

Natural-Language Processing
  • Dialogue
  • Discourse
  • Information Extraction
  • Information Retrieval
  • Machine Translation
  • Morphology and Phonology
  • Natural Language Generation
  • Natural Language Semantics
  • Natural Language Summarization
  • Natural Language Syntax
  • Natural Language Processing (General/other)
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Question Answering
  • Speech Recognition And Understanding
  • Text Classification

Planning and Scheduling
  • Activity and Plan Recognition
  • Hybrid Systems
  • Markov Decisions Processes
  • Model-Based Reasoning
  • POMDPs
  • Plan Execution And Monitoring
  • Plan/Workflow Analysis
  • Planning Algorithms
  • Planning under Uncertainty
  • Planning (General/other)
  • Scheduling
  • Theoretical Foundations of Planning

Robotics and Vision
  • Behavior And Control
  • Cognitive Robotics
  • Human Robot Interaction
  • Localization, Mapping, State Estimation
  • Manipulation
  • Motion and Path Planning
  • Multi-Robot Systems
  • Robotics
  • Sensor Networks
  • Vision and Perception

Uncertainty in AI
  • Approximate Probabilistic Inference
  • Bayesian Networks
  • Decision/Utility Theory
  • Exact Probabilistic Inference
  • Graphical Models
  • Preference Elicitation
  • Sequential Decision Making
  • Uncertainty Representations
  • Uncertainty in AI (General/other)

Web and Knowledge-based Information Systems
  • Information Extraction
  • Information Integration
  • Information Retrieval
  • Knowledge Acquisition
  • Knowledge Engineering
  • Knowledge-based Systems (General/other)
  • Ontologies
  • Recommender Systems
  • Semantic Web
  • Social Networks
  • Source Wrapping
  • Web Mining
  • Web Search
  • Web Technologies (General/other)

Call for ICML/UAI/COLT 2009 Workshop Proposals

. Monday, December 01, 2008
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The ICML, UAI, and COLT conferences will be colocated in Montreal June 14-21 2009. We solict proposals for workshops to be held during a single joint workshop day on June 18. This date lies between ICML (June 14-17) and UAI/COLT (June 19-21). Workshops will be selected on the basis of their interest to the attendees of one or more of the conferences.

The goal of the workshops is to provide an informal forum for researchers to discuss important research questions and challenges. Controversial issues, open problems, and comparisons of competing approaches are encouraged. Representation of alternative viewpoints and panel-style discussions are also encouraged.

Organization

The format, style, and content of accepted workshops is under the control of the workshop organizers and largely autonomous from the main conferences. The workshops will be seven hours long and split into morning and afternoon sessions. Workshop organizers will be expected to manage the workshop content, specify the workshop format, be present to moderate the discussion and panels, invite experts in the domain, and maintain a website for the workshop. Workshop registration will be handled centrally by the main conferences with a single uniform registration fee and with registrants allowed to attend workshops other than the one they register for.

Submission Instructions

Proposals should specify clearly all of the following:

  • the workshop's title (what is it called?)
  • topic (what is it about?)
  • motivation (why a workshop on this topic?)
  • impact and expected outcomes (what will having the workshop do?)
  • potential invited speakers (who might come?)
  • a list of related publications (where can we learn more?)
  • main workshop organizer (who is making it happen?)
  • other organizers (who else is making it happen?)
  • workshop URL (where will interested parties get more information?)
  • relevant conferences (which of ICML, UAI, and COLT would it appeal to?)

Please also provide brief CVs of all organizers. This information should be sent by email (in plain text or pdf format) to Icml-uai-colt-workshops09@ssli.ee.washington.edu by 19 Jan 2009.

16 PhD Scholarships in bioinformatics and robotics

.
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I just published in "Computer Science PhD" 16 PhD Scholarships for working on 16 individual projects in the fields of bioinformatics and robotics at the Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences (Germany). PhD scholarships amount to 1250 € per month. Students with a master's degree (or its equivalent) in computer science, mathematics, or engineering are invited to apply for admission. The application deadline is January 15, 2009.