[alife] Preliminary Call For Papers: Modeling Natural Action Selection (at IJCAI 2005)

Titus Brown titus at caltech.edu
Wed Dec 15 15:51:14 PST 2004


From: Modeling Natural Action Selection <mnas.ijcai05 at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2004 22:28:51 +0000
Subject: Preliminary Call For Papers: Modeling Natural Action Selection
(at IJCAI 2005)

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

Preliminary Call For Papers:  Modeling Natural Action Selection (at IJCAI 2005)

                 MODELING NATURAL ACTION SELECTION
           an International and Interdisciplinary Workshop

            http://www.bath.ac.uk/comp-sci/ai/MNAS-2005/

                     Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
             over two days between July 30-August 1, 2005

In association with:
The 19th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2005)

Introduction:
-------------

Action selection is an agent's continuous problem of choosing what to
do next.  In artificial intelligence, this problem has been addressed
with strategies ranging from constructing long chains of intentions
that provide provably optimal means of achieving goals to reactive or
anytime algorithms that do simple lookups based solely on the external
environment.  But what does nature do?

This multidisciplinary workshop is dedicated to advancing our
understanding of the behavioral patterns and neural substrates
supporting action selection in animals --- including humans.  Examples
of interesting topics include:
   o  The variation of action selection strategies across species.
   o  The variation of strategies within species across individual,
      social or environmental contexts.
   o  Cognitive, neural and embodied models of decision making.

We are seeking participation of researchers from either natural or
artificial intelligence (NI or AI), who propose models for either
human or animal behavior.  We seek experts from neuroscience,
psychology, and the quantitative social sciences as well as AI.  We
hope workshop participants will substantially advance the discipline
both through presenting science and by examining and critiquing a wide
variety of modeling approaches.

Requirements:
------------------

We ask that all papers:
   o  Reference or describe a model of action selection,
   o  Reference or describe a data set derived from the actions of
      living animals or humans, and
   o  Make direct comparisons between the model and biological data.

All aspects of action selection are acceptable, from single task
performance to evolutionary models of behavior, from individual
protozoa to human societies.  Our goal for the workshop is to bring
together researchers using a variety of strategies for modeling with
an aim to build an understanding of the currently available models,
tools, advances and challenges in the field.

Our ultimate goal is to create a rich synergy between AI and NI models
of action selection.  A similar synergy has helped advance the fields
of neuroscience and neural networks over the past decade, and has
resulted in a number of journals which regularly publish strong papers
from both fields.

Venue:
---------

This workshop will take place as part of the 19th International
Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2005), the world's
premiere conference on AI.  Participants in the workshop may wish to
attend the full conference but will not be required to do so.

The venue will be Edinburgh, Scotland.  This will be excellent time to
visit the Scottish capital just prior to the start of the famous
Edinburgh International Festival, and during the Edinburgh Jazz and
Blues Festival. Participants are encouraged to plan to stay on after
the workshop to enjoy the city and take advantage of these events.

Workshop Format:
----------------

The workshop will be held over two days.  The format will consist of

  o  twenty minute talks with ten minute discussions,
  o  aproximately four invited talks (pending funding applications),
  o  poster and discussion sessions, and
  o  dinners in town.

Talks will be clustered by approach so that researchers unfamiliar
with the various approaches to modeling action selection will have an
opportunity to learn.  We intend to allow speakers to know the
speaking order well in advance so that they can coordinate their talks
to maximize content and minimize repetition.

Talks will be chosen from submitted papers.  All papers will be peer
reviewed. The number of full papers accepted, as determined by review,
may exceed the number of talk slots available, in which case the
remainder of accepted papers will be offered a special full-paper
poster session. The maximum number of participants is limited by IJCAI
to 40. If there is room for participants without full papers, a second
call will be sent out in May for extended abstracts and ordinary
poster submissions.

Publications:
-------------

IJCAI will publish a workshop proceedings for all accepted papers and
abstracts.  In addition, we are negotiating with international
journals, e.g. Cognitive Science, to create a special issue for the
best scientific papers from the workshop (as assessed by the
participants.)  Final negotiations will depend on the quality of
papers submitted to the workshop.

Workshop participants will also discuss creating a further publication
(either a book or journal special issue) emphasizing the techniques and
technology used by the successful modelers.

Papers and Participation:
-------------------------

IJCAI workshop participation is limited to 40 people.  Preference will
be given to those who submit papers, but other places may be available.

Workshop papers should be from 4,000 to 8,000 words (or approximately
normal IJCAI conference length) and submitted in the IJCAI format.  For
later publications the word limit may be extended.

Electronic paper submission deadline:            April 1, 2005
Paper Notifications sent:                         May 15, 2005
Camera-ready copy deadline:                      June 15, 2005

Paperless participant application deadline:      June 15, 2005
Notice for paperless participants:               June 30, 2005

IJCAI Workshop dates:           July 30, 2005 - August 1, 2005

Organizing Committee:
---------------------

Dr. Joanna J. Bryson
Artificial models of natural Intelligence
Department of Computer Science
University of Bath, UK
BA2 7AY
http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb

Dr. Tony Prescott
Adaptive Behaviour Research Group
Department of Psychology
University of Sheffield, UK
S10 2TP
http://www.shef.ac.uk/~abrg/tony/index.shtml

Dr. Anil K.Seth
The Neurosciences Institute
10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive
San Diego
CA 92121, USA
http://www.nsi.edu/users/seth

Program Committee:
------------------

Gordon Arbuthnott, Dept of Preclinical Veterinary Sciences, University
of Edinburgh, UK

Orlando Avila-Garcia, Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of
Hertsfordshire, UK

Gianluca Baldassarre, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and
Technologies, National Research Council, Italy

Christian Balkenius,  Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden

Alwyn Barry, Artificial models of natural Intelligence, University of Bath, UK

Bettina Berendt,  Institute of Information Systems, Humboldt
University Berlin, Germany

Hagai Bergman, Department of Physiology, Hebrew University, Israel

Rafal Bogacz, Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK

Driss Boussaoud, Institute for Cognitive Sciences, CNRS, France

Olivier Buffet, Research School of Information Sciences and
Engineering, The Australian National University, Austrailia

Lola Canamera, Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of
Hertsfordshire, UK

Angelo Cangelosi, Artificial Intelligence and Cognition, University of
Plymouth, UK

Ricardo Chavarriaga, Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience, EPFL,
Switzerland

Rick Cooper, Cognitive Science, Birbeck (University of London), UK

Frederick Crabbe, Computer Science Department, United States Naval Acadamy, USA

Nathaniel Daw, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University
College London, UK

Peter Dayan, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University
College London, UK

Yiannis Demiris, Intelligent and Interactive Systems Group,  Imperial
College London, UK

Peter Dominey, Sequential Cognition and Language
Group, CNRS, France

Kenji Doya, Department of Computational Neurobiology, ATR Compuational
Neuroscience Laboratories, Japan

Jason Fleischer, Theoretical Neurobiology, The Neurosciences Institute, USA

Philippe Gaussier, Equipe Neurocybern?????tique, CNRS, France

Agnes Guillot, AnimatLab, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, France

Kevin Gurney, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK

Jim Houk, Deparment of Physiology, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA

Karl F. MacDorman, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan

Mark Humphries, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK

Mark Humphrys, School of Computing,  Dublin City University, Ireland

Jeff Krichmar, Theoretical Neurobiology, The Neurosciences Institute, USA

Brian S. Logan, Department of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, UK

Will Lowe, Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Jean-Arcady Meyer, AnimatLab, CNRS, France

Michael North, Center for Complex Adaptive Systems, Argonne National
Laboratory, USA

Peter Redgrave, Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK

Frank Ritter, Applied Cognitive Science Lab, Penn State University

Deb Roy  Media Laboratory, MIT, USA

David Sallach, Center for Complex Adaptive Systems, Argonne National
Laboratory, USA

Emmet Spier, Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics,
Sussex University, UK

Kris R. Thorisson,  School of Computer Science, Reykjav??????k University

Myra Wilson, Computer Science, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

-----

For all questions and comments, please email the workshop at
mnas.ijcai05 at gmail.com

For further details, please see the webpage:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/comp-sci/ai/MNAS-2005/



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