[alife] Call for Papers AISB'06 Workshop on Social Insects Behaviour

[Bob Planque]

*** Apologies for cross-posting ***

CALL FOR PAPERS

Social Insects Behaviour: Theory and Applications
April 3-4, 2006

http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/home/planque/AISB/

A 2-day symposium to be held as part of: AISB'06: Adaptation in Artificial and 
Biological Systems
April 3rd-6th 2006
University of Bristol, Bristol, England

Colonies of social insects are prime examples of natural systems employing 
decentralized decision making. Their abilities to solve complex problems using 
only local information and behavioural rules have attracted the attention from 
biologists and theoreticians alike. There has been great interest recently in 
applying mechanisms from social insect ecology to problems in computer science, 
such as ant swarming algorithms and grid computing. The algorithmic approach 
used by social insects lends itself particularly well to computing. This 
symposium will bring together scientists from different areas and will 
stimulate a cross-flow of ideas between different communities.

One theme of major interest within both communities of biologists and computer 
scientists is that of robustness of decision making systems. On the one hand, 
social insect colonies live in dynamic environments and natural selection may 
well have shaped their decision making mechanisms to be adaptable and rugged. 
On the other hand, in engineering applications there is a growing need for 
robust decision making algorithms that can work on dynamic networks or in other 
changing environments. We therefore encourage the submission of contributions 
that are on, but not limited to, adaptivity and robustness of distributed 
decision making mechanisms.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions should be in the form of abstracts, and should be no longer than 
500 words.

Accepted abstracts will be presented orally on the day and appear in the 
published workshop proceedings.
Formatting instructions will be available from the symposium website shortly.

Abstracts should be submitted to ants at cs.bris.ac.uk by 13th January 2006.

ORGANISERS:

Dr. Robert Planque, Dr. Tim Kovacs, Dr. James A. R. Marshall
Department of Computer Science /
School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol
Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UB, U.K.

Prof. Nigel R. Franks, Dr. Francois-Xavier Dechaume-Moncharmont
School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol
Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1UG, U.K.

Dr. Ana B. Sendova-Franks
School of Mathematical Sciences
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and
Mathematical Sciences
University of the West of England
Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane
Bristol BS16 1QY, U.K.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

* Nick Britton, University of Bath
* Franc§ois-Xavier Dechaume-Moncharmont, University of Bristol
* Nigel Franks, University of Bristol
* Tim Kovacs, University of Bristol
* James Marshall, University of Bristol
* Kevin Passino, Ohio State University
* Robert Planque©, University of Bristol
* Francis Ratnieks, University of Sheffield
* Ana Sendova-Franks, University of the West of England
* David Sumpter, University of Oxford

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of abstracts by: 13th January 2006
Notification of decision: 6th February 2006
Camera ready copies by: 20th February 2006




____________________________________________________________________________
Bob Planque
Dep. of Computer Science/
   School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol
Woodland Road Bristol BS8 1UB, UK email: planque at cs.bris.ac.uk
tel: +44-117-954-5251
web: http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/home/planque
      http://www.xeno-canto.org/