[alife] Call for Abstracts: Third International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization

[Larry Yaeger]

                    (apologies for multiple postings)

Dear colleagues,

This is an announcement and Call for Abstracts for the Third 
International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2010) to be 
held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA, 4-6 
September 2010:

http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso3/

The workshop is comprised of a group of researchers with diverse yet 
related interests, overlapping in the area of self-organizing systems 
and methods for characterizing those systems in ways that may 
ultimately allow them to be guided toward prespecified goals. 
Information theory and graph theory are core to many of these 
methods; quantifying complexity and its sources a common theme.

If interested in participating, send an extended abstract to the 
email addresses on the web site given above.  Selected works from the 
workshop will likely be published in a special journal issue (as has 
been the case in the past).  More information below and on the web 
site.

Best wishes,
Larry Yaeger

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The Third International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization (GSO-2010)
http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso3/


4-6 September 2010
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Sponsors:  School of Informatics and Computing
            Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research


Research Aims and Topics:

The GSO-2010 workshop will bring together invited experts and 
researchers in self-organizing systems, with particular emphasis on 
the information- and graph-theoretic foundations of GSO and 
information dynamics in cognitive systems.

The GSO-2010 workshop is third in the GSO series. The First 
International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2008 
<http://www.prokopenko.net/gso.html>) was held 24-27 November 2008 in 
Sydney, Australia. It was followed by The Second International 
Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2009 
<http://www.mis.mpg.de/calendar/conferences/2009/gs09.html>) on 
August 18-20, 2009 in Leipzig, Germany.

The goal of GSO is to leverage the strengths of self-organization 
while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing 
process.  In its most general form, GSO combines task-independent 
objectives (universal utility functions) with task-specific 
constraints. One may consider different ways to guide the process 
(dynamics) of self-organization, achieving a specific increase in 
structure or function within a system. This guidance may be provided 
by limiting the scope or extent of the self-organizing 
structures/functions, specifying the rate of the internal dynamics, 
or simply selecting a subset of all possible trajectories that the 
dynamics may take.

There have been a few recent attempts at formalizing aspects of GSO, 
specifically within information theory and dynamical systems: 
empowerment, information-driven evolution, robust overdesign, 
reinforcement-driven homeokinesis, predictive information-based 
homeokinesis, interactive learning, etc. What is common to many 
examples of GSO is the characterization of a system-environment loop 
(e.g., sensorimotor or perception-action loop) in 
information-theoretic terms. For instance, given an agent's behavior, 
the empowerment measures the amount of Shannon information that the 
agent can "inject into" its sensors through the environment, 
affecting future actions and future perceptions. On the other hand, 
maximization of the predictive information or excess entropy during a 
time interval enables an adaptive/evolutionary change in controllers' 
logic in such a way that the system becomes coordinated. Furthermore, 
methods relying on the use of predictive information in a 
sensorimotor process may produce explicit learning rules for the 
agent optimizing its behavior.

However, the lack of a common mathematical framework across multiple 
scales and contexts leaves GSO methodology somehow vague, indicating 
a clear gap. Filling this gap and identifying common principles of 
guidance are the main themes of GSO workshops.


Program:

The program includes 3 days of presentations, each day with two or 
three keynote talks (1 hour each), and 5-7 scheduled presentations 
(30 minutes each).

The following topics are of special interest: information-theoretic 
measures of complexity, graph-theoretic metrics of networks, 
information-driven self-organization (IDSO), applications of GSO to 
systems biology, computational neuroscience, cooperative and modular 
robotics, sensor networks.

Submissions to the workshop are extended abstracts (one page). 
Authors of accepted submissions will present the content to the 
workshop. It is expected that post-workshop publication of selected 
papers will follow in a special journal issue (as has been the case 
for previous GSO workshops). Selected papers of GSO-2008 were 
published by the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Journal, in 
the Special Issue on Guided Self-Organization 
<http://scitation.aip.org/dbt/dbt.jsp?KEY=HJFOA5&Volume=3&Issue=5> 
(full text papers online at 
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/issues/183859/>). A special issue 
<http://www.prokopenko.net/special-issue-gso-2009.html> of Theory in 
Biosciences is under review with selected papers from GSO-2009.


Invited speakers (confirmed):

*	Nihat Ay (MPI, Germany)
*	John Beggs (Indiana University, USA)
*	Ralf Der (MPI, Germany)
*	Daniel Polani  (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
*	Mikhail Prokopenko (CSIRO, Australia)
*	Olaf Sporns (Indiana University, USA)
*	(Additional speakers to be announced)


Participation:

If you are interested in presenting, please email a one-page extended 
abstract to the conference organizers.  If you are interested in 
attending, please send a short email to the conference organizers 
announcing your intentions (so we can adjust catering plans for 
coffee breaks and such).  Following the workshop, a formal call for 
papers will be issued for a special journal issue.  The workshop is 
free and open to all interested researchers, though for practical 
considerations the total number of presenters will be limited to 21, 
and the total number of attendees will be limited to 40.


Venue:

Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
USA


Program Committee:

Larry Yaeger, Indiana University, USA (Chair)

Nihat Ay, MPI, Germany
John Beggs, Indiana University, USA
Ralf Der, MPI, Germany
Keith Downing, NTNU, Norway
Carlos Gershenson, UNAM, Mexico
Joseph Lizier, University of Sydney, Australia
Stefano Nolfi, ISTC-CNR, Italy
Oliver Obst, CSIRO, Australia
Daniel Polani, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Mikhail Prokopenko, CSIRO, Australia
Ivan Tanev, Doshisha University, Japan