Liebe Mitglieder der GK, hier für dieses Jahr die letzten aktuellen Mitteilungen. Wir wünschen Ihnen ein frohes Weihnachtsfest und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr. Mit freundlichen Grüßen Nikolaus Rötting ********************************************** First Call For Papers International Workshop on MULTIMODAL CORPORA: FROM MULTIMODAL BEHAVIOUR THEORIES TO USABLE MODELS Saturday 27 May 2006 1 day workshop http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/mmc06/ ********************************************** In Association with LREC2006 (the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation) http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2006/ Main Conference 24-25-26 May 2006 Magazzini del Cotone Conference Center Genoa - Italy ------------------------- MOTIVATIONS ------------------------- 'Multimodal Corpora' target the recording and annotation of several communication modalities such as speech, hand gesture, facial expression, body posture, etc. Theoretical issues are also addressed, given their importance to the design of multimodal corpora. This workshop follows similar events held at LREC'2000, LREC'2002 and LREC'2004. There is an increasing interest in multimodal communication and multimodal corpora as visible by recently launched European Networks of Excellence and integrated projects such as HUMAINE, SIMILAR, CHIL and AMI, and similar efforts in the USA and in Asia. Furthermore, the success of recent conferences dedicated to multimodal communication (ICMI'2005, IVA'2005, Interacting Bodies'2005, Nordic Symposium on Multimodal Communication 2005) also testifies the growing interest in this area, and the general need for data on multimodal behaviours. The focus of this LREC'2006 workshop on multimodal corpora will be on non-verbal communication studies and their contribution to the definition of collection protocols, coding schemes, inter-coder agreement measures and reliable models of multimodal behaviour that can be built from corpora and compared to results that can be found in the literature. Topics to be addressed in the workshop include, but are not limited to: - Studies of multimodal behaviour - Multimodal interaction in groups and meetings - Building models of behaviour from multiple sources of knowledge : manual annotation, image processing, motion capture, literature studies - Coding schemes for the annotation of multimodal video corpora - Validation of multimodal annotations - Exploitation of multimodal corpora in different types of applications (information extraction, information retrieval, meeting transcription, multi-modal interfaces, translation, summarisation, www services, communication and clinical studies, HCI design) - Methods, tools, and best practices for the acquisition, creation, management, access, distribution, and use of multimedia and multimodal corpora - Metadata descriptions of multimodal corpora - Benchmarking of systems and products; use of multimodal corpora for the evaluation of real systems - Automated multimodal fusion and/or generation (e.g., coordinated speech, gaze, gesture, facial expressions) We expect the output of this one day workshop to be: 1) a deeper understanding of the theoretical issues and research questions related to verbal and non-verbal communication that multimodal corpora should address, 2) how such corpora should be built in order to provide useful and usable answers to research questions, and 3) an updated view of state-of-the-art research on multimodal corpora. ------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------- - 1st call for paper 15th December - 2nd call for paper 11th January - Deadline for paper submission (complete paper) 5th February - Notification of acceptance 1st March - Final version of accepted paper 23rd March - Final program 1st April - Final proceedings 13th April - Workshop : Saturday 27 May 2006 --------------- SUBMISSIONS --------------- The workshop will consist primarily of paper presentations and discussion/working sessions. Submissions should be 4 pages long, must be in English, and follow the submission guidelines at http://www.chi2006.org/docs/chi2006pubsformat.doc The preferred format is MS Word. The .doc file should be submitted via email to LREC-MM@LIMSI.FR Demonstrations of multimodal corpora and related tools are encouraged as well (a demonstration outline of 2 pages can be submitted). As soon as possible, authors are encouraged to send to LREC-MM@LIMSI.FR a brief email indicating their intention to participate, including their contact information and the topic they intend to address in their submissions. Proceedings of the workshop will be printed by the LREC Local Organising Committee. Submitted papers will be blind reviewed. -------------------------------------------------- TIME SCHEDULE AND REGISTRATION FEE -------------------------------------------------- The workshop will consist of a morning session and an afternoon session. There will be time for collective discussions. For this full-day Workshop, the registration fee will be specified on http://www.lrec-conf.org/lrec2006/ -------------------------------------------------- ORGANISING COMMITTEE -------------------------------------------------- Jean-Claude MARTIN CNRS-LIMSI / Univ. Paris 8-LINC, BP 133, 91403 ORSAY Cedex, France Email : MARTIN@LIMSI.FR Web : http://www.limsi.fr/Individu/martin/ Peter KUEHNLEIN Bielefeld University, PO Box 100131, D-33501 Bielefeld Email: p@uni-bielefeld.de Web: www.peter-kuehnlein.net Patrizia PAGGIO Centre for Language Technology (CST), University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 80, DK-2300 CPH S Email: patrizia@cst.dk Web: www.cst.dk/patrizia Rainer STIEFELHAGEN Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH), Interactive Systems Labs, ITI, Am Fasanengarten 5, 76131 Karlsruhe Email: stiefel@ira.uka.de Web: http://isl.ira.uka.de/~stiefel Fabio PIANESI Istituto Trentino di Cultura - Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (ITC-irst), Italy Email: pianesi@itc.it Web: http://www.itc.it/irst/Renderer.aspx?targetID=164 -------------------------------------------------- PROGRAMME COMMITTEE -------------------------------------------------- Jens Allwood, Univ. Göteborg, SE Elisabeth Ahlsén, Univ. Göteborg, SE Elisabeth André, Univ. Augsburg, D Gerard Bailly, CNRS-STIC, FR Tom Brøndsted, Univ. of Aalborg Stéphanie Buisine, ENSAM, FR Susanne Burger, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Genevieve Calbris, ENS LSH Lyons & CNRS UMR 8606, Paris, FR Loredana Cerrato, KTH TMH-CTT, SE Piero Cosi, ISTC-SPFD CNR, I John Glauert, University of East Anglia Dirk Heylen, U Twente, NL Bart Jongejan, CST, Univ. of Cph, DK Kostas Karpouzis, ICCS, G Michael Kipp, DFKI Saarbrücken, D Stefan Kopp, SFB 360, D, S. Alfred Kranstedt, SFB 360, D Peter Kuehnlein, Bielefeld University, D Daniel Loehr, MITRE, USA Ian Marshall, University of East Anglia Jean-Claude Martin, CNRS-LIMSI, F Costanza Navarretta, CST, Univ. Of Cph, DK Patrizia Paggio, CST, Univ. Of Cph, DK Catherine Pelachaud, Univ. Paris, FR Fabio Pianesi, ITC, I Isabella Poggi, Univ. Roma Tre, I Jan-Peter de Ruiter, MPI, NL Ielka van der Sluis, U Aberdeen, UK Rainer Stiefelhagen, Universitaet Karlsruhe, D Janienke Sturm, Univ. Nijmegen, NL Peter Wittenburg, MPI Nijmegen, NL Massimo Zancanaro, ITC, I -- http://www.peter-kuehnlein.net ====================================================== CALL FOR PAPERS - CALL FOR WORKSHOPS - CALL FOR TUTORIALS The Transregional Collaborative Research Center SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition invites you to submit a paper, workshop, or tutorial proposal to the international conference *** Spatial Cognition 2006 *** 24 - 28 September 2006, Universitaet Bremen, Germany www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de Important Dates: 31 March 2006 - deadline for submitting workshop or tutorial proposals 30 April 2006 - deadline for submitting full papers 15 May 2006 - notification of acceptance for workshops / tutorials 03 July 2006 - notification of acceptance for papers 30 July 2006 - deadline for submitting revised papers 24 - 28 September 2006 - Spatial Cognition 2006 conference Program Committee: Thomas Barkowsky (Universitaet Bremen) Christian Freksa (Universitaet Bremen) Markus Knauff (Universitaet Freiburg) Bernd Krieg-Brueckner (Universitaet Bremen) Bernhard Nebel (Universitaet Freiburg) Tutorial & Workshop Organization: Christoph Hoelscher (Universitaet Freiburg) The conference organizers request full paper submissions on original spatial cognition research and particularly encourage contributions from interdisciplinary / international collaboration. The target length of paper contributions is 15-20 pages including abstracts in the Springer LNCS format (see www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). Selected papers will be given 30 minutes for presentation and discussion at the conference. Spatial Cognition 2006 continues a series of international spatial cognition conferences published in the Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence since 1998. Workshop and tutorial proposals should be submitted on 1-2 pages. All spatial cognition topics and related aspects are welcome. We request electronic submissions, preferably in pdf format. Details are found at www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de. Please submit your paper to Thomas Barkowsky, barkowsky@sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de Please submit your workshop or tutorial proposal to Christoph Hoelscher, hoelsch@cognition.uni-freiburg.de Dr. rer. nat. Thomas Barkowsky Assistant Professor / Scientific Manager SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition Universitaet Bremen Postfach 330 440 28334 Bremen / Germany phone: +49-421-218-8625 / fax: -8620 ==================================================================== ***************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS: Neural Networks 2007 Special Issue "Echo State Networks and Liquid State Machines" Guest Co-Editors : Dr. Herbert Jaeger, International University Bremen, h.jaeger at iu-bremen.de Dr. Wolfgang Maass, Technische Universitaet Graz, maass at igi.tugraz.at Dr. Jose C. Principe, University of Florida, principe at cnel.ufl.edu A new approach to analyzing and training recurrent neural network (RNNs) has emerged over the last few years. The central idea is to regard a RNN as a nonlinear, excitable medium, which is driven by input signals or fed-back output signals. From the excited response signals inside the medium, simple (typically linear), trainable readout mechanisms distil the desired output signals. The medium consists of a large, randomly connected network, which is not adapted during learning. It is variously referred to as a dynamical reservoir or liquid. There are currently two main flavours of such networks. Echo state networks were developed from a mathematical and engineering background and are composed of simple sigmoid units, updated in discrete time. Liquid state machines were conceived from a mathematical and computational neuroscience perspective and usually are made of biologically more plausible, spiking neurons with a continuous-time dynamics. These approaches have quickly gained popularity because of their simplicity, expressiveness, ease of training and biological appeal. This Special Issue aims at establishing a first comprehensive overview of this newly emerging area, demonstrating the versatility of the approach, its mathematical foundations and also its limitations. Submissions are solicited that contribute to this area of research with respect to -- mathematical and algorithmic analysis, -- biological and cognitive modelling, -- engineering applications, -- toolboxes and hardware implementations. One of the main questions in current research in this field concerns the structure of the dynamical reservoir / liquid. Submissions are especially welcome which investigate the relationship between the excitable medium topology and algebraic properties and the resulting modeling capacity, or methods for pre-adapting the medium by unsupervised or evolutionary mechanisms, or including special-purpose sub networks (as for instance, feature detectors) into the medium. Submission of Manuscripts: The manuscripts should be prepared according to the format of the Neural Networks and electronically submitted to one of the Guest Editors. The review will take place within 3 months and only very minor revisions will be accepted. For any further question, please contact the Guest Editors. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION : June 1, 2006. ************************************ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dr. Herbert Jaeger Professor for Computational Science International University Bremen Campus Ring 12 28759 Bremen, Germany Phone (+49) 421 200 3215 Fax (+49) 421 200 49 3215 email h.jaeger@iu-bremen.de http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/hjaeger/ ============================================================================== *********************************************************************** Graduate Program in Computer Science "SmartSystems" International University Bremen (IUB) http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/smartsystems/ *********************************************************************** Menschen können wahrnehmen, handeln, kommunizieren, entscheiden und verstehen. Mittlerweile werden aber auch zunehmend Technologien entwickelt die Maschinen ebenfalls diese Fähigkeiten verleihen sollen. Für Studierende die sich für dieses Thema interessieren bietet die International University Bremen (IUB) im Bereich Informatik das Graduate Programm "SmartSystems" an. Teil des Programms sind Kurse in Robotik, Künstlicher Intelligenz, Netzwerke, Datenbanken, Webtechnologien und in der Mathematik Komplexer Systeme. Eine frühe und intensive Beteiligung an Forschungsarbeiten ist ein integraler Bestandteil des Programms. Im SmartSystems Graduate Program gibt es eine Doktoranden- und eine Masterschiene. Für Studenten die bereits einen Diplom- bzw. Masterabschluß besitzen beträgt die Promotionszeit in der Regel drei Jahre. Mit einem Bachelorabschluß bzw. einem Vordiplom und mindestens einem erfolgreichen Semester Haupstudium kann eine zweijährige Master oder eine fünfjährige Doktorandenlaufbahn eingeschlagen werden. Die Entscheidung zwischen diesen beiden Möglichkeiten wird in der Regel nach Abschlußdes ersten Jahres getroffen. Eine Fortsetzung des Studiums als Doktorand ist nach einem erfolgreichen Masterabschluß natürlich auch möglich. Die IUB ist eine private, unabhängige Forschungsuniversität die 1999 gegründet wurde und 2001 den Lehr- und Wissenschaftsbetrieb aufnahm. Lehr- und Umgangssprache ist Englisch. Wie an der IUB üblich besteht für SmartSystems ein sehr selektives Auswahlverfahren. Neben den allgemeinen Bewerbungsunterlagen die unter www.iu-bremen.de/affairs/graduatedegrees/27765/ erhältlich sind, wird ein Graduate Record Examination (GRE) erwartet. Das GRE ist ein international üblicher Zugangstest der vor der Bewerbung bereits abgelegt sein sollte. Informationen zum GRE liefert www.gre.org. Ein starkes Interesse am wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten ist für potentielle Bewerber ein Muß. Praktische Erfahrungen, Teilnahmen an nationalen und internationalen Wettbewerben und ein allgemeines fachliches sowie persönliches Engagement sind sehr willkommen. Das SmartSystems Graduate Program bietet eine exzellente Betreuung durch ein traumhaftes Zahlenverhältnis von Professoren zu Studenten, eine erstklassige forschungsorientierte Arbeitsumgebung und hochmotivierte Mitstudenten. Es bestehen verschiedene finanzielle Fördermöglichkeiten. Erstens fallen für die bis zu zwanzig Plätze im Graduate Program zur Zeit keine Studiengebühren an. Zweitens gibt es in der Doktoranden- wie auch bereits in der Masterschiene zusätzliche, finanziell äußerst attraktive Stipendien für erstklassige Bewerber. Die Kurse im SmartSystems Graduate Program beginnen jeweils zum 1. September eines Jahres. Bewerbungen werden in zwei Runden angenommen, die zum 1. Februar, bzw. 1. Mai eines Jahres enden. Bewerber der ersten Runde werden automatisch auch für die Vergabe von Stipendien in der zweiten Runde in Betracht gezogen. Weitere Informationen zu dem Graduate Program finden sich unter www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/smartsystems/ -------------------------------------------------- Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft Schriftführer: Prof. Dr. Manfred Thüring Webmaster: Nikolaus Rötting e-Mail: sf@gk-ev.de Web: http://www.gk-ev.de --------------------------------------------------