COLT 2010 CFP

COLT 2010 – Call for Papers

The 23rd Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT 2010) will take
place in Haifa, Israel, on June 27-29, 2010 and will be co-located
with ICML 2010. We invite submissions of papers addressing theoretical
aspects of machine learning and empirical inference. We strongly
support a broad definition of learning theory, including:

* Analysis of learning algorithms and their generalization ability
* Computational complexity of learning
* Bayesian analysis
* Statistical mechanics of learning systems
* Optimization procedures for learning
* Kernel methods
* Inductive inference
* Boolean function learning
* Unsupervised and semi-supervised learning and clustering
* On-line learning and relative loss bounds
* Learning in planning and control, including reinforcement learning
* Learning in games, multi-agent learning
* Mathematical analysis of learning in related fields, e.g., game
theory, natural language processing, neuroscience, bioinformatics,
privacy and security, machine vision, data mining, information retrieval

We are also interested in papers that include viewpoints that are new
to the COLT community. We welcome experimental and algorithmic papers
provided they are relevant to the focus of the conference by
elucidating theoretical results in learning. Also, while the primary
focus of the conference is theoretical, papers can be strengthened by
the inclusion of relevant experimental results.

Papers that have previously appeared in journals or at other
conferences, or that are being submitted to other conferences, are not
appropriate for COLT. Papers that include work that has already been
submitted for journal publication may be submitted to COLT, as long as
the papers have not been accepted for publication by the COLT
submission deadline (conditionally or otherwise) and that the paper is
not expected to be published before the COLT conference (June 2010).

Feedback on Review Quality
There will be no rebuttal phase this year. However, authors will be
given the opportunity to assess the quality of reviews and provide
feedback to the reviewers, after the decisions have been made. These
assessments will be used in particular to determine the Best Reviewer
award (see below).

Paper and Reviewer Awards
This year, COLT will award both best paper and best student paper
awards. Best student papers must be authored or coauthored by a
student. Authors must indicate at submission time if they wish their
paper to be eligible for a student award. This does not preclude the
paper to be eligible for the best paper award.

To further emphasize the importance of the reviewing quality, this
year, COLT will also award a best reviewer award to the reviewer who
has provided the most insightful and useful comments.

Open Problems Session
We also invite submission of open problems (see separate call). These
should be constrained to two pages. There is a shorter reviewing
period for the open problems. Accepted contributions will be allocated
short presentation slots in a special open problems session and will
be allowed two pages each in the proceedings.

Paper Format and Electronic Submission Instructions
Formatting and submission instructions will be available in early
December at the conference website. Submissions should include the
title, authors’ names, and a 200-word summary of the paper suitable
for the conference program. Papers should not exceed 13 pages
(including bibliography) and should be formatted according to the
following style file and sample LaTeX source (colt10e.sty, colt10-
sample.tar.gz). Authors not using latex should ensure that their
document complies with similar formatting (similar margins, 11pt font,
single column). Shorter papers are strongly encouraged. Additional
material beyond the 13 page limit can be placed in the appendix and
might be read, at the discretion of the program committee.

Important Dates
Preliminary call for papers issued October 15,2009
Electronic submission of papers (due by 5:59pm PST) February 19, 2010
Electronic submission of open problems March 13, 2010
Notice of acceptance or rejection May 07, 2010
Submission of final version May 21, 2010
Feedback on reviews due May 28, 2010
Joint ICML/COLT workshop day June 25, 2010
2010 COLT conference June 27-29, 2010

OrganizationProgram Co-chairs:
* Adam Tauman Kalai (Microsoft Research)
* Mehryar Mohri (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Google Research)

Program Committee:
Shivani Agarwal Mikhail Belkin
Shai Ben-David Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi
Ofer Dekel Steve Hanneke
Jeff Jackson Sham Kakade
Vladimir Koltchinskii Katrina Ligett
Phil Long Gabor Lugosi
Ulrike von Luxburg Yishay Mansour
Ryan O’Donnell Massimiliano Pontil
Robert Schapire Rocco Servedio
Shai Shalev-Shwartz John Shawe-Taylor
Gilles Stoltz Ambuj Tewari
Jenn Wortman Vaughan Santosh Vempala
Manfred Warmuth Robert Williamson
Thomas Zeugmann Tong Zhang

Publicity Chair:
* Sandra Zilles (University of Regina)

Local Arrangements Chair:
* Shai Fine (IBM Research Haifa)

2-year postdoc in Machine Learning and Reverse-Modeling of biological networks (Evry, near Paris, France)

A 2-YEAR POSTDOC POSITION AVAILABLE in MACHINE LEARNING and REVERSE-MODELING OF SIGNALING and GENE REGULATORY NETWORKS at IBISC (University of Evry – GENOPOLE, France)

The Machine Learning, Modeling and Data Integration Group group at laboratory IBISC at University of Evry – Genopole (30km Paris, France) is looking for postdoctoral candidates for a two-year position with a strong background in statistical learning (graphical models and kernel methods) and an interest for interdisciplinary research aimed towards reverse-modeling of biological networks.

The successful applicant will participate to an ANR project called ODESSA that began on December 1rst, 2009, in collaboration with the l’Institut de Génomique Fonctionnelle de Lyon (IGFL, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France). He/she will investigate new algorithms for structure and module learning in nonlinear state-space models. A sound knowledge in graphical models (dynamical models, mixture models, latent variable models) and kernel-based approaches is asked. The targeted application is the identification of signaling and gene regulatory networks involved in the cellular response to retinoic acid from large scale data (next generation sequencers). Experience in large scale data-mining of post-genomic data will be appreciated but is not required.

The successful candidate will have a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mathematics or Bioinformatics with a strong publication record.

Applications for this role should include a statement of research experience and interests, a CV, two reference letter(s) from appropriate academic sources and the two best publications.

Please send your applications in electronic form to Prof. Florence d’Alché-Buc : florence.dalche (at) ibisc.univ-evry.fr

The position can start in early 2010 and not later than June 2010.

Deadline for the first round of applications is Jan, 31 2010.

More details available at http://amisbio.ibisc.fr/opencms/opencms/amis/en/jobs/

PhD student for computational genetics

Please see below link for details of a vacancy for a PhD student who will further develop Bayesian methods for use in the analysis of genome-wide association studies:

http://www.ru.nl/vacaturedetails?recid=497857

If somebody has a good candidate, we would like to ask him/her to forward this advert to this person.

2 inderdiscplinary postdoc positions in London

Research Associate – Capitalizing on Gravitational Shear

A brief summary and pointer to the formal ad can be viewed on
cosmocoffee http://cosmocoffee.info/viewtopic.php?p=4369#4369

Workshop ECIR 2010 on Large-Scale Hierarchical Classification

Large-Scale Hierarchical Classification Workshop European Conference on
Information Retrieval 2010

March 28, 2010
The Open University in Milton Keynes, UK

http://lshtc.iit.demokritos.gr/workshop

*********************************************************
THE CHALLENGE

The workshop is associated to the PASCAL 2 Large-Scale Hierarchical Text
Classification Challenge. The challenge was completed recently with the very
active participation of several teams from around the world. The results are
publicly available at: http://lshtc.iit.demokritos.gr/

*********************************************************
SCOPE

Hierarchies are becoming ever more popular for the organization of
documents, particularly on the Web (e.g. Web directories). Along with their
widespread use comes the need for automated classification of new documents
to the categories in the hierarchy. Research on large-scale classification
so far has focused on large numbers of documents and/or large numbers of
features, with a limited number of categories. However, this is not the case
in hierarchical category systems, such as DMOZ. Approaching this problem,
either existing large-scale classifiers can be extended, or new methods need
to be developed. The goal of this workshop is to discuss and assess some of
these strategies. In particular some of the issues that we expect to cover
in the workshop are:
* Learning to classify against many categories.
* Data sparseness in the presence of large datasets.
* Use of the statistical dependence of hierarchically organized classes.
* The role of shrinkage methods in large hierarchies.
* Ensemble methods for hierarchical classification.
* Extending existing large-scale classifiers to hierarchies.
* Challenging hierarchical classification tasks and datasets.

*********************************************************
IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper submission – January 18
* Acceptance notification – February 15
* Final paper – March 1

*********************************************************
SUBMISSIONS

We expect submissions by the various teams who have participated to the
LSHTC challenge. At the same time, we strongly encourage submissions from
researchers not participating to the challenge. The Easychair electronic
submission system will be used for the papers. Please, refer to the workshop
page for details about the submission format and process.

*********************************************************
ORGANISERS

Eric Gaussier, LIG, Grenoble, France
George Paliouras, NCSR “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece Aris Kosmopoulos, NCSR “Demokritos” and AUEB, Athens, Greece Sujeevan Aseervatham, LIG, Grenoble, France

—

Research Readership in Computer Science

Oxford Brookes University – School of Technology
Starting salary: £46,509 rising annually to £52,346

negligible teaching activities!
see

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AAF163/reader-in-computer-science

Email philiptorr(at)brookes.ac.uk if any questions

Engineer and Post-doc positions – 3D avatar for Image Registration

Engineer and Post-doc positions – 3D avatar for Image Registration

The Inselspital, University Hospital Bern (www.insel.ch) is starting a KTI funded project with the University of Geneva (www.miralab.ch) and Nhumi Technologies GmbH (www.nhumi.com) as business partner to design a new system for navigating healthcare data using a 3D model of the human anatomy. The purpose is to enable patients and clinicians to see on a 3D avatar where images (e.g. X-rays, MRI’s) have been taken and therefore to request a relevant image in a single click.

For this project, the Inselspital is looking for an experienced engineer or a post-doc with strong software development skills who would have the responsibility to design, implement and test innovative techniques to align or register a set of real medical images with artificially generated images from a standard model of the human anatomy. The candidate will be integrated in the team of the Inselspital and will also work closely with the development lab of Nhumi Technologies and should be at ease with both academic and industrial environment.

The candidate will be offered a competitive salary for two years and will have the opportunity to put his ideas at work in a challenging environment. As a member of a dynamic team, she/he will be asked to work independently and to communicate regularly about her/his activities.

Required skills:

* English speaking (German a plus)
* Literate in Java and strong programming skills. Knowledge of web services and javascript.
* Mathematical background or experience in Computational Geometry algorithms or 3D Graphics programming.
* Master of Science or PhD degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Computer Graphics or related fields.
* Experience in image registration and medical informatics a plus.

Job location:

* Inselspital, Bern
* Nhumi Technologies, Zurich

Job duration:
2 years minimum

For more information, please do not hesitate to contact

Dr. med Michael A. Patak, Oberarzt
Institut für Diagnostische, Interventionelle und Pädiatrische Radiologie
Inselspital, Universitätsspital Bern
Freiburgstrasse
3010 Bern

michael.patak(at)insel.ch

Postdoc positions in SMT and/or CLIR, Xerox Research Centre Europe

The Cross-Language Technologies (CLT) area of the Xerox Research Centre Europe (XRCE) conducts research in the following areas: Statistical Machine Translation; Multilingual Terminology Extraction; Cross-Language Information Retrieval (CLIR), Categorization and Clustering. The team is part of the PASCAL 2 European Network of Excellence, ensuring a strong network of academic collaborations.

We are opening 2 Postdoc positions for researchers interested in the areas of Statistical Machine Translation and/or CLIR. For the first position, we are looking for a candidate with a strong Machine Learning background, for the second position for a candidate with a strong SMT, CLIR, or NLP background.

Required experience and qualifications:

For the first position:

* PhD in computer science, statistics or mathematics with focus on Machine Learning.

* Acquaintance with SMT or NLP is a plus.

For the second position:

* PhD in computer science or computational linguistics with focus on SMT, CLIR, or statistical NLP.

* Acquaintance with Machine Learning is a plus.

For both positions:

* Good programming skills in C, C++, and/or Python.

* A good command of English is required, as well as open-mindedness and the will to collaborate within a team.

Starting date: Beginning of 2010
Duration: 18 months

Application instructions: please email your CV and covering letter, with message subject containing the expression “[CLT Postdocs 2010]” to xrce-candidates and to Nicola.Cancedda at xrce.xerox.com.

More details at:

http://www.xrce.xerox.com/About-XRCE/Jobs/Two-Postdoc-Positions-Cross-Language-Technologies .

Inquiries can be sent to Nicola.Cancedda at xrce.xerox.com.

XRCE is a highly innovative place and we strongly encourage publication and interaction with the scientific community.

Call for papers: MLSP 2010, the Twentieth IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing

First Call for Papers for the

Twentieth IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing
(MLSP 2010)

August 29 – September 1, 2010, Kittila, Finland

Website: http://mlsp2010.conwiz.dk

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission of full papers: April 1, 2010
Notification of acceptance: May 28, 2010
Camera-ready paper and author registration: June 18, 2010
Advance registration before: June 23, 2010

The 2010 IEEE International Workshop on MACHINE LEARNING FOR SIGNAL
PROCESSING (MLSP 2010) will be held in Kittila, Finland, in
August-September 2010. MLSP 2010 is the twentieth workshop in the
series of workshops sponsored by IEEE Signal Processing Society. It
will present the most recent and exciting contributions in machine
learning for signal processing through keynote talks as well as
special and regular single-track sessions.

INVITED SPEAKERS:

– Prof. Zoubin Ghahramani, University of Cambridge
– Prof. Tom Mitchell, Carnegie Mellon University
– Dr. Henry Tirri, Head of Nokia Research Center

ORGANIZATION:

General chair: Erkki Oja
Program chairs: Samuel Kaski, David Miller
Special session chairs: Samy Bengio, Mikko Kurimo
Publicity chairs: Marc Van Hulle, Jaakko Peltonen
Web and publication chairs: Antti Honkela, Jan Larsen
Data competition chairs: Vince Calhoun, Kenneth Hild, Mikko Kurimo
Local arrangements: Tapani Raiko (chair), Francesco Corona, Ali Faisal, Mari-Sanna Paukkeri

VENUE:

MLSP 2010 will be held in the Levi Summit conference and exhibition
centre in Kittila, Finland. Levi is one of the largest resorts in
Finnish Lapland, north of the Arctic Circle. In the summer, Levi
offers many sports activities as well as lots of wild northern nature.
The conference centre is located high on the hillside of the Levi
fell, accessible by gondola from the main village.

CONFERENCE TOPICS:

Machine learning in signal processing is concerned with tasks such as
detection, estimation, prediction, classification, and optimization,
with a wide range of applications. The following is a non-exhaustive
list of topics for MLSP 2010:

– Bayesian learning and signal processing
– Cognitive information processing
– Graphical and kernel methods
– Information-theoretic learning
– Learning theory and algorithms, including bounds on performance
– Supervised learning, including signal detection, pattern
recognition and classification
– Unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning
– Source separation and component analysis
– Data fusion and integration
– Feature extraction, information visualization
– Sparse and structured representations
– Neural network learning
– Time-series analysis
– Adaptive filtering
– Data mining, information retrieval
– Sequential learning and sequential decision methods
– Hardware implementation of machine learning in signal processing
– Applications of machine learning: Bioinformatics, Biomedical and
neural signal processing, Neuroinformatics, Speech and audio
processing, Image and video processing, Computer vision,
Sensor networks, Robot control, Communications, Cognitive radio,
Multimodal interfaces and context modeling, Intelligent multimedia
and web processing

SPECIAL SESSION:

A special session “Towards multimodal proactive interfaces using
large-scale machine learning” is being organized. For more
information see http://mlsp2010.conwiz.dk .

DATA COMPETITION:

In conjunction with the workshop, a data and signal analysis
competition is being organized. Winners will present their works and
receive their award during the Workshop.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Authors are invited to submit a double column paper of up to six pages
using the electronic submission procedure described at
http://mlsp2010.conwiz.dk

Accepted papers will be published by IEEE Press and electronic
proceedings will be distributed at the Workshop.

SPONSORS: MLSP 2010 is supported by IEEE, by the IEEE Signal
Processing Society, and by the PASCAL2 Network of Excellence.

See http://mlsp2010.conwiz.dk for more details!

Call for participation: Workshop “µTOSS 2010 – Multiple Comparisons from Theory to Practice”

Call for Participation
Call for Poster Submissions

µTOSS 2010 Berlin –
Multiple Comparisons from Theory to Practice
February 15-16, 2010, Berlin, Germany

http://www.amiando.com/mutoss.html

** PASCAL2 Core Event **

Important Dates
===============

Submission Deadline: 2010-01-15
Notification of Acceptance: 2010-01-22
Registration Deadline: 2010-01-24
Workshop Date: 2010-02-15 – 2010-02-16

Organization
============

Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology (BFNT-B)
Berlin Institute of Technology (TUB)
Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis
and Stochastics (WIAS) Berlin

Klaus-Robert Mueller, TUB and BFNT-B
Thorsten Dickhaus, TUB
Gilles Blanchard, WIAS
Matthias L. Jugel, BFNT-B
Imke Weitkamp, BFNT-B/Workshop Coordination

Description
===========

Under the scope of the “Harvest” programme
of the PASCAL2 European Network of Excellence,
Gilles Blanchard, Thorsten Dickhaus and Klaus-Robert Mueller,
together with five participants from three countries, will carry out
a software project for multiple testing at TU Berlin from
January 18th to February 12th, 2010
(for details see http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~dickhaus/mutoss.html).

As a round-off of the project, the workshop “µTOSS 2010 Berlin –
Multiple comparisons from Theory to Practice” will take place in
collaboration with the Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology Berlin on
February 15th and February 16th, 2010. The workshop shall serve two
purposes. On the one hand, we will have invited speakers who present
talks on multiple testing methodology and practice in a tutorial style
for an audience that is familiar with basic concepts of statistical
testing, but has no particular expertise in MCPs. Directly after such a
theoretical talk, we will present how the things which have just been
presented can be realized in our new software (this practical
presentation will be done by one of the coding team members).

In a separate time slot, contributed posters will be presented.

Submission
==========

Please send your abstracts (max. 1 page, PDF or plain text)
no later than 2010-01-15 to the poster submission email address