Algorithmic Learning Theory and Discovery Science, October 29-31

Dear PASCAL colleagues,

The 23rd International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory (ALT
2012) will be held in Lyon, France, at Université Lumière Lyon 2, on October 29-31, 2012.

The conference is on the theoretical foundations of machine learning and is a PASCAL event (sponsored by the PASCAL network… this is why you get this email!).

The conference will be co-located with the 15th International Conference on Discovery Science (DS 2012); the joint website of these conferences is:
http://eric.univ-lyon2.fr/alt-ds-2012/

The invited speakers include:
— Luc De Raedt (Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
— Shai Shalev-Shwartz (School of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
— Pascal Massart (Département de Mathématiques, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France)
— Toon Calders (Faculty of Math and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
— Gilbert Ritschard (Department of Economics and Institute for Demographic and Life Course Studies, Université de Genève)

The papers to be presented at the two conferences were selected: Their lists can be found on the indicated website.
(The detailed programs will be available mid-September.)

Please note that the early registration deadline (with a reduced fee) is September 7.

Meanwhile: Enjoy your summer!

Gilles Stoltz, on behalf of the PC chairs and conference chairs

PhD or Postdoc position at the University of Stuttgart

The Institute of Stochastics and Applications (ISA) of the Department of Mathematics at the Universität Stuttgart is offering a research position for a

Post-Doc or PhD Student

available starting October 1, 2012 or later. The appointment is for up to three years at salary scale up to 100% TVL-13. The position is funded within joint DFG-project with the Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS) at the Universität Stuttgart.

ISA’s part of the project focuses on the design and mathematical analysis of new, fully adaptive methods for cluster analysis, which are then applied to sentiment analysis by the IMS. Solid mathematical knowledge, in particular in stochastics and functional analysis are required. Moreover, a close cooperation with the computer scientists at the IMS is expected.

Universität Stuttgart wishes to increase the proportion of female academic staff and, for this reason, especially welcomes applications from women.
Severely challenged persons will be given preference in case of equal qualifications.
Please, send applications in electronic form (pdf) to

Prof. Dr. Ingo Steinwart (applications@isa.uni-stuttgart.de)

by September 15, 2012.

BMVC 2012: bursaries and call for impromptu contributions

—————————————-
STUDENT BURSARIES
—————————————-
Link: http://bmvc2012.surrey.ac.uk/bursary.php
Deadline: Friday, 10 August

Thanks to PASCAL sponsorship, we will provide bursaries for up to two PASCAL student members who otherwise would not be able to attend the conference.
Additionally, the BMVA will provide 10 bursaries, but they will give priority to UK students.

—————————————-
CALL FOR DEMOS AND VIDEOS
—————————————-
Link: http://bmvc2012.surrey.ac.uk/cfp.php
Deadline: Friday, 24 August

Please follow the link above for further information.

—————————————-
CALL FOR IMPROMPTU POSTERS
The 4th UK Students Workshop (BMVW)
—————————————-
Link: http://bmvc2012.surrey.ac.uk/workshopPosters.php
Deadline: Monday, 20 August

For students in the UK

In addition to the workshop programme in which full peer-reviewed papers and invited talks will be presented, we are also welcoming “impromptu” contributions to be presented as posters.

The goal of this call is to make this workshop more inclusive so that students can discuss their ongoing research and preliminary results with a wide computer vision public.
Published material is also welcome, excluding posters that have already been presented at the main conference.

In order to be considered for inclusion in this program, please submit a short abstract (about 10 lines) using the form at the web page above.

Best regards,

Teo de Campos
PS: please send any query about BMVC to bmvc2012@list.surrey.ac.uk

CFP IbPRIA 2013 – 6th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis

CALL FOR PAPERS

IbPRIA 2013 – 6th Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis Madeira, Portugal June 5-7, 2013

http://www.ibpria.org/2013

The Iberian Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis
(IbPRIA) is an international event co-organised every two years, by the Portuguese and Spanish Associations for Pattern Recognition.

IbPRIA is a single track conference that includes tutorials, special sessions, invited speakers as well as oral and poster presentations.
The conference is intended to act as a forum for research groups, engineers and practitioners to present recent results, algorithmic improvements and promising future directions in pattern recognition and image analysis.

SCOPE
The conference is looking for new theoretical results, techniques and main applications on any aspect of pattern recognition and image analysis, including but not restricted to the following topics:

Pattern Recognition
Image Analysis
Computer Vision
Multimedia Systems
Statistical and Structural Pattern Recognition Machine Learning and Data Mining Computer Vision for Robotics and Automation Bioinformatics Image Coding and Processing Shape and Texture Analysis Information Systems Biometric Technologies Speech Recognition Document Processing Character and Text Recognition Robotics Remote Sensing Industrial Applications of Pattern Recognition Special Hardware Architectures

PAPER SUBMISSION
Papers should describe original and unpublished work on the topics of the conference. Prospective authors should prepare a full paper, written in english, not exceeding
8 pages and must submit it
electronically. Further information can be found on the conference
website: http://www.ibpria.org/2013

Each paper will be blind-reviewed by at least two reviewers and will be accepted based on its originality, signficance and clarity. All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings, and will be published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series, LNCS Series. A copy of the proceedings will be distributed to all participants at the Conference.

Moreover, the IbPRIA 2013 conference provides additional opportunities for journal publicaction and best paper awards. Contacts are being established with an indexed journal for a special issue.

Submission implies that at least one of the authors has to register and to present the communication at the conference if the paper is accepted.

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of papers November 19, 2012
Notification of acceptance January 19, 2013 Camera-Ready February 2, 2013

For more information please visit http://www.ibpria.org/2013

CfP: BBCI Workshop 2012 – Submission Extended

Call for Participation
Call for Poster Submissions

BBCI Workshop 2012 on Advances in Neurotechnology September 17-19, Berlin, Germany

Official: http://bbci12.ml.tu-berlin.de/

************************************************************************

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

Submission Date: 2012-08-12
Notification of Acceptance: 2012-08-17
Workshop Date: 2012-09-17 – 2012-09-19

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

Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology (BFNT-B) Humboldt University Berlin (HU) Berlin Institute of Technology (TUB) Charité – University Medicine Berlin Bernstein Center Computational Neuroscience Berlin (BCCN-B)

– Benjamin Blankertz (chair), Berlin Institute of Technology
– Ulrich Egert, University of Freiburg
– Siamac Fazli (poster co-chair), Berlin Institute of Technology
– Dario Farina, University of Göttingen
– Stefan Haufe (poster co-chair), Berlin Institute of Technology
– Klaus-Robert Müller (chair), Berlin Institute of Technology
– Susanne Schreiber (co-chair), Humboldt University Berlin
– Michael Tangermann (poster chair), Berlin Institute of Technology
– Jochen Triesch, University of Frankfurt

Matthias L. Jugel, BFNT-B/Industry
Imke Weitkamp, BFNT-B/Coordination

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

Different approaches to Brain-Computer Interfaces have been developed, each one with specific solutions that range from understanding and explaining cognitive functions over communicating with real and virtual environments by thought alone to real-time monitoring of cognitive states.

The Advances in Neurotechnology Workshop presents an overview, in-depth tutorials and discussions on the latest research at all levels of Neurotechnology and BCI research. What is presented will cover invasive recording, semi-invasive ECoG, non-invasive EEG, non-invasive NIRS and fMRI measurement and potential combinations of the different methods. Additional focus will be devoted to advances in data analysis.

The poster session following the tutorials will cross over into the BBCI barbecue, smoothing discussions with drinks and food.

Following the workshop there will be a summerschool on selected topics in BCI and neurotechnology from September 20th to 28th.
It has educational tutorials in the morning session (two tutorials of 2h each, held by internationally renowned researchers), and practical hand-ons sessions in the afternoon. The practical sessions are partly multi-track and will allow researchers in BCI/neurotechnology to complement their expertise in the interdisciplinary field.

Submission
==========

Please send your posters (in PDF) or abstracts (max. 2 pages, PDF or plain text) to the poster chair Michael Tangermann , no later than 2012-07-30.

Poster size should be a maximum of A0 (width x height: 841mm × 1189mm)

Confirmed Speakers
==================

– Felix Biessmann, Berlin Institute of Technology
– Benjamin Blankertz, Berlin Institute of Technology
– Mark Cohen, UCLA
– Tom Eichele, Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway
– Dario Farina, BFNT Göttingen
– Rainer Goebel, University Maastricht
– John-Dylan Haynes, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience
– Bo Hong, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
– Yukiyasu Kamitani, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto
– Motoaki Kawanabe, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto
– Christof Koch, California Institute of Technology
– Andrea Kübler, Universität Würzburg
– Seong-Whan Lee, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Engineering, Korea
– Donatella Mattia, Fondazione Santa Lucia, IRCCS, Italy
– José del R. Millán, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
– Klaus-Robert Müller, Berlin Institute of Technology
– Gernot Müller-Putz, TU Graz
– Gerwin Schalk, Wadsworth Center

Venue
=====

Audimax der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6 / Dorotheenstr. 17-19, Berlin, Germany

Workshop Fees
=============

Business: 300 EUR
Standard: 250 EUR

* Early Registration Discount (until 2012-08-19)

Academic : 200 EUR
Bernstein: 100 EUR
Students : 50 EUR

Funding
=======

The workshop is supported by the Bernstein Focus: Neurotechnology Berlin.

ECML PKDD 2012 – Call for Participation – Early Registration: July 31

*** ECML PKDD 2012 *** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION *** EARLY REGISTRATION:
JULY 31 ***

The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD) will take place in Bristol, UK from September 24th to 28th, 2012.

ECML-PKDD is the prime European scientific event in machine learning and data mining. It will feature presentations of contributed papers and invited speakers, a wide program of workshops and tutorials on the first and last days, a discovery challenge, and a DINe track with demo, industry, and ‘nectar’ talks.

Keynote talks

Workshops

Tutorials

The list of accepted research track papers can be accessed at http://ecmlpkdd2012.webfactional.com/ .

The early registration deadline with reduced registration fee is July 31st, 2012.

Accommodation is booked directly with the hotels: reduced rates are available on a first-come-first-serve basis, so please act now to avoid disappointment!

Registration

Hotels

We look forward to welcoming you in Bristol this September.

Peter Flach, Tijl De Bie and Nello Cristianini, University of Bristol ECML-PKDD 2012 General and Programme Chairs ECMLPKDD2012@cs.bris.ac.uk

Open PhD Position: Learning Representations of large-scale Multi-relational Data. Application to link prediction in Knowledge Bases.

Supervision : Antoine Bordes and Yves Grandvalet, CNRS – Université de Technologie de Compiègne.

Dates : position open from November 1st, 2012 to January 1st, 2013.
(earlier or later start dates can be negotiable)

Context :

A PhD studentship is available as part of the French ANR funded project EVEREST on “lEarning high-leVEl REpresentations of large Sparse Tensors”
being undertaken by Heudiasyc laboratory in Université de Technologie de Compiègne, with a partnership of Xerox Research Center Europe (Grenoble, France). See https://www.hds.utc.fr/everest for more details on the project.

The student will be based in the Heudiasyc laboratory in Compiègne
(France) and join the DI team headed by Yves Grandvalet. He/she will be supervised by Antoine Bordes (https://www.hds.utc.fr/~bordesan) and Yves Grandvalet (https://www.hds.utc.fr/~grandval). Heudiasyc is a joint laboratory with the Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC) and the French governmental agency for research (CNRS). In 2011, it was rated A+ (the highest rate) by the French Research evaluation agency (AERES).
Heudiasyc fosters interdisciplinary research on information science and technology including machine learning, uncertain reasoning, operations research, robotics and knowledge management. In 2011 Heudiasyc was awarded with an excellence project (LabEx) on the « Control of Technological Systems of Systems ». The project will also include a collaboration with Xerox Research Center Europe, through interactions with Guillaume Bouchard (http://www.xrce.xerox.com/).

The studentship is funded by an ANR project and will start between November 1st, 2012 and January 1st, 2013. The studentship is funded for 3 years (currently 1850€ per month — gross salary).

Requirements :

The PhD candidate should have or expect to obtain a MSc or equivalent in computer science or mathematics. The following qualities are desirable :
strong interests in machine learning or statistics ; excellent record of academic and/or professional achievement ; strong mathematical skills ; strong programming skills ; good written and spoken communication skills in French or English. The ideal candidate should be able to conduct theoretical research, but also implement and test models on very large datasets.

Project description :

Huge amounts of structured and relational data are available in many domains of engineering, industry or research ranging from the Semantic Web, or bioinformatics to recommender systems. As a result, knowledge bases (KBs), such as Freebase, WordNet or GeneOntology, became essential tools for storing, manipulating and accessing information, but they are also incomplete, imprecise and far too large to be used as efficiently and broadly as they could. Hence, there is need for methods able to summarize, complete or merge these large databases. This is the motivation of the project.

The data of these KBs is naturally represented as a so called multi-relational graph consisting of nodes associated with entities and of different types of edges between nodes corresponding to the different types of relations. The first phase of the project will consist in developing and evaluating an approach based on energy-based learning [4] for deriving high-level representations of such multi-relational graphs.
By high-level, we mean that these representations should enable to condense the original databases, to complete them by filling in missing values, and to ease their matching and merging. Energy-based models could provide a new direction to deal with multi-relational data, which will be compared with traditional low-rank methods [5] or Bayesian approaches [2,6]. They have already shown some promising preliminary results [1]. A goal of the thesis will also be to bridge energy-based learning in this context and tensor factorization [3].

In a second phase, the qualities of these new representations will be applied to link prediction, i.e. uncover relationships in a multi-relational graph that probably exist but have not been observed, on benchmark data and on real-world data provided by Xerox.

References :

[1] Bordes, A., J. Weston, R. Collobert, and Y. Bengio. “Learning Structured Embeddings of Knowledge Bases.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). AAAI Press, 2011.
[2] Kemp, C., J.B. Tenenbaum, T.L. Griffiths, T. Yamada, and N. Ueda.
“Learning Systems of Concepts with an Infinite Relational Model.”
Proceedings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). AAAI Press, 2006.
[3] Koida, T.G., and B.W. Bader. “Tensor Decompositions and Applications.”
SIAM Review, 2008.
[4] Lecun Y, Chopra S, Hadsell R, marc’aurelio R, Huang f (2006) A tutorial on Energy-Based learning. In: Bakir G, Hofman T, sch ̈olkopf B, Smola A, Taskar B (eds) Predicting Structured Data, MIT Press [5] Nickel, M., V. Tresp, and H.-P. Kriegel. “A Three-Way Model for Collective Learning on Multi-Relational Data.” Proceedinsg of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML). Bellevue, WA:
Omnipress, 2011.
[6] Sutskever, I., R. Salakhutdinov, and J.B. Tenenbaum. “Modelling Relational Data using Bayesian Clustered Tensor Factorization.” Avances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). Vancouver, BC, 2010.

Contact and application :

Applicants should send (preferably as a single PDF file):
* a CV
* a brief statement of research interests
* references (with email and phone number)
* their academic transcript
* a sample of strongest publications or course work (e.g. Master thesis)

Applications and inquiries should be directed to:
* Antoine Bordes – antoine.bordes@hds.utc.fr
* Yves Grandvalet – yves.grandvalet@hds.utc.fr

MLSB 2012: Call for Participation

=============== Call for Participation ===============

Machine Learning in Systems Biology
September 8 and 9, 2012
Basel, Switzerland
http://mlsb.cc

===============================================
We invite you to join us for the 6th installment of

Machine Learning in Systems Biology (MLSB) 2012,

which will be held as a 2-day ECCB workshop on September 8 and 9
in Basel, Switzerland.

The full program of MLSB 2012 can be found online on http://mlsb.cc
The highlights of MLSB 2012 include four invited talks by

* Uwe Ohler, Duke University & Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology/Max Delbrück Center & Humboldt Universität Berlin
Deciphering transcription regulation: from individual sites to cell type specific expression
* Yves Moreau, KU Leuven
Kernel methods for genomic data fusion
* Pascal Falter-Braun, TU München
Signatures of evolution and systems organization from an Arabidopsis interactome network map

* Ben Lehner, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona
The genetics of individuals: why would a mutation kill me, but not you?

Please note the early registration for MLSB/ECCB on July 31, 2012 (for registration visit http://www.eccb12.org/registration-info).

We are looking forward to meeting you in Basel!

Best regards,
Karsten Borgwardt and Gunnar Rätsch

—
Karsten Borgwardt
http://agkb.is.tuebingen.mpg.de

Gunnar Rätsch
http://raetschlab.org

CALL FOR PAPERS: ACML2012 (extended submission deadline 6 August, 2012)

======================================================================

The 4th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML2012)

Singapore, November 4-6, 2012

http://acml12.comp.nus.edu.sg/

======================================================================

Fresh new submissions that have not caught up with the early deadline are welcome for the final paper submission deadline!

—————-
Important dates:
—————-

* Final Paper Submission: 6 August, 2012

* Final Notification: 8 September, 2012
* Camera Ready: 24 September, 2012
* Conference: 4-6 November, 2012

The 4th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML2012) will be held on November 4-6, 2012, at the Singapore Management University, Singapore. The conference aims at providing a leading international forum for researchers in machine learning and related fields to share their new ideas and achievements. Submissions from other than the Asia-Pacific regions are also highly encouraged.

The conference program consists of tutorials, workshops, invited keynote talks by distinguished researchers as well as single track sessions of research paper presentations. The invited keynote speakers for ACML 2012 are James Rehg (Georgia Tech), Dale Schuurmans (University of Alberta), and Bob Williamson (Australian National University and NICTA).

The proceedings will be published as a volume of Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR): Workshop and Conference Proceedings. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit a significantly extended version of their paper to a post-conference special issue of the Machine Learning journal. The BEST STUDENT PAPER will receive an award sponsored by the Machine Learning journal.

This year ACML will have an innovative new feature: TWO submission deadlines. The late deadline has the usual ¡°accept¡± or ¡°reject¡± outcomes. In addition to the two outcomes, the early deadline also has “conditional accept subject to required revisions”, and ¡°resubmit¡± with notification in time for them to make the final deadline. The submission of “conditional accept” decision is strongly encouraged to carefully address the review comments in their revision. The revision without addressing the review comments properly might be rejected. The submission of “resubmit” decision must be significantly improved and revised before it can be re-submitted in the late deadline. Fresh submissions that have not caught up with the early deadline are also welcome for the late deadline.

ACML2012 calls for papers that report high quality original research results on machine learning and related fields. The topics include but are not limited to the following:

1. Learning problems

* Active learning
* Cost-sensitive Learning
* Ensemble methods
* Feature selection/extraction/construction
* Incremental learning and on-line learning
* Learning in graphs and networks
* Multi-agent learning
* Multi-instance learning
* Reinforcement learning
* Semi-supervised learning
* Supervised learning
* Classification, regression, ranking, structured, logical
* Transfer and multi-task learning
* Unsupervised learning
* Clustering, deep learning, latent variable models
* Other learning problems

2. Analysis of learning systems

* Computational learning theory
* Experimental evaluation methodology
* Others

3. Applications

* Bioinformatics
* Collaborative filtering
* Computer vision
* Information retrieval
* Mobile and pervasive computing
* Natural language processing
* Social networks
* Web search
* Other applications

4. Learning in knowledge-intensive systems

* Knowledge refinement and theory revision
* Multi-strategy learning
* Other systems

5. Other learning problems

Abstract and Paper Submission:
——————————
Electronic abstract and paper should be submitted through the ACML 2012 submission site:
https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/ACML2012/

Papers should be written in English and formatted according to the JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings format (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/proceedings/). The maximum length of papers is 16 pages in this format. Overlength submissions or submissions without appropriate format will be rejected without review. Paper submissions should ensure double-blind reviews. Please be sure to remove any information from your submission that can identify the authors, including author names, affiliations, self citations and any acknowledgments.

Proceedings will be published as a volume of JMLR: Workshop and Conference Proceedings (this is not equivalent to a regular issue of JMLR) at http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/proceedings/

Papers submitted to this conference must not have been published, accepted for publication or be under review for another conference or journal.
Novelty is an important criterion in the selection of papers.

To encourage interdisciplinary contributions, ACML will welcome papers that address applications of machine learning in other areas.
For these application papers, the novelty will be judged based on the applications of machine learning methods. These papers will be evaluated differently for the algorithmic papers. Authors of these papers should choose “Applications” as the primary topic.

Submitting a paper to ACML 2012 means that if the paper is accepted, at least one author will attend the conference to present the paper. All papers must be submitted electronically in PDF format only, before the deadline through the submission system. More information, including detailed author instruction, is available at:
http://acml12.comp.nus.edu.sg/index.php?n=Main.CallForPapers

For questions and suggestions on paper submission, please write to: acml2012program@gmail.com

Organizers
———-
General Co-Chairs
* Wee Sun Lee (National University of Singapore)
* Zhi-Hua Zhou (Nanjing University)

Program Co-Chairs
* Wray Buntine (NICTA)
* Steven C.H. Hoi (Nanyang Technological University)

Local Arrangement Co-Chairs
* Jing Jiang (Singapore Management University)
* Sintiani Dewi Teddy (Institute for Infocomm Research)
* Ivor Tsang (Nanyang Technological University)

Sponsorship Chair
* David Lo (Singapore Management University)

Finance Chair
* Jianxin Wu (Nanyang Technological University)

Tutorial Co-Chairs
* Hai Leong Chieu (DSO National Laboratories)
* Stanley Kok (Singapore University of Technology and Design)

Workshop Co-Chairs
* David Hardoon (SAS)
* Huan Xu (National University of Singapore)

Publication Chair
* Sinno Jialin Pan (Institute for Infocomm Research)

ACML Steering Committee
* Tom Detterich (Oregon State University, USA)
* Tu Bao Ho (JAIST, Japan)
* Hiroshi Motoda, Chair (Osaka University, Japan)
* Bernhard Pfahringer (Waikato University, New Zealand)
* Masashi Sugiyama (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
* Takashi Washio (Osaka University, Japan)
* Geoff Webb (Monash University, Australia)
* Qiang Yang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong)
* Zhi-Hua Zhou, Co-Chair (Nanjin University, China)

Senior Program Committee
* Edward Chang (Google Research Asia)
* Wei Fan (IBM TJ Watson Lab)
* Xaiofei He (Zhejiang University)
* Tu Bao Ho (JAIST, Japan)
* Chun-Nan Hsu (University of Southern California)
* Aapo Hyvarinen (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology)
* Rong Jin (Michigan State University)
* Kristian Kersting (University of Bonn)
* Kee-Eung Kim (KAIST)
* Irwin King (Chinese University of Hong Kong)
* James Kwok (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
* Pavel Laskov (University of Tubingen)
* Yuh-Jye Lee (NTUST)
* YoonKyung Lee (Ohio State University)
* Ping Li (Cornell University)
* Hang Li (Microsoft Research Asia)
* Phil Long (Google)
* Klaus-Robert Muller (Technical University Berlin)
* Bernhard Pfahringer (University of Waikato)
* Scott Sanner (Australian National University)
* Shirish Shevade (Indian Institute of Science)
* Masashi Sugiyama (Tokyo Institute of Technology)
* Jieping Ye (Arizona State University)
* Dell Zhang (Birbeck College University of London)
* Min-Ling Zhang (Southeast University)
* Xiaojin Jerry Zhu (University of Wisconsin (Madison)

Postdoctoral position in serious gaming (with possible tenure-track extension) at the University of Amsterdam

The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for a fully funded position for a postdoctoral fellow (with a possible extension to a tenure track position), to conduct research in the area of serious gaming and to help set up a new serious gaming track within our master’s degree program.

Application closing date: 1 September 2012 Starting date: 1 October 2012 (later starting date is possible).
Duration: 2-3 years (with possible tenure-track extension)

The postdoctoral fellow will be expected to conduct high quality research in the area of serious gaming in interaction with our existing research themes such as machine learning, information retrieval, and modeling and simulation of complex systems.

The postdoctoral position also offers the unique opportunity to play a key role in the development of a new interdisciplinary serious gaming track within our master’s degree program that has the potential to attract large numbers of students. The postdoctoral fellow will aid in curriculum design and recruitment of diverse teachers from within the University of Amsterdam and from our partner university, the VU University Amsterdam.

Applicants must have a PhD in computer science or a closely related area.

An ideal candidate possesses:

* a substantial publication record in gaming, serious gaming, or a similar area.

* a strong background in computer science and programming.

* experience with and enthusiasm for teaching.

* excellent oral and written communication skills.

The successful candidate will be based within the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam. The institute was recently ranked among the top 50 computer science departments in the world by the 2011 QS World University IT Rankings. Some of the things we have to offer:

* competitive pay and excellent benefits
* extremely friendly working environment
* high-level of interaction
* location near the city center (10 minutes by bicycle) of one Europe’s most beautiful and lively cities
* international environment (10+ nationalities in the group)
* access to high-end computing facilities (cluster with 4,000+ cores)
* brand-new building

Since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.

For further information, including instructions on submitting an application, see the official job ad at http://www.academictransfer.com/14957.

Informal inquiries can be made by email to Shimon Whiteson (s.a.whiteson@uva.nl).