PRICAI 2012 Special Session on Scalable Big Data Mining

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PRICAI 2012 Special Session on Scalable Big Data Mining

September 3 – 7, 2012
Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

Conference website:
http://ktw.mimos.my/pricai2012/

Special Session on Scalable Big Data Mining:
http://cs.waikato.ac.nz/~abifet/pricai2012/
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CALL FOR PAPERS

Data have become a torrent flowing in many important areas. Big data
refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of current
state-of-the art analytic tools. Streaming data is an specific approach
to deal with big data that is evolving and changing. Parallelization is
another scalable approach to mine large quantities of data.

This special session aims to provide an opportunity for researchers to
share their ideas and efforts in building new algorithms, methods and
software for dealing with big data, static or evolving streams.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

* Evolving Stream Mining
* Large-scale Machine Learning
* Distributed System Platforms: Hadoop, S4, Storm
* Evaluation Methodologies
* Visualization Techniques for Big Data
* Social Media Mining

IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2012
* Paper Acceptance Notification: May 15, 2012
* Camera-Ready Paper + Copyright Submission: May 21, 2012
* Conference: Sept 5 – 7, 2012

PAPER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The papers should report original and unpublished research on topics of
interest for this special session. Accepted papers are expected to be presented
at the conference, and will be published in the conference proceedings.
Papers for this special session should be prepared in accordance with the
PRICAI 2012 requirements(http://ktw.mimos.my/pricai2012/submission.html).

Submitted papers should not exceed 12 pages. Submitted papers should not be
under review or submitted for publication elsewhere during the review period.
Papers to be submitted via EasyChair at:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pricai2012

ORGANIZERS

* Wei Fan (IBM T.J.Watson Research, USA)
* Xiatian Zhang (Business Intelligence Center Tencent, China)
* Albert Bifet (University of Waikato, New Zealand)
* Geoff Holmes (University of Waikato, New Zealand)

Reannouncing mldata, will count toward your Activity score.

Dear Pascal Researchers,

I’m glad to announce that uploading data sets to mldata will count
towards your Activity score within Pascal.

mldata.org is a web site which has been funded by Pascal2 and which
allows you to upload and share your data sets. As data sets are
central to machine learning, we hope to further machine learning
research through this web site. You may upload data sets in any format
you like, but there also exists special support for uploading data
sets in one of the formats that mldata can parse (in particular, ARFF)
files.

To accomodate such advanced features, mldata is a bit more structured
than a mere repository of your data files, but you shouldn’t be afraid
of that. Basically, there are four types of entries:

– Data (raw data)
– Task (learning tasks, for now mainly supervised learning)
– Method (a ML method to be applied to tasks)
– Challenge (a collection of learning tasks to form a learning challenge)

mldata also has support for collaborative editing, such that others
can improve your description, a forum for discussing topics, and so on.

So if you have some data set from one of your papers and would like to
share it with other researchers, make sure to have a look at mldata.

The number of uploaded data sets will then count towards your
Activitiy score which determines your base site funding for the last
project period. How and when we will determine this exactly will be
announced in a later email. We will probably have a look at your data
around the end of March 2012.

One of the first question usually ask is about licensing. We have put
a number of Open Source licenses plus discussion here:
http://mldata.org/about/license/

With regards,

Mikio Braun

Extended Deadline – Next Call for Challenge Proposals – Winter 2012 – now 10th February

Next Call for Challenge Proposals – Winter 2012
Deadline, Feb. 10th, 2012

The goal of Pascal-II Challenges is to advance the state of the art about cognitive systems. The cognitive banner is large: welcome are proposals related to

* communication (language, voice, vision, haptics, brain signals, representation, feature construction, – non exhaustive list)
* interaction (games, robotics, social networks, preferences, validation, experiment design, distributed/decentralized decision – n.e.l.)
* applicative settings (multi-task and transfert, drift, privacy and anonymization – n.e.l.)
* theoretical and/or algorithmic aspects of communication, interaction, computational thinking, and cognition at large.

Challenges come in three possible flavors:

* Applicative challenges aim at advancing the state of the art in some real-world domain; they should come with real-world, comprehensive datasets, with different levels of difficulty if possible.
* Exploratory challenges aim at investigating a new field/mode of ML; they should come with highly flexible settings, in order to understand where the difficulty is and to perform lesion studies.
* Theoretical challenges aim at long term research; they should provide (experimental or theoretical) milestones for the road.

NB: A legacy of Pascal-I is a perennial repository, storing all previous challenge datasets; Pascal-II challenges will participate to this repository, contributing to a principled, well-recognized and up-to-date benchmarking methodology.

Call for Abstracts – EURO 2012

* Ensemble Learning and Ensemble Pruning Methods with Application to Machine Learning *
EURO 2012, 25th European Conference on Operations Research,
July 8-11, 2012, Vilnius, Lithuania
(www.euro-2012.lt)

Call for Abstracts

Organisers: Sureyya Ozogur-Akyuz, Terry Windeatt

EURO is a major international conference in optimisation and operations research
which consists of several streams. As part of the
*Machine Learning and Applications stream*,
we are organising a session on Ensemble Learning and Ensemble Pruning Methods.

“Ensemble Learning and Ensemble Pruning Method with Application to Machine Learning” session at EURO XXV calls for abstracts describing models for ensemble learning and pruning methods with application to machine learning problems.
Contributors are requested to contact the session organisers first for the submission (invitation) code and then submit their abstracts via the Conference web page (www.euro-2012.lt) by February 29, 2012. The abstracts must be written in English and contain no more than 600 characters (no formulas or mathematical notations are allowed). Please note that each participant is allowed to present one paper at the Conference. The EURO XXV Conference will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania from 8-11 July, 2012.

** Instructions**
In order to submit a contribution to the sessions, please go to the website below and sign up:
http://www.euro-online.org/conf/display.php?page=welcome
Then please paste the following code 0172f368 in the form, click on “Submit invited abstract” and follow the instructions.

* Award for PASCAL members *

The best abstract submitted by a member of the PASCAL network
will be selected for sponsorship of all the travel expenses.
If you would like to be considered for this selection,
please submit your abstract by the 31st of January.
(This award is subject to us obtaining sponsorship from PASCAL
— application under evaluation.)

Selected authors will be invited to present their work in a 20 min talk.

NETADIS – 12 ESR (PhD) positions across Europe

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/mathematics/research/disorderedsys/netadis/

Summary: The European network “Statistical Physics Approaches to Networks Across Disciplines” (NETADIS) is looking to recruit 12 excellent Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) for attractively funded three-year research projects, including the opportunity to study for a PhD degree, at 9 leading European partner institutions. ESR positions should be taken up on 1 September 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter.

Applications should normally be submitted to the partner institutions by 15 March 2012. Later applications will be considered where possible.

Scientific overview: NETADIS aims to train a cadre of future research leaders in advanced methods of analysis, inference, control and optimization of network structure and dynamics, to maximize the impact of statistical physics approaches across a broad range of application areas. It is funded by the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7.

Training will be organised via the 12 individual research projects, each defined by (a) the principal research theme and (b) the principal application domain. Research themes are (i) inference of interaction networks from data, (ii) the analysis of dynamical processes on networks of given structure, and of network evolution, and (iii) optimization and control (of networks, network-evolution, and processes). Application domains are (i) systems biology and neuroscience, (ii) information technology, computing and algorithms, (iii) socio-economic systems and finance, and (iv) network phenomena in physical systems, specifically in laser physics.

For further details of the scientific background and the research and training provision within NETADIS, candidates can consult extracts from the relevant contract with the European Research Executive Agency: see bit.ly/zqwfxD (Word), bit.ly/yKGHR7 (PDF).

The list of all NETADIS research projects is available here: bit.ly/x7zRTs (Word), bit.ly/ymkVMP (PDF).

Training overview: The 12 ESR research projects will be carried out at King’s College London, Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris), Universite Paris-Sud (Orsay), Technische Universitaet Berlin, Politecnico di Torino, La Sapienza University (Department of Physics and Institute for Chemical-Physical processes, CNR, Rome), NTNU (Trondheim, Norway), KTH (Stockholm, Sweden), and ICTP (Trieste). Four private sector partners (Human Genetics Foundation, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Sissa Medialab, Capital Fund Management) will make important contributions to the training provision.

Training for each individual ESR will be provided via on-the-job training, local training courses, and two targeted secondments to another network participant of 2-3 months length each. Network-wide training will include a scientific kick-off meeting, two summmer schools, and a final conference. ESRs will also be expected to attend the Spring School of the International Master’s Programme in Physics of Complex Systems. A career development plan will be developed for each ESR, and summer schools and conferences will include training in transferable skills such as presentation skills; entrepreneurship and exploitation of results; and communication and outreach.

NETADIS provides generous funding levels for living expenses of between 37,000 and 47,000 Euro/year (before deductions for social insurance, tax etc) per ESR depending on the country where the researcher position is held. In addition, the network budget includes a mobility allowance and a flat rate contribution to expenses for research, training and transfer of knowledge.

Eligibility and how to apply: Candidates are eligible to apply for NETADIS studentships at any of the participating institutions if they have an excellent first degree that qualifies for PhD study in a relevant discipline (e.g. physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering) with preferably a strong background in statistical physics, and less than four years of research experience. At the time of recruitment no candidate must have resided or carried out his/her main activity in the country of the chosen host institution for more than 12 months in the last 3 years. Any PhD course fees will be met from the training expenses contribution to NETADIS, subject to budget restrictions.

NETADIS aims to promote gender equality by recruiting at least 40% female ESRs. Suitably qualified female candidates are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply.

Before applying, candidates should consult the full list of the 12 NETADIS research projects: bit.ly/x7zRTs (Word), bit.ly/ymkVMP (PDF). Any queries on the projects and the practical application process at the relevant host institution should be sent directly to the contact email given in this list. Should any candidates intend to apply for several positions at different institutions, they would need to notify each of the institutions concerned accordingly.

Post-doc position in image processing/computer vision

Research Associate in Statistics (JDBN), – Ref:1230794

Click here to go back to search results
UCL Department / Division
Department of Statistical Science
Grade 7
Hours Full Time
Salary (inclusive of London allowance) £31,905- £38,594 per annum

Duties and Responsibilities
Applications are invited for a postdoctoral research associate to work with Dr James Nelson on the statistical image analysis project “Multiresolution Markov Models for Detecting Radial Patterns of Spicules in Mammograms”, funded by an EPSRC grant. The aim of the project is to develop image processing/computer vision methodology to improve the detection of cancerous abnormalities in mammogram images. The post is available from 30 April 2012 (or as soon as possible thereafter) and is funded for 12 months in the first instance.

Key Requirements
Candidates should have a PhD (or equivalent qualification) or have held a previous post-doctoral position in statistical image processing or very closely related areas. Experience with wavelet analysis or Markov random fields is essential.

Further particulars including a job description and person specification can be accessed at:

https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?owner=5041178&ownertype=fair&jcode=1230794

Call for Papers – PAIS-2012

The Seventh Conference on Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems

29-30 August 2012 ## Montpellier, France

http://www.lirmm.fr/ecai2012

Deadline for submission of full papers: 6 March 2012

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## INTRODUCTION ##
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The PAIS 2012 Program Committee invites papers describing innovative
applications of AI techniques to real-world systems and problems for
the Technical Program of the 7th International Conference on the
Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems – a subconference of
the 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2012).

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a central topic in contemporary
computing science. The fruits of almost sixty years of AI research
have benefited application domains as disparate as industrial systems
control and medicine. The milestone events in AI research are
increasingly regarded as milestones in scientific and technological
development: from the first chess playing program to defeat a reigning
world champion under standard chess tournament rules, via the first
robot to autonomously traverse 150 miles of rough terrain, to the
first computer program that beat humans in a quiz. Techniques,
concepts, and results developed under the banner of AI research have
proved to be of fundamental importance in areas such as medicine,
biology, economics, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and
engineering. And of course, AI remains a topic of perennial
fascination in popular culture.

Papers highlighting all aspects of the application of intelligent
systems technology are most welcome. Our aim is to provide a forum for
academic and industrial researchers and practitioners to share
experience and insights on the applicability, development and
deployment of intelligent systems. PAIS is the largest showcase in
Europe of real applications using AI technology and the ideal place to
meet with those working to make successful applications.

PAIS-2012/ECAI-2012 will be held in the vibrant and elegant city of
Montpellier, France. With excellent opportunities for sightseeing and
gastronomy, Montpellier promises to be a wonderful venue for a
memorable conference.

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## TOPICS OF INTEREST ##
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Papers are welcome on all novel and significant applications of
intelligent systems — the following list of application areas is
indicative only:

* AI & Life Sciences and Medicine
* AI & Autonomous Vehicles
* AI & Energy
* AI & Ecology
* AI & Education
* AI & Mobile Computing and the Internet
* AI & Sensor Networks
* AI & Smart Surroundings
* AI & Aerospace

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## IMPORTANT DATES ##
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Paper submission deadline:
Tuesday, 6 March 2012

Notification of acceptance/rejection:
Monday, 21 May 2012

Camera-ready papers due:
Sunday, 3 June 2012

Conference:
29-30 August 2012

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## SUBMISSION INFORMATION ##
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Both long and short papers can be submitted. Long papers must not
exceed *SIX* (6) pages in camera-ready format. Over-length submissions
will be rejected without review. Papers should be submitted using the
ECAI formatting style, to be available soon on the conference website
(this will be very close to previous ECAI styles). Each accepted paper
will be allocated six pages in the proceedings. Submission of short
papers, not exceeding *TWO* (2) pages in ECAI page format, is also
encouraged. Short papers are meant for highly promising but still
preliminary work. Short papers will be presented as a poster. Rejected
long papers will not be considered for poster presentation.

All submissions will be subject to peer review by the PAIS-2012
Programme Committee, and evaluated on the basis of: social relevance,
scientific and technological impact, originality, technical quality,
and quality of presentation.

Reviewing for PAIS-2012 will be double blind: reviewers will not be
presented with the identity of paper authors. To allow for double
blind review, author names in a submitted paper or poster should be
replaced by the unique tracking number assigned by the conference
website at the submission of an electronic abstract. Authors should
avoid writing anything that makes their identity obvious in the text.
Submissions should be original, and in particular should not
previously have been formally published. (As a rule of thumb, any
publication venue with an ISBN or ISSN number counts as a formal
publication.) Submissions should not be submitted elsewhere during the
PAIS-2012 review phase.

The primary authors of submitted papers will be offered the
opportunity to respond to the reviewers before the final discussion
and decision phase.

The proceedings of the PAIS conference, together with those of the
main conference, and STAIRS, will be published online (as an open
access book) and USB sticks with the proceedings will be given to the
participants. The authors will be responsible for producing
camera-ready copies of papers, conforming to the ECAI-2012 formatting
guidelines for inclusion in the proceedings. At least one author of
each accepted paper or poster is required to attend the conference to
present the contribution. Based on the recommendations made by the
reviewers and a separate award committee, one of the accepted long
papers will receive the *BEST PAIS PAPER AWARD*. In addition, there
will be a *BEST STUDENT PAIS PAPER AWARD* (first author should be a
student to qualify).

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## ORGANISATION ##
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PAIS Conference Co-Chairs:

Paolo Frasconi (Universita degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)
mailto:p-f@dsi.unifi.it
Peter Lucas (Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands)
mailto:peterl@cs.ru.nl

Local Organisation Chair:

HAVE TO FIND ONE!

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## PROGRAM COMMITTEE ##
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Juan-Manuel Ahuactzin, France
Peter Antal, Hungary
Roberto Bayardo, USA
Samy Bengio, USA
Diego Calvanese, Italy
Robert Castelo, Spain
Marc Cavazza, UK
Fabrizio Costa, Germany
Jesse Davis, Belgium
Yves Deville, Belgium
Kurt Driessens, Netherlands
Norman Fenton, UK
Pierre Flener, Sweden
Maria Fox, UK
Thore Grapel, USA
Johan de Kleer, USA
Yolanda Gil, USA
Peter Haddawy, Macau
Jesse Hoey, Canada
Arjen Hommersom, Netherlands
Vanja Josifovski, USA
Hidde de Jong, France
Ross King, UK
Pedro Larranaga, Spain
Tze-Yun Leong, Singapore
Michael Madden, Ireland
Chris Manning, USA
Stephen Muggleton, UK
Tartar Mugur, Germany
Daniele Nardi, Italy
David Page, USA
Andrea Passerini, Italy
Pedro Pereira Rodrigues, Portugal
Alun Preece, UK
Gregory Provan, Ireland
Dan Roth, USA
Carles Sierra, Spain
Barry Smith, Ireland
Peter Struss, Germany
Enrique Sucar, Mexico
Louise Trave-Massuyes, France
Paolo Traverso, Italy
Allan Tucker, UK
Peter Van Roy, Belgium
Marina Velikova, Netherlands
Jiri Vomlel, Czech Republic

Principle Research Scientist / R&D Team Leader – realeyes

Company description:

Do you care about good user experience and great visual design? Are you interested in leading edge computer vision techniques like gaze estimation and facial expressions analysis? Then join Realeyes to help develop groundbreaking user testing tools and interaction technologies for some of the best companies in the world.

Our international team has delivered worldwide biometric studies to the well known brands like Sony, Nokia, IKEA, The New York Times, NBC and many more. We have offices in Boston, London, Budapest and Tallinn.
Position description:

We are seeking a highly motivated individual to join the Realeyes research and development team. The candidate must have a strong background in computer vision, image processing and 3D modelling. He/she will be playing a leading role in exploring novel techniques of gaze, emotions and gesture tracking.

Key Responsibilities:

* Lead one of the world’s top gaze, emotions and gesture tracking research teams
* Investigate, design and test new tracking techniques and algorithms
* Play leading role in deciding on the direction of the research
* Develop contacts and collaborate with leading international research institutions

Education & Qualification:

The ideal candidate should have a PhD degree in computer science or related field, with strong mathematical and software development skills. Good spoken and written English is a must. The candidate should have experience of writing papers for international conferences and journals and be able to work with a diverse group of researchers and developers.

Essential Skills:

* 5+ years of experience in researching and developing computer vision and image processing algorithms using Matlab or Octave (signal processing toolkit) and C/C++ (OpenCV/VXL)
* Extensive experience in gaze tracking and gaze vector computation, head-pose estimation, emotions tracking and/or gesture tracking
* Clear understanding of relevant statistical modelling, such as Active Shape Models (AAM/CLM), Principle Component Analysis, Gaussian Process, Hidden Markov Models, Meanshift, classification and boosting
* Experience with existing face and emotions databases, training database creation, algorithm training framework design and implementation

Desired skills (not required):

* Real-time optimisations using Intel IPP, MKL, Threading Building Blocks, GPGPU
* Camera calibration
* Image and video encoding and decoding
* Image enhancement
* Image feature extraction, target matching and tracking

Further information:
The salary offer is internationally highly competitive and depends on seniority and expertise of the candidate. A successful candidate is furthermore incentivised by a set of company options.
To apply online please send your application letter and CV to Dr. Elnar Hajiyev (elnar.hajiyev@realeyesit.com).

The salary offer is internationally highly competitive and depends on seniority and expertise of the candidate. A successful candidate is furthermore incentivised by a set of company options.

To apply online please send your application letter and CV to Dr. Elnar Hajiyev (elnar.hajiyev@realeyesit.com).

ECCV 2012 – Call for Papers

ECCV 2012
The 12th European Conference on Computer Vision

Call for Papers

Deadline for submissions: March 5th, 2012

http://eccv2012.unifi.it/
October 7-13th 2012 – Firenze, Italy

ECCV 2012 solicits the submission of high quality previously
unpublished research papers on any aspect of computer vision.
Contributions from related disciplines (such as machine learning,
computer graphics, biological vision, mathematics) which illuminate
the state-of-the-art in computer vision are also of interest, together
with papers on longer term research challenges which point to new
research directions or brave perspectives that might pave the way to
innovation.

The conference website http://eccv2012.unifi.it provides instructions
for paper submission as well as calls for tutorials, workshops, demos,
and industrial exhibits.

Accepted papers will be presented in the oral and poster sessions of
the ECCV 2012 technical program. Continuing the top quality tradition
of ECCVs, it will be a single-track conference with double-blind peer
review process.

Important dates

March 5th, 2012 – Paper submission
June 25th, 2012 – Notification of acceptance
August 1st, 2012 – Camera-ready paper submission
October 7-13th, 2012 – Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS – Special Issue on LEARNING SEMANTICS in Machine Learning

**Overview**
A key ambition of AI is to render computers able to evolve and interact
with the real world. This can be made possible only if the machine is able
to produce an interpretation of its available modalities (image, audio,
text, etc.) which can be used to support reasoning and taking appropriate
actions. Computational linguists use the term “semantics” to refer to the
possible interpretations of natural language expressions and there is
recent work in “learning semantics” – finding (in an automated way) these
interpretations. However, “semantics” are not restricted to the natural
language (and speech) modality, and are also pertinent to visual
modalities. Hence, knowing visual concepts and common relationships
between them would certainly provide a leap forward in scene analysis and
in image parsing akin to the improvement that language phrase
interpretations would bring to data mining, information extraction or
automatic translation, to name a few.

Progress in learning semantics has been slow mainly because this involves
sophisticated models which are hard to train, especially since they seem
to require large quantities of precisely annotated training data. However,
recent advances in learning with weak, limited and indirect supervision
led to the emergence of a new body of research in semantics based on
multi-task/transfer learning, on learning with semi/ambiguous/indirect
supervision or even with no supervision at all. Hence, this special issue
invites paper submissions on recent work for learning semantics of natural
language, vision, speech, etc.

Papers should address at least some of the following questions:
– How should meaning representations be structured to be easily
interpretable by a computer and still express rich and complex knowledge?
– What is a realistic supervision setting for learning semantics?
– How can we learn sophisticated representations with limited supervision?

– How can we jointly infer semantics from several modalities?

**Dates**
Submission deadline: May 1, 2012
First review results: July 30, 2012
Final drafts: September 30, 2012

**Submissions**
Papers must be submitted online, selecting the article type that indicates
this special issue. Peer reviews will follow the standard Machine Learning
journal review process. It is the policy of the Machine Learning journal
that no submission, or substantially overlapping submission, be published
or be under review at another journal or conference at any time during the
review process. Papers extending previously published conference papers
are acceptable, as long as the journal submission provides a significant
contribution beyond the conference paper, and the overlap is described
clearly at the beginning of the journal submission. Complete manuscripts
of full length are expected, following the MLJ guidelines in
http://www.springer.com/computer/ai/journal/10994 .

**Guest Editors**
Antoine Bordes (antoine.bordes@utc.fr)
Léon Bottou (leon@bottou.org)
Ronan Collobert (ronan@collobert.com)
Dan Roth (danr@illinois.edu)
Jason Weston (jweston@google.com)
Luke Zettlemoyer (lsz@cs.washington.edu)