PhD position in Machine Learning & Robotics, TU Berlin

The Machine Learning & Robotics group at TU Berlin is inviting applications for a PhD studentship. The position is financed from a cooperative project with the CoR-Lab Bielefeld and the Honda Research Institute (Offenbach), in particular with their ASIMO robotics lab. The project is about grasping using tactile and visual feedback and involves a realization on a robotics platform with a 7 DoF Schunk arm and a dexterous 3 finger Schunk hand. We aim to apply Machine Learning methods in this context, in particular probabilistic inference methods for the integration of goals, constraints and uncertain information on multiple sensor and motor representations, and learning of prototypes and representations. The position is based in Berlin but includes the unique chance to visit the Honda and Bielefeld lab for one or two months per year and actively transfer the developed methods. Applicants should have experience in one of the fields of robotics, control, or Machine Learning, and great interest in the combination of theoretical methods and robotic applications.

Applications and informal enquiries, e.g., concerning more details on the project, can be addressed to

Marc Toussaint, Ph.D., TU Berlin
http://ml.cs.tu-berlin.de/~mtoussai/
mtoussai (at) cs.tu-berlin.de, cc: nilsp (at) cs.tu-berlin.de

We would appreciate applications until April 15th.

ICML Workshop on Numerical Methods in Machine Learning: Call for Contributions

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
Workshop on Numerical Mathematics in Machine Learning
June 18, 2009. Montreal, Canada
http://numml.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de
Deadline for abstract submissions: April 27, 2009

Motivation:

Most machine learning (ML) algorithms rely fundamentally on concepts of numerical mathematics. Standard reductions to black-box computational primitives do not usually meet real-world demands and have to be modified at all levels. The increasing complexity of ML problems requires layered approaches, where algorithms are components rather than stand-alone tools fitted individually with much human effort. In this modern context, predictable run-time and numerical stability behavior of algorithms become
fundamental. Unfortunately, these aspects are widely ignored today by ML researchers, which limits the applicability of ML algorithms to complex problems.

Our workshop aims to address these shortcomings, by trying to distill a compromise between inadequate black-box reductions and highly involved complete numerical analyses. We will invite speakers with interest in *both* numerical methodology *and* real problems in applications close to machine learning.
While numerical software packages of ML interest will be pointed out, our focus will rather be on how to best bridge the gaps between ML requirements and these computational libraries. A subordinate goal will be to address the role of parallel numerical computation in ML.

Examples of machine learning founded on numerical methods include low level computer vision and image processing, non-Gaussian approximate inference, Gaussian filtering / smoothing, state space models, approximations to kernel methods, and many more.

The workshop will comprise a panel discussion, in which the invited speakers are urged to address the problems stated above, and offer individual views and suggestions for improvement. We highly recommend active or passive attendance at this event. Potential participants are encouraged to contact the organizers beforehand, concerning points they feel should be addressed in this event.

Invited Speakers:

Inderjit Dhillon University of Texas, Austin
Michael Mahoney Stanford University
Jacek Gondzio Edinburgh University, UK

[Further speaker to be confirmed]

Topics:

Potential short talks / posters should aim to address:

– Raising awareness about the increasing importance of stability and predictable run-time behaviour of numerical machine learning algorithms and primitives
– Stability and predictable behaviour as a criterion for making algorithm choices in machine learning
– Lessons learned (and not learned) in machine learning about numerical mathematics. Ideas for improvement
– Novel developments in numerical mathematics, with potential impact on machine learning problems

Contributions will be considered only if a clear effort is made to analyze problems that arise, and if choices of algorithms, preconditioning, etc. are clearly motivated. For reasons stated in “Motivation”, submissions that apply numerical methods in a black box fashion, or that treat numerical techniques without motivating the use for machine learning, cannot be considered. The usual “smoothing over problems” conference paper style is discouraged, and naming and analyzing problems is strongly encouraged.

Potential Subtopics (submissions are not limited to these):

A- Solving large linear systems
Arise in the linear model/Gaussian MRF (mean computations), nonlinear optimization methods (Newton- Raphson, IRLS, …)
– Preconditioning, use of model structure.
Our main interest is on semi-generic ideas that can be applied to a range of machine learning real-world situations

B- Novel numerical software developments relevant to ML
– Parallel implementations of LAPACK, BLAS
– Sparse matrix packages

C- Approximate eigensolvers
Arise in the linear model (covariance estimation), spectral clustering and graph Laplacian methods, PCA
– Lanczos algorithm and specialized variants
– Preconditioning

D- Exploiting matrix/model structure, fast matrix-vector multiplication
– Matrix decompositions/approximations
– Multi-pole methods
– Signal-processing primitives (e.g., variants of FFT)

F- Parallel numerical computation for ML

G- Other numerical mathematics (ODEs, PDEs, Quadrature, etc.) focusing on machine learning

Submission Instructions:

We invite submissions of extended abstracts, from 2 to 4 pages in length (using the ICML 2009 style file). Criteria for content are given in “Topics”. Submissions should be sent to suvadmin@googlemail.com

Accepted contributions will be allocated short talks or posters. There will be a poster session with ample time for discussion. Short talk contributions are encouraged to put up posters as well, to better address specific questions.

Important Dates:

Submissions due: April 27, 2009
Author notification: May 11, 2009
Workshop date: June 18, 2009

Matthias W. Seeger MPI Informatics / Saarland University, Saarbruecken
Suvrit Sra MPI Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen
John P. Cunningham Stanford University (EE), Palo Alto

We acknowledge financial support through the PASCAL 2 Initiative of the European Union.

Call for Papers: Workshop on “On-line Learning with Limited Feedback” at ICML/UAI/COLT 2009

——————————————————————————–
CALL FOR PAPERS

On-line Learning with Limited Feedback
Workshop at ICML/UAI/COLT 2009
June 18, 2009, Montreal, Canada
Submission deadline: April 26, 2009
http://sequel.futurs.inria.fr/online-learning
——————————————————————————–

OVERVIEW

The main focus of the workshop is the problem of on-line learning when only limited feedback is available to the learner. In on-line learning, at each time step the learner has to predict the outcome corresponding to the next input based on the feedbacks obtained so far. Unlike the usual supervised
problem, in which after each prediction the learner is revealed sufficient information to evaluate the goodness of all predictions he could have made, in many cases only limited feedback may be available to the learner. Depending on the nature of the limitation on the feedback, different classes of problems can be identified:

1. Delayed feedback. The utility of an action (i.e., the prediction) is returned only after a certain amount of time. This is the case of reinforcement learning and on-line control problems where the final outcome
of an action may be available only when a goal is finally achieved.

2. Partial feedback. The feedback is limited to that on the learner’s prediction so that no information is available on what would other possible predictions bring. Multi-armed bandits, when only the utility of the pulled arm is returned to the learner, is the classic example for this.

3. Indirect feedback. Neither the true outcome, nor the utility of the prediction is observed. Only an indirect feedback loosely related to the prediction is returned.

The increasing interest in on-line learning with limited feedback is also motivated by a number of applications, such as recommender systems, web advertisement systems, in which the user’s feedback is limited to accepting/ignoring the proposed item, and the true label (i.e., the item the user would prefer the most) is never revealed to the learner.

GOALS

Although some aspects of on-line learning with limited feedback have been already thoroughly analyzed (e.g., multi-armed bandit problems), many problems are still open. For instance, bandits with large action spaces and side information, learning with delayed reward, on-line optimization, etc., are of primary concern in many recent works on on-line learning. Furthermore, on-line learning with limited feedback has strong connections with a number of other fields of Machine Learning such as active learning, semi-supervised learning, and multi-class classification.
The goal of the workshop is to provide researchers with the possibility to present their current research on these topics and to encourage the discussion about the main open issues and the possible connections between the different sub-fields.In particular, we expect the workshop to shed light on a number of theoretical issues, such as:

* how does the performance of learning algorithms scale in either large (e.g., infinity number of arms, either numerable or continuum, or in metric or measurable spaces) or changing action spaces?
* how does the performance of learning algorithms scale depending on the smoothness of the function to be optimized (Lipschitz, linear, convex, non convex)?
* what are the connections between the MDP reinforcement learning paradigm and the on-line learning problem with delayed feedback?
* how to define complexity measures for on-line learning with limited feedback?
* is it possible to define a unified view on the problem of learning with delayed, partial, and indirect feedback?

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The organizing committee would like to invite the submission of extended abstracts (three to four pages in the conference format plus appendix if needed) describing research on (but not restricted to) the following topics:

* adversarial/stochastic bandits
* bandits with side information (contextual bandits, associative RL)
* bandits with large and/or changing action spaces
* on-line learning with delayed feedback
* on-line learning in MDPs and beyond
* partial monitoring prediction
* on-line optimization (Lipschitz, linear, convex, non-convex)
* on-line learning in games
* applications

We also welcome work-in-progress contributions, as well as papers discussing potential research directions.

Submissions should be sent via email to Alessandro Lazaric at alessandro.lazaric@inria.fr and should be in Postscript, or PDF format.

IMPORTANT DATES

Deadline for submission: 26th April
Notification of acceptance: 15th May
Workshop: 18th June

INVITED SPEAKERS

Nicolo’ Cesa-Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Sham Kakade (Toyota Technological Institute)
Gabor Lugosi (Pompeu Fabra University)
Shai Shalev-Shwartz (Toyota Technological Institute)

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE

Jean-Yves Audibert (Certis-Université Paris Est-Ecole des Ponts ParisTech)
Peter Auer (University of Leoben)
Sebastien Bubeck (INRIA – Team SequeL)
Alessandro Lazaric (INRIA – Team SequeL) – (primary contact)
Odalric Maillard (INRIA – Team SequeL)
Remi Munos (INRIA – Team SequeL)
Daniil Ryabko (INRIA – Team SequeL)
Csaba Szepesvari (University of Alberta)

SPONSORS

The workshop is sponsered by PASCAL2 Network and the Alberta Ingenuity Center for Machine Learning .

Summer school on inverse problems and statistics in high dimension

After the successful PASCAL workshop in 2005 on inverse problems in Toulouse (see http://idei.fr/doc/conf/wip/programme.pdf), we are pleased to announce a summer school on inverse problems and statistics in high dimension:

*Stats in the chateau*
http://www.hec.fr/statsinthechateau

The focus is less on learning and more on statistics and econometrics, but it could be interesting for some of you. Two members of the organizing committee (Sacha Tsybakov and myself) belong to PASCAL.

It will be held in a charming castle in the south of Paris, from August 31 to September 4, 2009.

Registration is only 550 euros, including gourmet meals and accomodation!

If you would like to register, please do so as soon as possible as spaces are getting filled up very quickly.

Researcher positions at NCSR “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece

The Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of NCSR “Demokritos” is looking for outstanding researchers.

For more information, please refer to:
http://www.cra.org/ads/adtext/ads4990679f1d9e7.php

The Institute has a strong focus on Artificial and Computational Intelligence.

CFP: IJCAI Workshop TextLink 2009

————————————————————-
Call for papers TextLink 2009

The IJCAI-09 Workshop on Text-Mining & Link-Analysis
http://kt.ijs.si/dunja/TextLink2009/

Submission due March 15, 2009

Submissions should be sent in electronic form as a PDF file,
To: marko.grobelnik (at) ijs.si.
Subject: TextLink-2009 Workshop submission

————————————————————-
The workshop aims to focus the intersection of the two still increasingly important areas of analytic research: Text-Mining and Link-Analysis. Both areas deal with so-called unstructured data representations like text and graphs sharing many similar characteristics in the context of analysis. Although both areas are very much related in the technical and the historical sense there has not been almost any events so far addressing explicitly the common problems and techniques. Therefore, the aim of the workshop is to attract the scientists in the both areas resulting in getting better insights in the work of each other and potentially new ideas for future research.
Link-Analysis is an area, which developed in the last 20 years in various fields as Social Sciences (Social-Network-Analysis), Mathematics (Graph-Theory), and Computer-Science (graph as a data-structure). Recently the area got much bigger attention, especially in Data Mining / KDD community because of its wide applicability in the areas as law enforcement investigations (e.g.,
terrorism), fraud detection (e.g., insurance, banking), web analytics (e.g., search engines, web marketing), telecommunications (e.g. routers, traffic, connectivity).
Text-Mining area is receiving in the last 6 years growing attention mainly because of the availability of large text corpora in the electronic form and because there is lack of “intelligent” tools and techniques for solving different difficult problems appearing on the market like: information extraction, text categorization, ontology building, visualization, intelligent search, etc.
On the intersection of both fields there are many interesting problems and issues out of which both fields can benefit. Just to name some of the potential problem and application areas: trend analysis, community identification, web user profiling, media clipping, marketing, etc. The intersection of both areas also includes ideas as for instance representing text with the graph structure (which got popular in the social-networks area recently) and analytic procedures for discovering various pieces of knowledge using that kind of alternative representations. In particular, currently “hot” areas of research and applications are analysis of dynamic (evolving) datasets including text and link structure, emerging semantics from electronic social structures (blogs, emails, folksonomies, social bookmarking, Wikipedia etc.)
The broader context of the workshop can be related in some respect to the areas of Data-Mining, Machine-Learning, Semantic-Web, Information Retrieval, Natural-Language-Processing, Social-Networks-Analysis and general Graph-Theory.
Particular topics of interest for the workshop include but are not limited to:
* Link-Analysis / Social Networks Analysis
* Text-Mining / Language technologies
* Web-Mining
* Semantic-Web
* Emerging Semantics / Folksonomies
* Information-Extraction
* Scalability of developed approaches
* Visualization of text and link structures
* Performance evaluation measures
* Dynamic Networks
* Visualization / HCI
* Innovative applications

Submissions should be sent by March 15, 2009, in electronic form as a PDF file, to
marko.grobelnik (at ) ijs.si. Please ensure you include the following text in your email subject: “TextLink-2009 Workshop submission”. Submissions should be formatted according to IJCAI-09 Workshop Procedures. The reviews will not be blind so authors should include their full contact information in the papers. Submitted papers will be reviewed by referees from the Program Committee.
Accepted papers will be published in the Workshop proceedings.
Notification of acceptance and rejection will be sent by April 17, 2009.
Submission Deadline: March 15, 2009
Acceptance Notification: April 17, 2009
Camera-ready Copies: April 30, 2009
Workshop date: July 11-13, 2009

Attendance is not limited to the paper authors. The workshop should be interesting primarily for researchers, students and company people working in the research and application areas dealing with various aspects of data analysis and rich data & knowledge representations.
We expect that, the workshop will attract people from the areas and sub areas of:
* Academic Data-Mining (analytical aspects of dealing with text and link structures, dynamic networks)
* Commercial Data-Mining (new application areas, such as blog analysis, trend detection etc.)
* Natural-Language-Processing (representational aspects)
* Social-Networks-Analysis (algorithmic aspects of dealing with large network structures)
* Semantic-Web (especially emerging semantics coming out of bottom-up collaborative efforts e.g. folksonomies)

Our assumption is that the topic will attract people already being present at the IJCAI and being interested in Data-Mining, Machine-Learning and Natural-Language-Processing. We expect that there might be also some additional participants just because of the workshop topics from Social-Network-Analysis area which otherwise would not come to the IJCAI.

Program Chairs
Marko Grobelnik
J.Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Jure Leskovec
Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
Natasa Milic-Frayling
Microsoft Research Ltd, 7 J J Thomson Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 0FB, United Kingdom
Dunja Mladenic
J.Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Call for Papers – VAKD ’09

ACM SIGKDD WORKSHOP ON VISUAL ANALYTICS AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY:
INTEGRATING AUTOMATED ANALYSIS WITH INTERACTIVE EXPLORATION

A full-day workshop in conjunction with the 15th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining in Paris, France, on 28 June 2009.
Submit papers by 20 April 2009.

http://www.hiit.fi/vakd09

The goal of Visual Analytics is to derive insight from massive, dynamic, ambiguous, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected; provide timely, defensible, and
understandable assessments; and communicate the assessment effectively for action. The goal of this workshop is to raise the awareness of the KDD community for the importance of Visual Analytics and bring together researcher from the underlying fields to bridge the gap between them – to write a KDD research roadmap on Visual Analytics.

Topics of Interest

We solicit papers that will introduce new research results, present
forward-looking positional statements, or define relevant research
challenges. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Visual and interactive data analysis
* Visual support in the knowledge discovery process
* Statistical graphics for data analysis
* Geo-spatial Visual Analytics
* Collaborative Visual Analytics
* Scalable Visual Analytics
* Visual data abstraction
* Visual analysis of large graphs and networks
* Visual exploration of data warehouses
* Integrated visualization of raw data and analysis results
* Metrics and evaluation methods for Visual Analytics
* Perceptual and cognitive factors in Visual Analytics
* Interaction paradigms and human factors

Visual Analytics Challenge

You are invited to work the IEEE VAST 2008 challenges, and use those datasets, to illustrate your KDD/VA research. A distinct advantage to you in using these datasets is that we will be able to compare and contrast approaches taken by the Visual Analytics community with yours and examine the possibilities for synergies between the two communities. We will present examples of the VAST 2008 challenge solutions at the workshop, as a springboard to follow-on discussion.

Invites Speakers

Rakesh Agrawal (Search Labs, Microsoft Research)
Jim Thomas (National Visualization and Analytics Center, Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory)

Program Committee Chairs

Fosca Giannotti & Dino Pedreschi & Salvatore Rinzivillo (University of Pisa)
Georges Grinstein (University of Massachusetts Lowell)
Otto Huisman (International Institute of Geo-Information Science and
Earth Observation)
Daniel A. Keim (University of Konstanz)
Catherine Plaisant (Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland)
Tobias Schreck (Technische Universitaet Darmstadt)
Mike Sips (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik)
Dimitrios Tzovaras (Center for Research & Technology Hellas)
Anders Ynnerman & Jimmy Johansson (Linköping University)

Challenge Chairs

Mark A. Whiting & Jean Scholtz (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

General Chairs

Kai Puolamäki & Heikki Mannila (Helsinki Institute for Information
Technology HIIT)
Alessio Bertone & Silvia Miksch (Danube University Krems)

Contact Information

Email: vakd09@hiit.fi
Web site: http://www.hiit.fi/vakd09
See the workshop web site for complete contact information.

Sponsors

VisMaster, a European FP7 Coordination Action Project focused on
Visual Analytics
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT
Danube University Krems, Departement of Information and Knowledge
Engineering (DUK)
National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC)

Important Dates
20 April 2009 Paper/challenge submissions
28 June 2009 Workshop in Paris, France

Please see the full Call for Papers at
www.hiit.fi/vakd09

KDD cup 2009

KDD cup 2009: fast scoring on a large database

http://www.kddcup-orange.com/

10000 Euros in prizes!

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a key element of modern marketing strategies. The KDD Cup 2009 offers the opportunity to work on large marketing databases from the French Telecom company Orange to predict the propensity of customers to switch provider (churn), buy new products or services (appetency), or buy upgrades or add-ons proposed to them to make the sale more profitable (up-selling). The challenge is to beat the in-house system developed by Orange Labs. It is an opportunity to prove that you can deal with a very large database, including heterogeneous noisy data (numerical and categorical variables), and unbalanced class distri butions. Time efficiency is often a crucial point. Therefore part of the competition will be time-constrained to test the ability of the participants to deliver solutions quickly.

Key dates:
March 10, 2009 — fast challenge opens
April 10, 2009 — deadline of the fast challenge
May 11, 2009 — challenge ends

Chicago Summer School/Workshop on Theory and Practice of Computational Learning

Dear Everyone,

We would like to remind you about the upcoming Machine Learning Summer School and Workshop on Theory and Practice of Computational Learning in Chicago. As you recall, the summer school workshop will be held from June 1 to June 11 at the University of Chicago. At this point we would like to ask you to let your students, colleagues and anyone else who may be interested know about this event. In particular, we think that the summer school will be a great opportunity for graduate students and researchers from other fields to be introduced to a broad range of subjects in data analysis, machine learning, geometry of data and applications, while the workshops will let the participants learn about the most recent research in these fields.

The workshop will be held in the afternoon and in the morning there will be a full program of tutorial talks on topics including

Foundations of Statistical Learning
Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines
Semi-supervised and Active Learning
Boosting and Ensemble methods
Compressed Sensing and Sparse representations
Manifold Methods and Geometry of Point Clouds
Graphical Models
Machine Learning in Computer Vision, Speech, Text and Natural Language Processing
Learning in Neuroscience and Human-Computer Interaction

More information is available at http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/mlss09/
The flier can be downloaded from http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/mlss09/mlss.pdf

Call for Papers: ISDA’2009

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

CALL FOR PAPERS

ISDA 2009
9th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and
Applications
http://cig.iet.unipi.it/isda09/
PISA, ITALY
November 30 – December 2, 2009
===============================================================

AIMS AND SCOPE
The International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications (ISDA) is a major annual international conference to bring together researchers, engineers, developers and practitioners from academia and industry working in all interdisciplinary areas of computational intelligence and system engineering to share their experience, and exchange and cross-fertilize their ideas.
Following the big success of the previous editions, ISDA’09, which is the ninth edition of ISDA, serves as a forum for the dissemination of state-of-the-art research, development, and implementations of intelligent systems, intelligent technologies and useful applications in these two fields.

ISDA’09 is sponsored by:
IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society (IEEE – SMC)
International Fuzzy Systems Association (IFSA)
European Neural Network Society (ENNS)
European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology (EUSFLAT) (pending
approval)
Machine Intelligence Research Labs (MIRLab)
University of Granada
University of Pisa
University of Salerno

TOPICS
Topics of interests include (but are not limited to):
A. Intelligent Systems Architectures and Applications
B. Intelligent Image and Signal Processing
C. Intelligent Internet Modeling
D. Intelligent Data Mining
E. Intelligent Business Systems
F. Intelligent Control and Automation
G. Intelligent Agents
H. Intelligent Knowledge Management
I. Innovative Information Security
J. Innovative Networking and Communication Techniques
K. Web Intelligence

A detailed list can be found at:
http://cig.iet.unipi.it/isda09/index.php/topic.html

INVITED PLENARY SPEAKERS
Piero Bonnissone (General Electric, USA)
Carlos A. Coello Coello (CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico)
Hani Hagras (University of Essex, United Kingdom)
Hisaho Ishibuchi (Osaka Prefecture University, Japan)
Witold Pedrycz (University of Alberta, Canada)

SUBMISSIONS
Prospective authors are invited to submit a full paper of 4-6 pages (PDF). Authors must follow the double column IEEE 8.5 two-column format. Papers should contain up to 5 keywords. Papers will be evaluated for originality, significance, clarity and soundness, and will be reviewed by at least three independent reviewers. Accepted papers will be published by IEEE COMPUTER SOCIETY PRESS. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their contribution for
possible inclusion in special issues of a selection of international journals.
The Program Committee will select two winners for the Best Paper Award (all regular papers are eligible) and two winners for the Best Student Paper Award (to be eligible, the student must be the sole author of the paper or the first author and primary contributor).
The award winners (both regular and student papers) will each be presented with an award certificate and a present. It is assumed that all accepted manuscripts will be presented at the conference. All accepted papers must be accompanied by a full paid registration to appearin
the proceedings. All full papers have to be submitted electronically in PDF format via the web site.

WORKSHOP PROPOSAL
Proposals for holding workshops that will complement the main conference are solicited from interested individuals (or group of individuals). The workshops should fall within the scope of ISDA’09, and should include at least 8 related papers. Researchers and practitioners wishing to organize workshops should submit proposals in plain text or pdf- format. Proposals should be written explicitly with the following information:
– Workshop Title
– Duration of the Workshop
– A Technical Description of the Workshop Topic area
– A Brief Statement of the Relevance of the proposed Workshop to ISDA’09
– Composition of the Organizing Committee
The proposals will be evaluated by the Workshop Chair of ISDA’09. The information about the accepted workshops will be included in the IDSA’09 web site as well as links to the call for papers and call for participation. Please submit your proposals to the
workshop chair, Jose Manuel Benitez Sanchez, at J.M.Benitez (at) decsai.ugr.es.

SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSAL
The ISDA’09 invites proposals for special sessions to be held in conjunction with the Conference. Special sessions provide organizers and participants with an opportunity to concentrate on focused topics related to the conference. A minimum of 4 papers is required for each special session. All accepted papers will be included in the ISDA’09 conference proceedings. It is expected that organizers will be chairing their special sessions in ISDA’09. Special session proposals should contain the necessary information to judge the importance, quality and community interest in the proposed topic. Each special session should have one or more designated organizers.
Special session proposals should address the following issues:
– Topic of interest:
Provide a full description of the proposed special session. What will the special session be about? Why should we believe this is an interesting and significant topic?
– Organizers’ biography: Please indicate the background of the organizer(s).

Once a special session proposal has been approved it will be immediately announced on the website. Organizers are also expected to help promoting the special sessions by their own means.
Please submit your proposals to the special session chair, Dr. Sabrina Senatore, at
ssenatore (at) unisa.it

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline for workshop and session proposal April 15, 2009
Workshop and session proposal acceptance April 30, 2009
Deadline for paper submission May 31, 2009
Notification of acceptance July 25, 2009
Camera-ready manuscript submission September 15, 2009

GENERAL CHAIRS
Beatrice Lazzerini (University of Pisa, Italy)
Lakhmi Jain (University of South Australia, Australia)
Ajith Abraham (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)

TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Francesco Marcelloni (University of Pisa, Italy)
Francisco Herrera (University of Granada, Spain)
Vincenzo Loia (University of Salerno, Italy)

STEERING COMMITTEE
Ajith Abraham (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway)
Janos Abonyi (University of Veszprem, Hungary)
Yuehui Chen (Jinan University, China)
Lakhmi Jain (University of South Australia, Australia)
Janusz Kacprzyk (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
Etienne Kerre (Ghent University, Belgium)
Halina Kwasnicka (Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland)
Nadia Nedjah (State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Jeng-Shyang Pan (National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Taiwan)
Marcin Paprzycki (SWPS, Poland)
Paramasivan Saratchandran (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

ADVISORY BOARD
Christian Borgelt (European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain)
Bernadette Bouchon-Meunier (CNRS, France)
Stefano Cagnoni (University of Parma, Italy)
Oscar Cordon (European Centre for Soft Computing, Spain)
Bernard de Baets (Ghent University, Belgium)
Enrique Herrera Viedma (University of Granada, Spain)
Mario Köppen (Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan)
Chang-Shing Lee (National University of Tainan, Taiwan)
Trevor Martin (University of Bristol, United Kingdom)
Nikhil R. Pal (Indian Statistical Institute, India)
Vincenzo Piuri (University of Milan, Italy)
Hideyuki Takagi (Kyushu University, Japan)
Domenico Talia (University of Calabria, Italy)
Ronald R. Yager (Iona College, USA)
Albert Zomaya (University of Sydney, Australia)

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (to be extended)
Akshai Aggarwal (University of Winsor, Canada)
Bruno Apolloni (University of Milan, Italy)
Adil Baykasoglu (University of Gaziantep, Turkey)
Ester Bernado (University of Ramon Llull, Spain)
Andrea Bonarini (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Piero Bonissone (General Electric, USA)
Abdelhamid Bouchachia (Alps-Adriatic University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
Alberto Bugarín (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Humberto Bustince (Public University of Navarra, Spain)
Oscar Castillo (HAFSA, Mexico)
Yuehui Chen (Jinan University, China)
Sung-Bae Cho (Yonsei University, Korea)
Mario G.C.A. Cimino (University of Pisa, Italy)
Marco Cococcioni (University of Pisa, Italy)
Carlos Artemio Coello Coello (CINVESTAV-IPN, Mexico)
Emilio Corchado (University of Burgos, Spain)
Ernesto Damiani (University of Milan, Italy)
Andre de Carvalho (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Martine De Cock (Ghent University, Belgium)
José Valente de Oliveira (University of Algarve, Portugal)
María José del Jesus (University of Jaen, Spain)
Abraham Duarte (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Wilfried Elmenreich (Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
Anna Maria Fanelli (University of Bari, Italy)
Jose Antonio Gámez (University of Castilla la Mancha, Spain)
Xiao-Zhi Gao (Institute of Intelligent Power Electronics, Finland)
José Luís García-Lapresta (University of Valladolid, Spain)
Nicolás García-Pedrajas (University of Cordoba, Spain)
Raul Giraldez (University Pablo Olavide, Spain)
Fernando Gomide (DCA-FEEC-UNICAMP, Brazil)
Crina Grosan (Babes-Bolyai University, Romania)
Jerzy Grzymala-Busse (University of Kansas, USA)
Hani Hagras (University of Essex, UK)
Cesar Hervás (University of Córdoba, Spain)
Tzung-Pei Hong (National University of Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Pedro Isasi (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Hisaho Ishibuchi (Osaka Prefecture University, Japan)
Frank Klawonn (University of Applied Sciences Braunschweig/Wolfenbuettel,
Germany)
Andreas König (TU Kaiserslautern, Germany)
Jonathan Lee (National Central University, Taiwan)
Chia-Chen Lin (Providence University, Taiwan)
Paul P. Lin (Cleveland State University, USA)
Jose Antonio Lozano (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain)
Teresa B. Ludermir (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Urszula Markowska-Kaczmar (Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland)
Francesco Masulli (University of Genova, Italy)
Lahcéne Mitiche (University of Djelfa, Algeria)
Roman Neruda (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic)
Seppo J. Ovaska (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland)
Marcin Paprzycki (Polish Academy of Science, Poland)
Witold Pedrycz (University of Alberta, Canada)
José María Peña (Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain)
Petr Posik (Czech Technical University, Czech Republic)
Dilip Pratihar (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India)
Germano Resconi (Catholic University, Italy)
José Riquelme (University of Sevilla, Spain)
Ignacio Rojas (University of Granada, Spain)
Ovidio Salvetti (ISTI-CNR, Italy)
Elie Sanchez (CNRS, France)
Luciano Sánchez (University of Oviedo, Spain)
Andrea Schaerf (University of Udine, Italy)
Giovanni Semeraro (University of Bari, Italy)
Georgios Ch. Sirakoulis (Democritus University of Thrace, Greece)
Luciano Stefanini (University of Urbino, Italy)
Carlo Tasso (University of Udine, Italy)
Ayeley Tchangani (Universite Toulouse III, France)
Michael N. Vrahatis (University of Patras, Greece)
Gregg Vesonder (Executive Director and AT&T Fellow, USA)
Shyue-Liang Wang (National University of Kaohsiung, Taiwan)
Fatos Xhafa (Universtat Politécnica de Catalunya, Spain)