Two Internships at UPC in Open-Source Natural Language Parsing

The TALP Research Center at the UPC offers two interships in Machine
Learning and Natural Language Processing, funded by the PASCAL2
Harvest Programme. The internships will take place at the UPC campus
in Barcelona for 8 weeks during May-July of 2011.

The goal of the project is to develop an open-source library of
high-performance methods for tagging, parsing and structured
prediction tasks, with a focus in NLP tasks. Our aim is
that this software library becomes a reference implementation of
modern techniques for natural language parsing and related problems.

The project team will be led by Xavier Carreras and Lluís Padró of the
TALP research center, both experts in NLP and statistical methods. The
two interns will closely work with the other members of the team.

These internships are an excellent opportunity for PhD students and
researchers interested in parsing and machine learning. We will
implement a generic, extensible structured prediction framework
consisting of several learning algorithms (including Perceptron,
max-margin methods and CRFs) and several models for predicting
structures (such as Markov taggers and dependency parsers). The first
four weeks of the internship will take a tutorial-style form with a
series of lectures and guided experimental sessions. After this phase
we should be all familiar with methods and existing code, and we
should be able to reproduce top-performing systems for a variety of
multi-lingual parsing tasks.

The second part of the internship will be devoted to collaborative
engineering and research. Our main interest is to improve efficiency,
scalability, flexibility and usability of the software library. Ideas
from interns will be welcome, ranging from extending the library with
new models and features, to designing generic parsing schemes, to
improving efficiency of algorithms and data structures.

The interns will be entitled to a per-diem for accomodation, meals and
local travel, as well as a round-trip ticket from the place they live.

The ideal candidates should have:

* A clear understanding of natural language parsing and structured
prediction methods. Ideally, candidates would be Master or PhD
students that already took a class on the subject. More experienced
researchers are also welcome to participate.

* A passion for programming, algorithms and data structures, and
excellent skills in C++, unix environments, and generic/template
programming.

* Experience implementing a large NLP or ML project.

* Ability to work in group.

* Fluent English.

For applications and inquiries, send email to Xavier Carreras and
Lluís Padró ({carreras,padro}(at)lsi.upc.edu). To apply, send a CV, a
short description of programming/research projects you’ve been
involved, and a statement of interests in research and engineering
related to NLP. Let us also know about time constraints you may have
for the period of May-July, as we will set the time that best fits the whole
team.

The positions will be opened until filled, though ideally we would
receive applications by mid March and decide by early April.

Localot Research PhD Scholarship at UPC

A fully-funded 4 year PhD scholarship is available at the Tecnhical
University of Catalonia (UPC) in the areas of Natural Language
Processing and Machine Learning, starting September 2011.

The topics of the PhD involve information extraction, parsing and
induction of domain semantics with applications to search and
matching. The main research goal of this project is to develop new
semi-supervised statistical methods for inducing structured
representations from free text and computing semantic equivalences.

The project will be jointly supervised by Xavier Carreras and Ariadna
Quattoni. The student will join the TALP Reseach Center at the UPC in
Barcelona (http://www.talp.cat), and will be part of the PASCAL2
Network of Excellence. The student will enroll in a PhD program in
Computer Science at the UPC, with specialization in Artificial
Intelligence (http://postgrau.upc.edu/ai) or Computing (http://postgrau.upc.edu/computing).

The scolarship is co-funded by Localot Research and UPC. Localot
Research is a young start-up company based in Cambridge, MA focused on
Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Their mission is to
build the next-generation search engines for targeted applications in
finance, health and other areas. The team consists of first-class
researchers in the fields of NLP and machine learning and qualified
engineers. The company will provide real applications and challenges
to motivate the PhD research, together with data and experimental
scenarios. There will be possibilities of internships at the company
to foster collaborations.

The ideal candidate should have a degree in Computer Science,
Mathematics or Computational Linguistics. We expect a highly-motivated
student, with fluent English, good programming skills, and a creative
mind. Previous experience with topics related to the project is not
required, but will be a plus.

Applications and inquiries should be sent to Xavier Carreras and
Ariadna Quattoni ({carreras,aquattoni}(at)lsi.upc.edu). Applications
should include: your CV, a 1 page statement of research interests, 2-3
references (with email and relation) and list of publications (if
any).

The position is open until filled, but applications sent no later than
March 2011 will receive full consideration. The starting date is
September 1, 2011 (earlier or later start is possible).

Vision and Sports Summer School 2011

Call for Participation

VISION AND SPORTS SUMMER SCHOOL

Zurich, 15-19 August 2011

http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/summerschool2011/

email: vs3(at)vision.ee.ethz.ch

application deadline: 10 May 2011

OVERVIEW

Vision and Sports is a special special kind of summer school. In
addition to a broad-range of lectures on state-of-the-art Computer
Vision techniques, it offers exciting sport activities, such as Indoor
Climbing, Judo, Tennis and Volleyball. Sports are organized by the
same internationally renowned experts who deliver the lectures. The
school offers the best of both worlds to participants: high-quality
teaching on Computer Vision, and lots of fun with a variety of
attractive sports. This offers plenty of opportunity for personal
contact between students and teachers.

The Vision and Sports Summer School covers a broad range of subjects,
reflecting the diversity of Computer Vision. Each lecture will cover
both basic aspects and state-of-the-art research. Every day there are
two Computer Vision classes and one sports session. The classes
include both lectures and practical exercises.

The school is open to about 60 participants, and is targeted mainly to
young researchers (Master students and PhD students in particular).

CONFIRMED TEACHERS (MORE WILL FOLLOW)

Jiri Matas
Czech Technical University

Daniel Cremers
TU Muenchen

Vittorio Ferrari
ETH Zurich

Silvio Savarese
University of Michigan

Christoph Lampert
IST Austria

Cristian Sminchisescu
University of Bonn

Bodo Rosenhahn
University of Hannover

Ondrej Chum
Czech Technical University (Prague)

COMPUTER VISION LECTURES

Current list of topics:

Local feature extraction
Multi-view geometry and 3D reconstruction
Large-scale specific object recognition
Appearance-based object categorization
Shape representation and matching
Contour-based object categorization
Human Pose Estimation
Kernel Methods for Computer Vision
Continuous optimization for Computer Vision
Structured Probabilistic models in Computer Vision

SPORT ACTIVITIES

Tennis, Volleyball, Indoor Climbing, Unihockey, Table Tennis, Soccer, Judo

APPLICATION

The school is open to about 60 participants. Please apply online at

http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/summerschool2011/

Although priority will be given to young researchers (Master/PhD
students in particular), applications from senior researchers and
industrial professionals are welcome as well. The registration fee is
expected to be around 400 Euro. This fee includes all classes, sports
activities, coffee breaks, lunches, and a social dinner. For hotel
accommodation, students will get discount rates on hotels affiliated
with the school.

Applicants should apply before 10 May 2011.
Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31 May 2011.

MORE INFORMATION

http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/summerschool2011/

CAEPIA 2011 – Call for Papers

Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA)

November, 7-11 2011

TENERIFE, SPAIN

WEB PAGE: www.caepia11.es

OVERVIEW

The Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA) is an international
forum open to all researchers. In its program CAEPIA’11 includes
workshops, tutorials and presentations of works related to
Artificial Intelligence. As in previous editions, the objectives are to facilitate the dissemination of
new ideas and experiences, strengthen links between different research groups
involved, promote the transfer of knowledge between researchers and new consolidated groups
and help disseminate new developments to society.

CAEPIA will also be open to pre-doctoral work, and there will be a special call for this
type of work through the Doctoral Consortium. This event is specially designed for
the interaction of doctoral students and senior researchers.

To achieve the proposed objectives, authors are requested to send original unpublished works,
that describe relevant research about topics related with Artificial Intelligence from all
points of view: formal, methodological, technical or applied. Works can be submitted in Spanish
or English in LNCS format (Spinger). CAEPIA’11 will use a double blind-review process. The authors
will remove their names from the submitted papers and must take responsibility for the
originality of the work and send it in the proper format.

CONTRIBUTIONS

– CAEPIA papers (Main track): Submitted technical papers must be no longer than 10 pages,
including all figures and references, and must be formatted according to LNCS guidelines.
The submitted paper will represent original research, with solid, well-founded or
demonstrable results on any of the conference topics. Accepted papers will be
assigned a 15 or 20 minutes slot for oral presentation at the conference. Submitted papers
will be assigned to an area chair and reviewed by at least three program committee members.

– Doctoral consortium papers: We encourage the submissions of preliminary works from PhD students.
These works will be presented in special sessions at the conference. The objective is to foster
a fruitful debate between the candidate and the audience. The length of these papers should not
exceed 4 pages and will be orally presented during 15 minutes. The authors of accepted papers
as pre-doctoral work will enjoy special benefits to attend the conference.

IMPORTANT DATES

CAEPIA papers

* Submission of papers: May 15, 2011

* Notification of acceptance/rejection: June 30, 2011

* Camera-ready copy due: July 31, 2011

* Technical sessions: November 7-11, 2011

Doctoral Consortium papers

* Submission of papers: September 1, 2011

* Notification of acceptance/rejection: October 1, 2011

* Camera-ready copy due: October 15, 2011

* Technical sessions: November 7-11, 2011

SUBMISSION

In order to submit your paper you should register in the following
web page:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=caepia2011

PROCEEDINGS

Accepted paper will be published in the two volumes of CAEPIA proceedings that will
be given to all the attendants to the conference. The two volumes will be as
follows:
– One volume published by Springer-Verlag in its Lecture Notes in Artificial
Intelligence series, will contain a selection of the best papers accepted by the
program committee. In order to be included in this volume papers should be submitted
in English.
– One volume published by the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence that will
contain all the accepted papers not included in the previous volume. This includes
CAEPIA paper and Doctoral Consortium papers.

TOPICS

CAEPIA 2011 is organized around ten key areas or tracks, each managed by a member of
the senior programme committee member. Below a description of these areas can be found.
However its definition is only a guide and, in general, any work related to AI
research and its applications are welcome CAEPIA’2011.

NATURAL LANGUAGE
Discourse, dialogue, and pragmatics
Language modeling
Machine translation
Multilingual language processing
Question answering
Spoken language processing
Summarization
Syntax, parsing, grammar induction
Text mining
Topic and text classification
Word sense disambiguation

MULTIAGENT SYSTEM
Adaptation and self-organization
Architectures and agent-based programming
Social, organizational and institutional approaches
Agent communication languages
Methodologies and Infrastructures (platforms, tools, environment)
Agent-based Simulation and emergent behavior
Agreement Technologies (coordination, negotiation, argumentation, norms, trust)

AUTOMATIC LEARNING
Data Mining
Reinforcement learning
Case Based Learning

KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND ENGINEERING
Knowledge representation
Computational Logic
Nonmonotonic Reasoning
Model-Based Reasoning
Qualitative reasoning
Spatial and temporal reasoning
Action and change
Diagnosis
Ontologies
Semantic Web
Knowledge Management

REASONING AND LOGIC, SEARCH AND PLANNING
Satisfaction of restrictions
Optimization with constraints
Satisfiability
Heuristic search
AI in games planning
Markov processes
Scheduling

IA APPLICATIONS AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY ASPECTS
Applications of AI
Integration of AI in other areas of science

SOFT COMPUTING
Evolutionary Computation
Bio-inspired algorithms
Fuzzy techniques
Neural networks
Metaheuristics

UNCERTAINTY IN AI
Probabilistic graphical models
Bayesian Networks
Modeling, inference, learning and decision making under uncertainty
Approximate Reasoning

PERCEPTION AND ROBOTICS
Robotics
Vision and perception
Robot-human interaction

SMART WEB AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
Recovery Information
System recommendations
Web mining
Web 2.0
Semantic Web
Digital Libraries

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Chair: Jose A. Lozano, U. País Vasco
Vice-chair: Jose A. Gámez, U. Castilla- La Mancha

Area Chairs

Jorge Civera, U. Politécnica de Valencia (Natural language processing)
Sascha Ossowski, U. Rey Juan Carlos (Agents and multi-agents systems)
Manuel Ojeda-Aciego, U. Málaga (Knowledge representation and engineering)
Hector Geffner, U. Pompeu Fabra (Reasoning and logic, search and planning)
Nicolás García-Pedrajas, U. Córdoba (AI applications and multidisciplinary aspects -TTIA-)
Filiberto Plá, U. Jaume I (Perception and robotics)
Oscar Cordón, ECSC (Soft Computing)
José M. Peña, U. Linköping (Uncertainty in AI)
Enrique Herrera-Viedma, U. Granada (Information retrieval and smart web)
José Marcos Moreno, U. la Laguna (Doctoral Consortium)

Members:
Hermann Ney, RWTH Aachen, Alemania
Marcello Federico, FBK, Italia
Philipp Koehn, U. Edinburgh, UK
Jose B. Mariño, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
Mikel Forcada, U. Alicante
Francisco Casacuberta, U. Politécnica de Valencia
Alfons Juan, U. Politécnica de Valencia.
Jesús Andrés-Ferrer, U. Politécnica de Valencia
Vicent Botti, U. Politécnica de Valencia
Juan Manuel Corchado, U. Salamanca
Christian Guttmann, EBTIC, UAE
Beatriz López, U. Girona
Juan Pavón, U. Complutense
Francisco Herrera, U. Granada
Pedro Larrañaga, U. Politécnica de Madrid
César Hervás, U. Córdoba Propone 1
Emilio Corchado, U. Salamanca
Jaume Bacardit, U. Nottingham, UK
Ángel Sappa, U. Autónoma de Barcelona
Joan Serrat, U. Autónoma de Barcelona
Francesc Moreno, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
José María Martínez, U. Zaragoza
José Jesús Guerrero, U. Zaragoza
José Miguel Sanchiz, Universitat Jaume I
Enric Cervera, Universitat Jaume I
Pedro Meseguer, CSIC IIIA
Carlos Linares Lopez, U. Carlos III
Lawrence Mandow, U. Málaga
Luis Castillo IActive Intelligent Technologies
Ines Lynce, INESC, Portugal
Michael Fink, TU Wien, Austria
Pedro Cabalar, U. Coruña
Pablo Cordero, U. Málaga
David Pearce, U. Politécnica de Madrid
Jesús Medina, U. Cádiz
Agustín Valverde, U. Málaga
Jose M. Gutierrez, U. Cantabria
Robert Castelo, U. Pompeu Fabra
Concha Bielza, U. Politécnica de Madrid
Luis M. de Campos, U. Granada
Kishan Mehrotra, U. Syracusem, USA
Gonzalo Cerruela, U. Córdoba
Domingo Ortiz, U. Córdoba
Colin Fyfe, U. West of Scotland
César García, U. Burgos
Juan J. Rodríguez, U. Burgos
Wesam Barbakh, U. Gaza, Israel
Alberto Bugarín, U. Santiago Compostela
Humberto Bustince, U. Navarra
Sancho Salcedo, U. Alcalá de Henares
Pablo Varona, U. Autónoma de Madrid
Richard Duro, U. Coruña
María J. del Jesus, U. Jaén
Ramiro Varela, U. Oviedo
Luciano Sánchez, U. Oviedo
Christiam Blum, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
Carlos Coello, CINVESTAV-IPM, Méjico
Carme Torras, U. Politécnica de Cataluña – CSIC
Ulrich Bodenhoffer, U. Johannes Kepler, Austria
Thomas Stützle, Free U. Brussels, Bélgica
Juan Manuel Molina, U. Carlos III
Jose Angel Olivas, U. Castilla-La Mancha
Pablo Castells, U. Autónoma de Madrid
Juan Manuel Fernández Luna, U. Granada
Chris Cornelis, U. of Ghent, Bélgica
Vicenç Torra, CSIC
Slawomir Zadrozny, Polish Academy of Sciences, Polonia
Umberto Straccia, U. Pisa, Italia
Vitaly Schetinin, U. Bedfordshire, UK
José L. Balcázar, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
Joao Gama, U. Porto, Portugal
Sebastian Sardina, RMIT, Australia
Francesco Buccafurri, UNIRC, Italia
Carlos Damásio, U. Lisboa, Portugal
Enrique Alba, U. Malaga
Belén Melián Batista, U. La Laguna
José Luis Verdegay Galdeano, U. Granada
María Teresa Lamata Jiménez, U. Granada
David Pelta, U. Granada
Carmen Paz Suárez Araujo, U. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
José Manuel Cadenas Figueredo, U. Murcia
Daniel Borrajo, U. Carlos III
Lluis Godo, CSIC
Roque Marín, U. Murcia
Serafín Moral, U. Granada
Jordi Vitria, U. Barcelona
José Ramón Dorronsoro Ibero, U. Autónoma de Madrid
Francesc J. Ferri, U. Valencia
Andres Cano, U. Granada
Antonio Salmeron, U. Almería
Jose Miguel Puerta, U. Castilla-la Mancha
Carlos Cotta, U. Málaga
Iñaki Inza, U. País Vasco
Antonio Fernandez, U. Castilla-La Mancha
Luis Magdalena, European Centre of Soft Computing, Asturias
Ricard Gavalda, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
Miquel Sanchez, U. Politécnica de Cataluña
Alex Mendiburu, U. País Vasco
Francisco Mario Hernández Tejera, U. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

ECML PKDD 2011 – Call for Demonstrations

We invite submissions for demos of working systems based on
state-of-the-art machine learning and data mining technology.

At ECML PKDD 2011 a special demonstration session will be held, an
exciting and highly interactive way to showcase the state of the art
in machine learning and knowledge discovery software. Accepted
demonstration papers (4 pages) will be included in the conference
proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in the “Lecture Notes in
Artificial Intelligence Series.”

The focus will be on innovative prototype implementation or systems
that apply machine learning techniques and knowledge discovery process
in practical settings. We especially encourage submissions in the
fields of web, medicine, biology, neuroscience, engineering, and
government.

Submissions will be judged by a committee of technical experts with
expertise in machine learning, data mining, and software engineering.
Selection criteria include the relevance of the contribution, its
interest and usefulness for attendees, and its technical difficulty.

Accepted contributions: At least one of the authors must register for
and attend the conference in order to present the demonstration (details
about demonstrations to be given with the acceptance notification).

Submissions

Each demonstration should be accompanied by a short paper of at most 4
pages (including figures and screenshots, if needed). The paper must be
in English and must be formatted according to the Springer-Verlag
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence guidelines. Authors instructions
and style files can be downloaded at
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

Please submit your paper electronically by May 6 to demos(at)ecmlpkdd2011.org.

In this accompanying paper, please try to answer the following questions:
What makes your piece of software unique and special? What are the
innovative
aspects or in what way/area does it represent the state of the art? For
whom is it most interesting/useful? (an ML or KDD researcher, a graduate
or undergraduate student in these areas, an industrial practitioner, etc.).
If there are similar/related pieces of software: What are the advantages
and disadvantages compared to related software?

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 6 May 2011
Notifications: 6 June 2011
Final versions due: 12 June 2011

Demo Track Organisation

Michelangelo Ceci (Univ. Bari, Italy)
Spiros Papadimitriou (Google Research, USA)

Contact

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Demo
Chairs,
Michelangelo Ceci and Spiros Papadimitriou, via demos(at)ecmlpkdd2011.org.

Conference website: http://www.ecmlpkdd2011.org/

2nd Joint call for tutorials and workshops ECML/PKDD 2011

ECML/PKDD 2011
http://www.ecmlpkdd2011.org/

Joint call for tutorials and workshops ECML/PKDD 2011

The ECML/PKDD-2011 Organizing Committee invites proposals for tutorials and workshops to be held on the first and last days of the conference, which will take place in Athens, Greece from September 5th to 9th, 2011. We invite proposals for half-day tutorials and half-day or full-day workshops. Combination of workshops and tutorials are also welcome. The scope of the proposal should be consistent with the conference themes as described in the ECML/PKDD 2011 Call for Papers.

Workshops provide an opportunity to discuss current topics in machine learning and/or data mining in a small and interactive atmosphere.
Workshops can concentrate in-depth on research topics, but can also be devoted to application issues, or to questions concerning the economic and social aspects of machine learning and data mining. Multidisciplinary workshops that bring together researchers and practitioners from different communities are welcome. Workshops are expected to cover a full day (3.5h + 3.5h, incl. two breaks of 30 minutes), except for joint workshops/tutorials, in which case a half day tutorial (3.5h incl. one 30 minute break) followed by a half day workshop (3.5h incl. one 30 minute break) is possible. The general idea is that for some events, it may be preferable to have a general introduction to a topic, presented by experienced presenters, before more technical or novel work is presented.

Tutorials are intended to provide independent instruction on core techniques and areas of knowledge that enjoy broad interest within the machine learning and the data mining community. We are interested in tutorials on established or emerging research topics within the field itself, but we also welcome tutorials from related research fields or application areas. The ideal tutorial should attract a wide audience.
It should be broad enough to provide a gentle introduction to the chosen research area, but it should also cover the most important contributions in depth. Each tutorial should be well-focused so that its content can be covered in a half day slot (3.5h incl. a 30 minute break). Proposals that exclusively focus on the presenter’s own work or commercial presentations are not eligible.

** Important dates **
—————————————————————————
The following deadlines are important for the workshop/tutorial organizers:

– Workshop/tutorial proposal deadline: March 1, 2011
– Workshop/tutorial acceptance notification: March 17, 2011
– Workshop websites and call for papers online: April 1, 2011
– Workshop/tutorial proceedings (camera-ready): July 28, 2011

Workshops are free to determine their own schedules, but we advise the
following deadlines:

– Workshop paper submission deadline: June 7, 2011
– Workshop paper acceptance notification: July 1, 2011
– Workshop paper camera-ready deadline: July 21, 2011

—————————————————————————

** Contact **

In case you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are looking forward to your proposals,

The ECML/PKDD 2011 Workshop and Tutorial Chairs:

Fosca Giannotti, Bart Goethals, Katharina Morik and Maguelonne Teisseire

Please send emails to tutorialsandworkshops(at)ecmlpkdd2011.org

For more information, please check the ECML/PKDD webpage http://www.ecmlpkdd2011.org/

PostDoc Position on Biomedical Image Analysis with Machine Learning Methods

The group of Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning at the Frankfurt Institute
for Advanced Studies (FIAS) and the group of Applied Systems Biology at the Leibniz
Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology in Jena offer a PostDoc
position for research on Machine Learning approaches to the analysis of microscopy images
on infection processes.

The interdisciplinary project aims at using modern probabilistic approaches to autonomously
learn representations of cells and their interactions in microscopy images. The representations
will be used to automatically analyze the complex interplay between pathogens and immune
cells during infection. The technology learned during the project is based on Bayesian
generative models that can be applied to a large range of fields and offers the candidate
numerous perspectives for the future.

Applicants should have a doctoral degree in Machine Learning, Physics, Computer Science,
Mathematics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field. Strong analytical skills and good
programming experiences are required. Experience in the analysis of data and the use of
Machine Learning approaches is highly desirable. Good communication skills in English are essential.

The offered position is a fully funded research position and we are looking for a highly
qualified candidate. The PostDoc will work in international and young research groups at
Frankfurt and Jena. We aim at high-profile research, publish in leading journals and
conferences of the field, and offer and encourage collaborations with leading international
research groups.

Please send applications by

March 7, 2010,

to Johanna Dilley including:

* complete scientific curriculum vitae (including a list of publications, if applicable)
* copies of certificates
* short statement of research interests and achievements (half a page)
* two letters of reference or the names and contact details of two individuals who are willing
to write a recommendation letter if contacted
* if applicable, provide a proof of proficiency in English (e.g., TOEFL, IELTS, or similar)

Applications received after March 7 may not be considered.

After the submission deadline, the position can be filled as soon as a suitable candidate is
found.

For further information about the Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning group
at the FIAS see:
http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/cnml

For further information about the Applied Systems Biology group at the Leibniz Institute for
Natural Product Research and Infection Biology see:
http://www.sysbio.hki-jena.de/

Workshop on learning theory in Paris, May 9-11, 2011

On behalf of the French Mathematical Society, we are happy to announce the following meeting in Paris:

Statistical Learning Theory – “Etats de la Recherche”

Institut Henri Poincaré, Paris
May 9-10-11, 2011

http://learningtheory.state.free.fr/

Scientific committee

Vladimir Koltchinskii (GeorgiaTech)
Gabor Lugosi (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)
Pascal Massart (Université Paris-Sud)
Alain Pajor (Université Paris-Est)

Organizers

Stéphane Boucheron (Université Denis-Diderot)
Nicolas Vayatis (ENS Cachan)

Programme:

A. Mini-courses by:

* Peter Bartlett (UC Berkeley) : Design and theoretical analysis of prediction methods
* Sanjoy DasGupta (UC San Diego) : Unsupervised and minimally-supervised learning.
* Shahar Mendelson (Technion and Australian National University) : Geometric methods in learning theory.

B. Talks by:

Francis Bach (INRIA & ENS Ulm)
Gilles Blanchard (Potsdam University)
Nicolas Broutin (INRIA)
Stéphan Clémençon (Telecom ParisTech)
Stéphane Mallat (Ecole Polytechnique)
Richard Nickl (Cambridge University)
Jean-Luc Starck (CEA)
Gilles Stoltz (ENS Ulm & HEC)
Alexandre Tsybakov (ENSAE ParisTech)

Purpose

The aim of this event is to introduce learning theory to non-experts mathematicians. The participation of junior researchers and graduate students is particularly encouraged.

Registration

Registration is free but mandatory. A limited number of invitations will be delivered. If you are interested in this event, please fill the application form:

http://learningtheory.state.free.fr/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=32&lang=fr

For more information

Please check the webpage: http://learningtheory.state.free.fr/.

PhD Scholarship, Heidelberg University

PhD scholarship in the Graduate Program “Semantic Processing” jointly
organized by the Computational Linguistics Department at Heidelberg
University and the NLP Group at HITS gGmbH, Heidelberg, Germany
(March 15th, 2011)

One PhD scholarship (salary EUR 1280/month, tax-free) is available for
a student working in the area of Computational Linguistics/Natural
Language Processing. Candidates are free to choose the topic of their
PhD projects as long as they are within the general interests of the
faculty of the graduate program:
* Anette Frank: statistical semantics, discourse, information extraction
* Sebastian Padó: multilingual NLP, computational psycholinguistics
* Stefan Riezler: statistical machine translation, machine learning
* Michael Strube: discourse, generation, knowledge extraction
The scholarship will be granted initially for two years with the
possibility for a one year extension after successful evaluation.

Candidates should have a strong background in computational
linguistics and possess a Masters or a Diploma degree in either
Computational Linguistics or Computer Science/Linguistics with a
specialization in Natural Language Processing. Experience with machine
learning, corpus-based methods and statistics is a plus. We expect
strong programming skills (Java, C++, or Python).

The graduate program “Semantic Processing”
(http://semproc.cl.uni-heidelberg.de) is jointly organized by the
Computational Linguistics Department at the University of Heidelberg
(http://www.cl.uni-heidelberg.de) and the NLP Group at HITS gGmbH
(http://www.h-its.org/nlp). Members of the graduate program
participate in a PhD seminar series and may attend lectures at the
university. The graduate program provides a lively research
environment in a group of PhD students. We encourage interdisciplinary
research activities with Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology,
Geography and other disciplines.

To apply, please send your CV, a statement of research, a copy of your
degree certificate, and a study transcript before March 15th, 2011 to:

Anke Sopka
Institut für Computerlinguistik
Universität Heidelberg
Im Neuenheimer Feld 325
69120 Heidelberg
Germany

Email: icl(at)cl.uni-heidelberg.de
Tel.: +49 6221 54-3245

PhD Position In Venice

Applications are invited for one PhD position in Computer Science at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice, Italy (http://www.unive.it) to undertake research in the areas of computer vision and pattern recognition on:

Similarity, clustering and matching of relational structures.

The activitiy will be closely related to the themes of the EU FP7 SIMBAD project (http://simbad-fp7.eu).

The position is funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) under the “Youth support Fund” program.

The successful candidate will join the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Group headed by Prof. Marcello Pelillo, which is a member of the PASCAL 2 Network of Excellence. The group’s research activity is focused primarily on graph-theoretic, optimization, and game-theoretic approaches, and in the interplay between continuous and combinatorial methods. The research spans a range of topics including grouping and segmentation, shape analysis and object recognition, structural matching and learning, and contextual pattern recognition.

For further information and how to apply, please see:
http://www.unive.it/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=82531

Deadline for applications is: ***22 March 2011***

Note: in order to apply for this position, please mention explicitly in the application form the “Youth support Fund” scholarship bounded to the topic “Similarity, matching and clustering of relational structures” – Strategic programme: “ICT and electronic components;” (code 27-05)

Please feel free to contact Prof Marcello Pelillo for further information.
http://www.dsi.unive.it/~pelillo