Call for additional partners of PASCAL 2 Network of Excellence

PASCAL 2 is a European Commission financed FP7 Network of Excellence that started in March 2008 and that will run until February 2013. It focuses on the development of principled approaches to machine learning, statistical analysis and pattern recognition and their applications to diverse areas including cognitive systems and robotics, user interfaces, and vision, speech and text understanding. Many of the leading European research groups in these areas participate. The funding is allocated dynamically by a range of network programmes that promote network themes and encourage interaction and community building in these areas. As a part of this activity, we have held an annual call for new sites for the past two years, and we will hold a limited call again this year. Any site that is eligible to participate in EC financed projects can apply, but the process is highly selective and for budgetary and network-focus related reasons only a very small number of new sites can be admitted this year. New sites are expected to be world leading in their research areas and they must demonstrate links with existing sites that are sufficient to ensure future collaboration and good integration into the network. Sites working on any network-related theme can apply, but for this call preference will be given to building critical mass in our thematic priority area of creating artificial cognitive systems (including but not limited to robotic systems, embedded agents, etc) based on sound statistical and machine learning principles. For more information about the application process and deadlines, see below.

———————————————————————
Information required for an application to become a new PASCAL 2 site

For consideration at the 3 September 2010 Steering Committee meeting, applications including all of the following information must reach the Committee by FRIDAY 6 AUGUST 2010 and the corresponding letters of reference must reach the Committee by FRIDAY 13 AUGUST 2010. There will be no extensions. Applications and letters should be sent in PDF or plain text format to the PASCAL administrator Rebecca Martin at UCL, Rebecca.Martin at cs.ucl.ac.uk.

Information to include:

• The site name and manager.
• The name of the PASCAL 2 Beneficiary that will manage the site’s budget for it (for most sites this will be UCL [1])
• The names of two previously agreed sponsors from within the PASCAL 2 network. These must be from two different countries (one country can be that of the candidate site) and they must be permanent staff at their respective institutions. The applicant should ask each sponsor to email a confidential letter of support for the application to the Committee by FRIDAY 13 AUGUST 2010. The letters should evaluate the leadership and excellence of the site and the added value for the network as a whole of including it (complementarity, critical mass, probable collaborations, advancement of network goals…)
• A proposed initial list of members at the site, giving their employment status (permanent, postdoc, PhD student) and keywords for their research interests.
• A few paragraphs (absolute maximum 1 page) explaining concisely how the site intends to contribute to PASCAL 2 and describing the kind of work that it does, its alignment with PASCAL 2 and its goals, any past or current participations in PASCAL activities, how the group plans to interact with other PASCAL 2 sites,… Include a list of at most 5 recent publications that illustrate the quality and alignment of the work at the site. Small sites will need to argue that they have the critical mass to participate as an autonomous PASCAL site.
• The information required for a Contract Preparation Form: official names and addresses of the institution(s) concerned; names, email addresses and telephone numbers of the people in their contracts offices who will handle contract preparation; full names and titles of their contract signatories.
• Before submitting an application, you must also verify that your institution has read the Non-Beneficiary accession agreement and is willing to accede to it (Downloadable version available here).

———————————————————————-

[1] Most new sites are expected to join as “Non-Beneficiary” members. This essentially allows full network participation except that the site budget is managed by UCL rather than the site itself and staff can not be employed. If staff need to be employed later (e.g. following a successful Pump Priming or Harvest request) the site can apply for promotion to full Beneficiary status at that stage. However sites that are attached to existing multi-site Beneficiaries, notably the CNRS, can immediately become full members via their Beneficiary, subject to the agreement of that Beneficiary. The application and approval process is the same for all new sites.

Call for new members of PASCAL2 – update to contact details

It appears that the address for the applications to be sent to did not appear in the orginal advert.

Everything should be sent to Rebecca Martin – rebecca.martin at cs.ucl.ac.uk

The original advert has also been updated, and is available here: http://www.pascal-network.org/?q=node/164

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Postdoctoral position within the area of Distributed Text Mining at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology

A post-doctoral position in the area of distributed text mining within the
COMIDOR project is available at the Department of Computer and Information
Science (IDI) in the Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and
Electrical Engineering (IME), the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology (NTNU).

COMIDOR (Cooperative Mining of Independent Document Repositories) is a
research project at NTNU that will focus on the mechanisms and algorithms
necessary to perform mining of independent document repositories. COMIDOR is
funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Traditionally, text mining has been performed on a single text
collection, and in the case of collections from several repositories
these collections have first been merged before performing the mining
process. In some application areas, merging of collections is not
acceptable. For example, some repositories can not be merged for legal
reasons, while some can not be merged because of risk of revealing
classified information. In the COMIDOR project the aim is to develop
new solutions to mining of independent document repositories without
communication of base repositories. A more detailed description of the
project can be found at http://research.idi.ntnu.no/comidor/.

The candidate should have a Ph.D. in Computer Science with solid
knowledge of text mining, data mining, or distributed data management, and
familiarity with program development. The postdoc position is for two
years.

For more information, please Prof. Kjetil Norvag (project leader), noervaag
at idi.ntnu.no.

Specific Conditions: The postdoc position is placed in Norwegian salary code
1352, gross NOK 446.700 per year (equivalent to approx. EUR 56.500 and USD
75.600).

Living Costs in Norway: A rule of thumb is that one pays appr. 35% tax on
net income. Public health care system is free for all (due to the tax
level). Generally there is no need for private health care insurances.
Education on all levels is free for all. Housing normally cost between NOK
4000 (for a simple one bed studio with kitchenette, possibly shared
bathroom) and 8000 (for a 3-4 piece apartment suitable for a small family)
per month.

Postdoctoral Position in Machine Learning with,application to Computer Vision at KTH, Stockholm, Sweden

A postdoctoral position in Machine Learning with application
to Computer Vision is available in the Computer Vision group
(CVAP) at KTH, Stockholm.

The position will be associated with an ongoing project in,
Computer Vision that can be either:

1. Wearable Visual Information Systems

http://www.nada.kth.se/cvap/vinst.html

This project aims at the processing of visual information captured in
wearable cameras. The main objectives are recognition, classification,
location finding in e.g. mobile phone cameras as well as the automatic
creation of visual diaries from continuously wearable cameras.

2. Capturing and Visualizing Large Scale Human Action

http://www.csc.kth.se/~sullivan/actvis/results.html

This project is also closely associated with the European project
FINE. http://www.projectfine.eu/

This project has as its main goal the mapping of human sports action
from video into 3D animations. Specifically we will consider the 3D
capture of players actions in football games. The project is carried
out in connection with the Swedish industrial partner TRACAB as well as
other industrial partners in Europe.

The length of the position is 2 years with possible extension up to 4
years. The applicant is expected to perform full time research of
which approximately 50% will be devoted to the associated project.

Applications should include a cover letter indicating the associated
research project of interest, a curriculum vitae, and the contact
information of references.

The position is part of a larger (3) post-doc program at KTH

Please follow the link:
http://www.kth.se/om/work-at-kth/vacancies/postdoctoral-positions-in-machine-learning-1.62352?l=en_UK

for detailed instructions of application

Deadline for application is October 1st 2010

For information contact:
Stefan Carlsson, stefanc at csc.kth.se, Tel: +46 8 790 8432
Josephine Sullivan sullivan at csc.kth,se +46 8 790 6136

Book Announcement: “Reinforcement Learning and Dynamic Programming Using Functions Approximators”

Dear machine learning researchers,

We are pleased to announce the recent release of our book:
“Reinforcement Learning and Dynamic Programming Using Functions Approximators”
(Lucian Busoniu, Robert Babuska, Bart De Schutter, and Damien Ernst)
in the Automation and Control Engineering series of Taylor & Francis CRC Press.

Book information:

Reinforcement learning (RL) can optimally solve decision and control problems involving complex dynamic systems, without requiring a mathematical model of the system. If a model is available, dynamic programming (DP), the model-based counterpart of RL, can be used. RL and DP are applicable in a variety of disciplines, including artificial intelligence, automatic control, economics, and medicine. Recent years have seen a surge of interest RL and DP using compact, approximate representations of the solution, which enable algorithms to address realistic problems.

This book provides an in-depth introduction to RL and DP with function approximators, with a focus on continuous-variable control problems. A concise description of classical RL and DP (Chapter 2) builds the foundation for the remainder of the book. This is followed by an extensive review of the state-of-the-art in RL and DP with approximation, which combines algorithm development with theoretical guarantees, illustrative numerical examples, and algorithm comparisons (Chapter 3). Each of the final three chapters (4 to 6) is dedicated to a representative algorithm from the authors’ research. These three algorithms respectively belong to the three major classes of methods: approximate value iteration, approximate policy iteration, and approximate policy search. The features and performance of these algorithms are highlighted in comprehensive experimental studies on a range of control applications.

Features:
* A concise introduction to the basics of RL and DP
* A detailed treatment of RL and DP with function approximators, including theoretical results and illustrative examples
* A thorough treatment of policy search techniques
* Comprehensive experimental studies on a range of control problems, including real-time control results
* An extensive, illustrative convergence and consistency analysis of an approximate value iteration algorithm

For graduate students and others new to the field, this book offers a thorough introduction to both the basics and emerging methods. And for those researchers and practitioners working in the fields of optimal and adaptive control, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and operations research, this resource offers a combination of practical algorithms, theoretical analysis, and comprehensive examples that they will be able to adapt and apply to their own work.

Access the book’s website at http://www.dcsc.tudelft.nl/rlbook/ for additional information, including computer code used in the experimental studies, information about ordering the book, etc.

Hoping you will find this book useful,

Sincerely,

The authors

Job opening: Research Fellow in Machine Learning and Corpus Classification

The Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds, UK, is inviting
applications for a Research Fellow post to work on a research project
funded by an FP7 grant from the European Commission. It is a full-time,
fixed term position to be filled as soon as possible, lasting until
31 Dec 2012.

We’re interested in a candidate with a PhD in Computational linguistics
or Machine Learning and experience in designing ML algorithms for text
categorisation tasks. For a formal application, take a look at the job
description:
http://hr.leeds.ac.uk/jobs/ViewJob.aspx?SId=16&JId=1306

I will be attending ACL2010 in Uppsala and SIGIR2010 in Geneva, so feel
free to contact me there informally.

Closing date for applications: 03 August 2010
Salary: Grade 7 (£29,853 – £35,646 p.a)
It is likely that an appointment will be made at or below £30,747 p.a.
since there are funding limitations which dictate the level at which the
appointment can start.

Call for participation: The Fifth European Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM’2010), Helsinki

The Fifth European Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM’2010)
Helsinki, Finland, September 13-15, 2010
http://www.helsinki.fi/pgm2010/

News:
====
* Deadline for early registration is Friday August 6
* Registration is open at
http://www.helsinki.fi/pgm2010/registration.html
* Invited speakers and list of accepted papers:
http://www.helsinki.fi/pgm2010/programme.html

The European Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM) is a biennial workshop that aims to bring together people interested in probabilistic graphical models and provides a forum for discussion of the latest research developments in this field. The first PGM workshop was first held in Cuenca, Spain, in 2002, followed by workshops in Leiden (2004), Prague (2006) and Hirtshals (2008). The fifth PGM workshop will be held in Helsinki, Finland, September 13-15, 2010.

Welcome!

Programme Co-Chairs:
Petri Myllymäki, University of Helsinki
Teemu Roos, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT
Tommi Jaakkola, MIT

Contact: pgm2010 at helsinki.fi
Home page: http://www.helsinki.fi/pgm2010/

Call for posters: Workshop on Validation in Statistics and Machine Learning

October, 6 – 7, 2010
WIAS Berlin, Germany

http://www.wias-berlin.de/workshops/validation2010/

— Important dates —

* submission deadline (posters): 31 Aug
* notification of submissions : 08 Sep
* registration deadline : 22 Sep

— Overview —

In statistics and machine learning, the evaluation of algorithms
typically relies on their performance on data. This is because, in
contrast to a theoretical guarantee (e.g. a consistency result), it is
in general not possible to prove that an algorithm performs well on a
particular (unseen) data set. Therefore, it is of vital importance that
we ensure the reliability of data-based evaluations. This requirement
poses a wide range of open research problems and challenges. These include

* the lack of a ground truth to validate results in real-world
applications,
* the high instability of empirical results in many settings,
* the difficulty to make statistics and machine learning research
reproducible,
* the general over-optimism of published research findings due
pre-publication optimization of the algorithms and publication bias.

This workshop brings together scientists from statistics, machine
learning, and their application fields to tackle these challenges. The
workshop serves as a platform to critically discuss current
shortcomings, to exchange new approaches, and to identify promising
future directions of research.

We invite poster submissions that fit into the scope and topics of the
workshop.

The workshop is funded by the Weierstrass Institute (WIAS) Berlin and by
the Pascal2 Network of Excellence.

Invited speakers include:

Mikio L. Braun (TU Berlin)
Thorsten Dickhaus (HU Berlin)
Francois Fleuret (EPF Lausanne / IDIAP)
Thomas A. Gerds (University of Copenhagen)
Jelle Goeman (Leiden University)
Ulrike Grömping (Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin)
Torsten Hothorn (LMU Munich)
Niels Keiding (University of Copenhagen)
Ulrich Mansmann (LMU Munich)
Carolin Strobl (LMU Munich)
Richardus Vonk (Bayer-Schering Pharma)

— Organization —

Nicole Krämer (WIAS Berlin)
Anne-Laure Boulesteix (University of Munich)

Multiple Positions in Robotics/Vision/Learning at U. Innsbruck

In a new research group in Intelligent Systems at the University of
Innsbruck, to be directed by Prof. Justus Piater, multiple positions
will shortly be available for postdoctoral researchers and doctoral
students.

* Our Opportunities

These (non-permanent) university research staff positions are not tied
to any specific research projects. Research topics are negotiable
within the range of activities of the research group. Topics of
particular interest include:

– gesture-based human-computer interaction
– video analysis for sign language transcription
– semantic understanding of observed manipulative actions
– exploratory learning from sensorimotor to conceptual levels
– learning to learn: leverage experience to guide future learning
– perception and inference for robotic grasping and manipulation
– landmark-based visual SLAM
– reactive algorithms for obstacle avoidance and navigation

Most of these topics tie in with one active and two upcoming
EU-FP7-ICT projects in Cognitive Systems, Interaction and Robotics,
offering a vibrant and internationally well-connected research
environment.

Postdoctoral researchers are expected to assume leadership roles.
In addition, all positions involve minor teaching requirements.

Salaries are internationally competitive and commensurate with
qualification and experience.

* Your Profile

Applicants for a postdoctoral position should have earned, or be about
to earn, a doctoral degree in a relevant area, possess a strong
publication record commensurate with experience, and have demonstrated
strengths in at least one of the following areas:

– statistical machine learning
– probabilistic modeling and inference
– computer vision
– robotic grasping or manipulation
– autonomous mobile robotics

Applicants for a doctoral studentship should have earned, or be about
to earn, an M.Sc. degree or equivalent in a relevant area, possess an
excellent academic record, and have demonstrated prior achievements in
any of the above areas.

All applicants should possess good written and oral communication
skills in English, a strong mathematical background, and programming
experience. Enthusiasm for leading-edge research, a team spirit and
independent problem-solving skills are essential.

* The University of Innsbruck, Austria

The history of the University of Innsbruck dates back to 1669. It
offers a complete set of academic curricula and currently counts 25000
students. Founded in 2001, the Department of Computer Science is
currently expanding and is highly active in research.

Innsbruck is home to about 30000 students who imprint a distinctive,
international student atmosphere upon this beautiful city of 120000.
Beautifully located in the Tyrolean Alps, on the Inn river and
surrounded by peaks of up to 2718m, Innsbruck offers outstanding
recreational and cultural value all around the year.

* How to Apply

Interested applicants should send a letter of motivation, a curriculum
vitae, scanned transcripts and diplomas, and contact information of at
least two references as a single PDF file to Justus.Piater at ULg.ac.be.

Applications will be considered as they are received, until all
positions are filled. The earliest possible starting date is
September 15.

ICGI 2010

10th International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference

ICGI 2010

13-16 September, 2010 Valencia (Spain)

http://users.dsic.upv.es/workshops/icgi2010/

SCOPE AND LOCATION
==================

ICGI 2010 is the tenth edition of the International Colloquium on Grammatical
Inference series which is a biennial conference being considered the most
successful conference related to Grammatical Inference.

The conference will take place at the city of Valencia which is the third
largest city in Spain. Valencia is a beautiful city in the Mediterranean coast
where centenary traditions live together with modernity. Its climate is
mediterranean with mild winters and hot summers. The city contains a dense
monumental heritage together with the City of Arts and Sciences an avant-garde
and futuristic museum complex.

The conference is colocated with the European Conference on Machine Learning
and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD
2010) which will take place in Barcelona, from September 20th to 24th, 2010.

This edition is a celebration one due to the 10th anniversary. We are planning
some innovations with respect to previous editions such as a tutorial day,
special talks and an award to the best student paper.

TUTORIAL DAY
============

On September 13th, the tutorial day will be held. The following lecturers and
topics are confirmed:

* Graph Grammars: Representations, Algorithms, and Induction
Tim Oates, with Sourav Mukherjee (University of Maryland Baltimore
County, USA)

* Active Learning
Colin de la Higuera (University of Nantes, France)

* Modelling Biological Sequences by Grammatical Inference
Francois Coste (INRIA/IRISA, France)

* Inference of Finite Automata
Damián López, with Pedro García (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)

INVITED LECTURES
================

* Molecules, Languages, and Automata
Dr. David B. Searls (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

* Grammatical Inference and Games
Dr. Simon Lucas (University of Essex, UK)

CONFERENCE AND PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR
======================================

José M. Sempere (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
=================

Pieter Adriaans, (Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Dana Angluin, (Yale University, USA)
Jean-Marc Champarnaud, (Université de Rouen, France)
Alexander Clark, (Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom)
Francois Coste, (INRIA, France)
Francois Denis, (Université de Provence, France)
Henning Fernau, (Universität Trier, Germany)
Pedro García, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Colin de la Higuera, (Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne, France)
Makoto Kanazawa, (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Satoshi Kobayashi, (University of Electro-Communications, Japan)
Laurent Miclet, (ENSSAT-Lannion, France)
Tim Oates, (University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA)
Arlindo Oliveira, (Lisbon Technical University, Portugal)
Jose Oncina, (Universidad de Alicante, Spain)
Georgios Paliouras (Institute of Informatics Telecommunications, Greece)
Yasubumi Sakakibara, (Keio University, Japan)
Etsuji Tomita, (University of Electro-Communications, Japan)
Menno van Zaanen, (Tilburg University, The Netherlands)
Ryo Yoshinaka, (Hokkaido University, Japan)
Sheng Yu, (The University of Western Ontario, Canada)
Thomas Zeugmann, (Hokkaido University, Japan)

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE
======================

Marcelino Campos, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Antonio Cano, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Damián López, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Alfonso Muñoz-Pomer, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Piedachu Peris, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)
Manuel Vázquez de Parga, (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain)