PhD Studentship in Computational Ecology

Ecological interaction networks: Application to ongoing field work in Tanzania

Ecosystems consist of a complex web of interactions: among species, and between species and their environment. Understanding these interactions is important for predicting how factors – such as biological or chemical control agents, grazing pressure, or climate change – may affect ecosystem function. However, unravelling such complex networks of interactions stretches the boundaries of current research; new methods are needed to handle the complexity of real ecosystems.

This studentship explores the use of a methodology new to ecological analysis, Bayesian networks, for revealing ecological interaction networks. You will develop Bayesian network algorithms for handling ecological data and incorporating spatial information. Methods developed will be applied to real ecological data, including data collected in an ongoing field project in Tanzania. There is opportunity for a field season in Tanzania, where you would perform targeted manipulation experiments based on your models (e.g., targeted removal and addition of species within caged areas).

This project will be based in Dr Anne Smith’s lab at St Andrews and be in collaboration with Dr Colin Beale (York University, currently based in Tanzania) and Dr Dirk Husmeier (Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland). In this studentship, you will gain both computational and field skills.

For more details, please contact anne.smith (at) st-andrews.ac.uk and/or visit: http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/

Funding by NERC: UK residents (stipend and fees) or EU citizens (fees only)

A PDF of the above advertisement is downloadable from:

http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/NERC2010.pdf

Conference on Bayesian Nonparametric Statistical Methods at Santa Cruz, CA, Aug 2010

CBMS Regional Conference – Bayesian Nonparametric Statistical Methods: Theory and Applications. Santa Cruz, California, August 16-20, 2010.

Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) methods combine the advantages of Bayesian modeling (e.g., ability to incorporate prior information, full and exact inference, ready extensions to hierarchical settings) with the appeal of nonparametric inference. In particular, they provide data-driven, albeit model-based, inference and, importantly, more reliable predictions than parametric models.

Theoretical research on NPB methods and their applications has grown dramatically in the last fifteen years. This has produced a massive body of scattered literature, which can be daunting for newcomers and hard to follow even for specialists. This CBMS conference, to be held between August 16th and August 20th, 2010 at the campus of the University of California, Santa Cruz, aims at providing a comprehensive introduction to the field for new researchers, and in particular graduate students, postdocs and junior researchers.

The main lecturer for the conference will be Dr. Peter Muller, who is Robert R. Herring Distinguished Professor in Clinical Research in the Department of Biostatistics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. In addition to the ten lectures delivered by Dr. Muller, four invited speakers will deliver complementary two-hour lectures. These invited speakers include Michael Jordan (University of California, Berkeley), Peter Hoff (University of Washington), Wesley Johnson (University of California, Irvine) and Tim Hanson (University of Minnesota). The local organizers are Abel Rodriguez and Athanasios Kottas.

More information can be found at the conference website https://www.ams.ucsc.edu/CBMS-NPBayes or through email at CBMS-NPB@ams.ucsc.edu

Newton International Fellowship Scheme – Deadline 8 February 2010

Dear academic,

The next round of the Newton International Fellowship scheme is currently open and closes on 8 February 2010. The scheme, run by The British Academy, The Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, aims to attract the world’s best postdoctoral researchers to the UK for two years.

The Fellowships cover the broad range of natural and social sciences, engineering and the humanities and are open to early-stage postdoctoral researchers who do not hold UK citizenship and are working outside the UK. Fifty Fellowships are available per round and successful candidates will receive an annual subsistence of £24,000, up to £8,000 for research expenses, and a one-off payment of up to £2,000 for relocation.

Newton Fellows may be eligible for follow-on funding of up to £6,000 per year for ten years, to help develop lasting international networks with the UK.

Applications are invited for Fellowships starting in January 2011 and further information is available atwww.newtonfellowships.org . The deadline for applications is 8 February 2010. Please bring this scheme to the attention of any colleagues who may be interested.

Thank you for your help in promoting this important scheme.

Newton Operations Team

Postdoctoral Position, CRAN, France

Our laboratory proposes a postdoctoral position in the field of fault detection and diagnosis (FDI) based on kernel PCA (principal components analysis). We are looking for a candidate with competences in data analysis and machine learning.

More information available at http://www.pascal-network.org/vacancies/postdoc_eng_abs.pdf

Post-doc Position – Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Bristol

We are currently inviting applications for a post-doc position in the Intelligent Systems Laboratory of Bristol.

Topic: statistical techniques for informative pattern mining in complex and structured data, and applications.
Applicants with a theoretical interest in this subject, as well as applicants with a specific interest in applications to content-based music information retrieval, are particularly welcome to apply.

The closing date for applications is 9am 1 March 2010, and the interview will be in early March 2010.
The starting date is flexible and to be agreed, but will be no later than 1 October 2010.
The duration of the post is up to 30 months.

Further details of the post and application procedure are available from:
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AAM962/research-assistant-/

COLT 2010: Call for Open Problems

COLT 2010 will include a session devoted to the presentation of open problems.
A description of these problems will also appear in the COLT proceedings.

The write-up of an open problem should include the following:

1. A clear, self-contained description of an open problem
2. Motivation for the study of this problem
3. The current state of understanding for this problem, including known
partial solutions and citations of related published work

We especially encourage people to propose descriptions of new interesting
research directions in areas that are currently outside the scope of COLT,
such as bioinformatics, privacy and security, and vision, to name a few.
Ideally, your open problems or research directions should include well-defined
mathematical questions, nontrivial, and explainable without requiring too
much specialized background knowledge in a 5-10 minutes talk. Monetary
rewards for solving an open problem are encouraged but not required.

Format and submission: The open problems should be 1-2 pages long in the
COLT proceedings format.

Please submit them electronically to open@colt2010.org with subject line
“open problem for Colt2010”. The submissions, in pdf or ps, should be
attached to the email.

Deadline: March 13, 2010.

Cancer Bioinformatics Workshop, Cambridge UK, Sept. 2010

Call for Submissions
Cancer Bioinformatics Workshop

September, 2nd-4th 2010
Cambridge Research Institute,
Cambridge, England

http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/cig/cb/

Supported by the EPSRC, PASCAL2 and the Royal Statistical Society

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

Submission Deadline: Friday 30th April 2010
Notification of Acceptance: Tuesday 1st June 2010
Registration closes: Monday 2nd August 2010
Workshop Date: 2nd-4th September 2010

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

Substantial amounts of data are being generated within cancer research.
Datasets range from gene expression and microRNA array data through to next
generation sequence data. Data interpretation draws on mathematical and
computational skills and thus the subject has engaged the interest of
researchers in areas such as machine learning, statistics, bioinformatics
and computer science. The goal of this cross-disciplinary Workshop is
therefore to bring together researchers from these disciplines and
cancer researchers who have an interest in data analysis, to explore and
present innovative approaches to this subject. Presented papers should:

(1) Propose novel data analysis methods applicable to this domain or:
(2) Present bioinformatics-driven studies in which mathematical or
computational methods played an important role in finding results of
potential significance in cancer research.

For novel data analysis methods, a non-exhaustive list of suitable topics
include:
– unsupervised, semi-supervised and biclustering methods to highlight disease subtypes or dysregulated genes within these subtypes,
– data integration/data fusion methods to integrate different types of data
such as gene expression, microRNA expression and array CGH data,
– inference of gene regulatory networks,
– pathway modeling and probabilistic ranking of pathway models,
– biomarker discovery,
– genome-wide association studies,
– rational drug design methods and chemoinformatics,
– protein function, structure prediction and structural bioinformatics,
– microRNA target site prediction,
– analysis of high throughput sequencing data,
– gene expression and post-transcriptional regulation,
– methods for the detection of fusion genes,
– prediction of disease progression,
– probabilistic inference, Bayesian methods and Kernel-based methods
for classifier design with applications to cancer bioinformatics,
– methods for the detection and quantification of copy number alterations and deletions.
There is a planned associated edited volume (see website).

Invited Speakers
================

Keith Baggerly (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center)
Olivier Elemento (Cornell Weill)
Mark Girolami (University of Glasgow)
Debashis Ghosh (University of Michigan)
Rachel Karchin (John Hopkins University)
Sami Kaski (Helsinki University of Technology)
Mark van der Laan (UC Berkeley)
Shayan Mukherjee (Duke University)
Peter Park (Harvard University)
Dana Pe’er (Columbia University)
John Quackenbush (Harvard University)
Lodewyck Wessels (NKI Netherlands)

Submission
==========

We invite you to submit a two page extended abstract, with pointers to
supporting material where appropriate. Submissions should be sent to
cb-2010@bris.ac.uk and should be received by 30th April 2010.
Notification of acceptance will be given by 1st June 2010.
Papers will be selected for oral or poster presentation.
Poster size should be a maximum of A0 (width x height:
841mm x 1189mm)

Workshop Venue
==============

The Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute
Li Ka Shing Centre, Robinson Way, Cambridge, England

Registration
=============

The standard registration fee is 200 pounds Sterling and will cover
all meals during the course of the Workshop at the Cambridge Research
Institute and all meals and accommodation at Homerton College for the
nights of Thursday 2/3 and Friday 3/4 September.

For those not using the accommodation arrangements at Homerton College
it is possible to register for free (see website for further
details).

Organisers
============

Colin Campbell (University of Bristol, United Kingdom)
Christina Leslie (Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA)
Florian Markowetz (Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute, United Kingdom)
Jean-Philippe Vert (Institut Curie, Paris, France)

Sponsorship
===========

This Workshop is sponsored through:

– The EPSRC (principal event sponsor) through grant EP/H024778/1.
– The Royal Statistical Society.
– The EU PASCAL2 Network of Excellence.

ICML 2010 2nd Call for Papers

ICML 2010 2nd Call for Papers
http://www.icml2010.org/

This is the second call for papers for the 27th International
Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-10), the premier conference
in the field. This year, ICML will be held in Haifa, Israel,
June 21-25, 2010, and will be co-located with the 23rd Conference
on Learning Theory (COLT-10).

The full call for papers, with all dates, details on the reviewing
process, etc. can be found at

http://www.icml2010.org/cfp.html

Our invited speakers will be
* Nir Friedman (Hebrew University)
* Tom Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon University)
* Duncan Watts (Yahoo! Research)

A special invited application track is planned which will
feature machine learning applications that have appeared in other
communities.

We would also like to remind you that we are making a strong effort to
attract papers not only in areas that have seen high submission
numbers in the past years, but also in areas that have not been
strongly represented recently. The list of area chairs at

http://www.icml2010.org/areas.html

shows that there are competent reviewers for all areas of machine
learning.

The submission site and instructions are available at

http://www.icml2010.org/sub.html

The submission deadline is February 1, 2010 at 11:59pm, Samoa time.
We are looking forward to your submissions.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at
.

——————————————
1st Call for Papers issued on 14 October 2009

The 27th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML-10) will be
held in Haifa, Israel, June 21-25, 2010, and will be co-located with the
23rd Conference on Learning Theory (COLT-10).

ICML 2010 invites submission of engagingly written papers on
substantial, original, and previously unpublished research in all
aspects of machine learning. We welcome submissions of innovative work
on systems that are self adaptive, systems that improve their own
performance, or systems that apply logical, statistical, probabilistic
or other formalisms to the analysis of data, to the learning of
predictive models, to cognition, or to interaction with the
environment. We welcome innovative applications, theoretical
contributions, carefully evaluated empirical studies, and we
particularly welcome work that combines all of these elements. We also
encourage submissions that bridge the gap between machine learning and
other fields of research.

To further strengthen and broaden participation in all areas of machine
learning, we followed an area-driven process for selecting the area
chairs and are confident that we have competent people for handling
submissions in /all/ areas of machine learning.

Further information is available at http://icml2010.haifa.il.ibm.com/.

IMPORTANT DATES
* October 12, 2009 Call for papers issued
* February 1, 2010 Full paper submissions due
(no separate abstract date)
Deadline: 11:59pm, Samoa time
* April 16, 2009 Acceptance notification
* June 21, 2010 ICML tutorials
* June 22-24, 2010 ICML conference
* June 25, 2010 Joint ICML/COLT workshop day
* June 26, 2010 Organized trip (Jerusalem or Nazareth)
* June 27-29, 2010 COLT conference

FORMAT OF THE CONFERENCE

The conference will include three days of technical presentations, one
day of tutorials and one day of workshops. Accepted papers will each
have an oral presentation as well as a poster in an evening poster
session. Awards will be given for papers of outstanding quality. There
will also be talks by several invited speakers, and a banquet.

SUBMISSION

Submission of papers and the management of the paper reviewing process
will be entirely electronic. More instructions for authors can be found
at http://icml2010.haifa.il.ibm.com/.

REVIEW PROCESS

The review process will be similar to last year’s process, but
incorporates some of the community feedback. Authors, reviewers, and
area chairs indicate subject areas. With the help of these subject
areas, area chairs bid for papers and one area chair is assigned to each
paper. During a first round of reviewing, each paper will receive two
reviews. First-round reviewers are assigned via subject areas and
bidding. As in recent years, authors will have the opportunity to see
and respond to the reviews before a final decision is made. Papers that
receive at least one positive review in the first round, or where
otherwise deemed necessary by the area chair, will receive one or more
additional reviews. These additional reviewers are manually selected by
the area chair. Final decisions will be made using the input from all
reviewers, the author feedback, the area chair, and the program chairs.
Reviewing for ICML 2010 will be blind to the identities of the authors.
No conditional accepts will be granted this year.

ICML 2010 will not accept any paper that is substantially similar to
another paper that is currently under review or has already been
accepted for publication in a journal or another conference. Please
clearly indicate in the submission which contributions are novel and
which are previous work, either by the authors or others. If a paper
submitted to ICML 2010 and another already published or already
submitted paper contain substantial overlap in content and this overlap
is not clearly indicated (anonymously) as being previous work, then the
ICML submission may be rejected on the grounds of being a dual
submission. Similarly, authors must withdraw their papers if they submit
an overlapping paper elsewhere during ICML’s review period. For papers
published in substantially disjoint communities (application
conferences, for example), the amount of novel content a paper needs to
contain may be less, as long as the submitted papers are themselves
clearly targeted to a machine-learning audience.

With your help, we expect another excellent conference!

THE ICML2010 ORGANIZATIONAL TEAM

* General Chair:
o Stefan Wrobel (Fraunhofer IAIS & Universität Bonn)
* Program Co-chairs:
o Johannes Fürnkranz (Technische Universität Darmstadt)
o Thorsten Joachims (Cornell University)
* Local Arrangements Chair:
o Shai Fine (IBM Research Haifa)

Contact us at

TWO Postdoctoral Fellowships in ML for Robotics and Adaptive Control @ Edinburgh, UK

TWO Postdoctoral Research Fellows in Machine Learning for Robotics and Adaptive Control

Applications are invited for two Postdoctoral Research Fellows in the area of Learning Robotics and Adaptive Control as part of an EU-IST FP7 funded project STIFF dealing with variable impedance actuation. The posts are available from Feb. 2010 for a maximum of 23 months and located in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Salary is on the UE07 scale (£29,704 – £35,469) with annual increments and full staff benefits. Placement for the post is according to experience and qualifications.

The successful candidates will have a PhD (or expected completion) in the area of (learning) robotics, probabilistic machine learning and/or adaptive motor control; have strong fundamental skills in statistical machine learning, optimization and basic control theory and some familiarity of concepts such as reinforcement learning and optimal feedback control. The appointees will have to opportunity for hands-on implementation of adaptive control paradigms on biophysical simulations and on state-of-the-art novel variable impedance actuators and anthropomorphic robotic systems such as the KUKA LWR arm and the Schunk hand. .

Both posts will involve travelling to project partner meetings around Europe(DLR Germany, CNRS Paris, Delft Netherlands, IDSIA Switzerland), preparing and presenting material for periodic reporting at EU reviews and attending and disseminating work at international conferences. The posts also assume leadership roles and some level of PhD supervision on topics relevant to the project.

More details of the job, the research group and application procedure can be found at:
http://www.jobs.ed.ac.uk/vacancies/index.cfm?fuseaction=vacancies.detail&vacancy_ref=3012111

Applicants are asked to submit your curriculum vitae including a *statement of interest* justifying your suitability for the post and contact details of two referees using the online application procedure from the link above.

Application Deadline: January 15, 2010
Interviews: late Jan/early Feb 2010

Informal enquiries may be addressed to: Sethu Vijayakumar (sethu.vijayakumar (at) ed.ac.uk)

Academic position in Computational Statistics

The Faculty of Sciences of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, announces the opening of a full-time academic position in Computational Statistics starting October 1st, 2010. The position will have a joint affiliation with the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Mathematics of the Faculty of Sciences.

Candidates are expected to lead a high-quality research and teaching programme in computational statistics or related topics, demonstrated by significant research and teaching experience, as well as a strong publication record in international journals. All applicants need to hold a PhD in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, or related disciplines. Experience in interdisciplinary collaboration as well as significant research stays in foreign universities or research laboratories are important assets.

The candidate will take part in teaching activities in the Bachelor and Master programmes in Mathematics and Statistics, as well as in the Bachelor and Master programmes in Computer Science. He/she should progressively increase his/her teaching activities to reach a level comparable to that of his/her colleagues (typically 4 or 5 hours a week for two semesters, plus some supervision of exercise sessions).

The candidates expertise should comprise at least one of the following topics: analysis and modelling of complex/high-dimensional data, computational and stochastic modelling, data mining, functional data, (multivariate) time series, numerical methods for data analysis, statistical machine learning.

Deadline: March 1st, 2010

Details can be found at http://www.ulb.ac.be/di/vacancepub_statcomp_en.htm

For any additional information please contact Prof. Gianluca Bontempi (gbonte (at) ulb.ac.be), Head of the Department of Computer Science, or Prof. Christine De Mol (Christine.De.Mol (at) ulb.ac.be) Head of the Department of Mathematics.