Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence - ANTS 2012

ANTS 2012
Eighth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence

September 12-14, 2012. Brussels, Belgium

Call for papers prepared on November 17, 2011
More details and up-to-date information at
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012

Scope of the Conference
=======================

Swarm intelligence is a relatively new discipline that deals with the
study of self-organizing processes both in nature and in artificial
systems. Researchers in ethology and animal behavior have proposed
many models to explain interesting aspects of social insect behavior
such as self-organization and shape-formation. Recently, algorithms
and methods inspired by these models have been proposed to solve
difficult problems in many domains.

An example of a particularly successful research direction in swarm
intelligence is ant colony optimization, the main focus of which is on
discrete optimization problems. Ant colony optimization has been
applied successfully to a large number of difficult discrete
optimization problems including the traveling salesman problem, the
quadratic assignment problem, scheduling, vehicle routing, etc., as
well as to routing in telecommunication networks. Another interesting
approach is that of particle swarm optimization, that focuses on
continuous optimization problems. Here too, a number of successful
applications can be found in the recent literature. Swarm robotics is
another relevant field. Here, the focus is on applying swarm
intelligence techniques to the control of large groups of cooperating
autonomous robots.

ANTS 2012 will give researchers in swarm intelligence the opportunity
to meet, to present their latest research, and to discuss current
developments and applications.

The three-day conference will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on
September 12-14, 2012.

Relevant Research Areas
=======================

ANTS 2012 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of swarm
intelligence. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are:

Behavioral models of social insects or other animal societies that
can stimulate new algorithmic approaches.

Empirical and theoretical research in swarm intelligence.

Application of swarm intelligence methods, such as ant colony
optimization or particle swarm optimization, to real-world problems.

Theoretical and experimental research in swarm robotics systems.

Publication Details
===================

Conference proceedings will be published by Springer in the LNCS
series.

The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated
to ANTS 2012 that will contain extended versions of the best research
works presented at the conference. Further details will be
published on the web site.

Best Paper Award
================

A best paper award will be presented at the conference.

Invited talks
================

- Prof. Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) on "Towards Simulating the Foundations of Society"

- Prof. Nigel R. Franks (University of Bristol, UK) on "Ants, Bees and Brains"

- Prof. Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania, USA) on "Architectures, abstractions, and algorithms for large teams of robots"

Further Information
===================

Up-to-date information will be published on the web site
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012/. For information about local
arrangements, registration forms, etc., please refer to the
above-mentioned web site or contact the local organizers at the
address below.

Conference Address
==================

ANTS 2012
IRIDIA CP 194/6 Tel +32-2-6502729
Université Libre de Bruxelles Fax +32-2-6502715
Av. F. D. Roosevelt 50 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2012
1050 Bruxelles, Belgium email: ants@iridia.ulb.ac.be

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

Submission deadline March 2, 2012
Notification of acceptance May 3, 2012
Camera ready copy May 17, 2012
Conference September 12-14, 2012

ANTS 2012 Organizing Committee
==============================

General Chair:
Marco Dorigo, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Technical Program Chairs:
Christian Blum, ALBCOM, LSI, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Andries Engelbrecht, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Roderich Groß, Sheffield University, UK

Publication Chair:
Anders Lyhne Christensen, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Portugal

Organization Chairs:
Mauro Birattari, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium
Thomas Stützle, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Local Arrangements:
Andreagiovanni Reina, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium
Arne Brutschy, IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium

Agents Applied in Health Care

*7th Workshop on Agents Applied in Health Care*
http://deim.urv.cat/~itaka/workshops/aamas2012

To be held in conjunction with the
Eleventh International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
(AAMAS 2012, 4th-8th June 2012, Valencia, Spain)


/LATEST NEWS

/
/.    If the quantity and quality of the papers submitted to the workshop is appropriate, those papers accepted for presentation at the workshop and presented in Valencia will be invited to present extended versions to a *special issue on agents applied in health care of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools (IJAIT)*, included in JCR.

.    Paper* submission deadline extended to February 28th* (this deadline will not be further extended)./

*Technical description*
Intelligent agent-based systems constitute one of the most exciting research areas in Artificial Intelligence. Due to the growing interest in the application of agent-based systems in health care, a number of applications addressing clinical problems are already based in agent technology. Thus, it may now be a good time for the specialists in the field to meet and report on the results achieved in this area, to discuss the benefits (and drawbacks) that agent-based systems may bring to medical domains, and also to provide a list of the research topics that should be tackled in the near future.

This workshop will try to incorporate two novel aspects with respect to related workshops held in the last years:

.    Interdisciplinary research: special efforts will be devoted to try to attract the attention of health care and biomedical specialists, so that they attend the workshop and realise the potential benefits of agent technology.
.    Applied research: the organising committee will also pay special attention to papers describing applications which are not just academic, but are already deployed and running in a real medical environment.

Current topics of research include personalized health systems for remote and autonomous tele-assistance, communication and co-operation between distributed intelligent agents to manage patient care, information agents that retrieve medical information from distributed repositories, intelligent and distributed data mining, and multi-agent systems that assist the doctors in the tasks of monitoring and diagnosis. Several methodological and technical problems have been discovered by the researchers that attempt to deploy agent-based systems in the medical area; just to name a few, the growing number of huge databases that need to be integrated (e.g. genetic data from next generation sequencing), the difficulty to integrate new agent-based systems with legacy software, the need to apply changing national and international laws and regulations concerning the privacy of medical data and the security of the transaction of patient information between agents.

*Submitted papers should address at least one of the following issues:*

.    Co-operation between intelligent agents to improve patient management (e.g. distributed patient scheduling).
.    Agents that provide autonomous and remote care delivery.
.    Agents that provide information about medical services.
.    Multi-agent systems for patient monitoring and diagnosis.
.    Successful applications of agents and multi-agent systems in health care.
.    MAS that improve medical training or education (e.g. tutoring systems).
.    Medical agent-based decision support systems.
.    Information agents that gather compile and organise medical data and knowledge available on Internet.
.    Solutions to the basic methodological and technological problems associated to the real deployment of health-care agent-based systems:
-    Security, privacy of medical data.
-    Social acceptance of agent-based systems.
-    Integration and use of medical ontologies.
-    Lack of centralised control.
-    Communication standards.
-    Integration with other types of software.
.    Legal and ethical issues related to the use of agents in health care.
.    Surveys providing an up to date view of the state of the art in the area of agents in health care.

Submissions must be formatted following the guidelines of the main AAMAS conference. Papers must not be longer than 10 pages.

The workshop organisers would appreciate that anyone intending to submit a paper to the workshop communicates this intention before February 1st to the workshop contact person.

*Previous editions of the workshop*
.    First edition - ECAI 2002 in Lyon, France. Expanded versions of selected papers published in a special issue of AI Communications (Ed: A.Moreno, 2003).
.    Second edition - ECAI 2004 in Valencia, Spain. Expanded versions of selected papers published in a special issue of AI Communications (Ed: J.Nealon, 2005).
.    Third edition - IJCAI 2005 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Expanded versions of selected papers published in a special issue of IEEE Intelligent Systems (Ed: A.Moreno, December 2006).
.    Fourth edition - ECAI 2006 in Riva del Garda, Italy. Expanded versions of selected papers published in a volume of the Whitestein series in Software Agent Technologies and Autonomic Computing (December 2007).
.    Fifth edition - AAMAS 2008 in Estoril, Portugal.
.    Sixth edition - e-Health 2010 in Casablanca, Morocco. Papers published by Springer in a book of the series ICST Transactions on e-health.

*Preliminary workshop agenda *
The workshop will feature some of the following activities:
.    1-2 invited presentations by international experts in the field
.    Presentation of state-of-the-art papers with the latest developments in the field.
.    Possible demos of practical applications of MAS in health care.
.    Panel discussion of the main problems that have to be faced to deploy real agent-based health-care applications.

*Important dates*
.    February 28th, 2012: Deadline for paper submission (this deadline will not be further extended)
.    March 28th, 2012: Notifications of acceptance/rejection sent
.    April 10th, 2012: Deadline for sending camera-ready papers to workshop organisers.
.    June 4th or 5th, 2012: Workshop.
.    Autumn-Winter 2012:  Possibility of publishing revised and expanded versions of selected papers in a special issue of an appropriate scientific journal or book.

*
Paper review process*
All the submitted papers will be revised by at least three members of the Program Committee. The main aspects to be reviewed will be originality, technical accuracy and relevance to the workshop.
*
Post --proceedings: special issue in IJAIT*
If the quantity and quality of the papers submitted to the workshop is appropriate, those papers accepted for presentation at the workshop and presented in Valencia will be invited to present extended versions to a special issue on agents applied in health care of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools (IJAIT), included in JCR.

*Organising committee*
Antonio Moreno (contact person)
  University Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain.
  e-mail: antonio.moreno@urv.net
Ulises Cortés
  Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain
Magí Lluch-Ariet
  Informatics Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain
David Isern
  University Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain.

*Scientific committee*
M.Beer, Sheffield Hallam Univ., UK
F.Grasso, Univ. of Liverpool, UK
A.Ilarramendi, Univ. of the Basque Country, Spain
P.Kostkova, City Univ., UK
L.Lhotska, Czech Technical Univ., Czech Republic
B.López, Univ. of Girona, Spain
M.Schumacher, Univ. of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Switzerland
A.Valls, Univ. Rovira i Virgili, Spain
L.Varga, ELTE University, Hungary

Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS'12)

1st International Workshop on Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS'12)
KES-AMSTA 2012 Special Session, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 25-27 June 2012
http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/~ndra/TruMAS12
Proceedings published by Springer-Verlag in a volume of LNCS/LNAI.

IMPORTANT DATES

5 February 2012  Submission of papers
22 February 2012 Notification of acceptance
7 March 2012 Camera ready
25-27 June 2012 TruMAS and KES-AMSTA

WORKSHOP AIM AND SCOPE

The rapid development of computer-based technologies has made computers more and more complex and ubiquitous. Many computer-based systems are in charge of critical tasks such as, to mention only a few, the management of financial and medical databases, the monitoring of nuclear plants, the flying of airplanes, etc. Multi-agent systems (MAS) have been proposed as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing open and distributed software systems. The foundational idea behind a Multi-Agent System is to have a loosely coupled network of software agents (i.e., sophisticated computer programs that act autonomously on behalf of their users) which interact to solve problems that are beyond the individual capacities or knowledge of each single agent. Therefore, it is not surprisingly MAS have received a lot of attention as reference computing paradigm to tackle complexity in modern computer-based systems.

However, the complexity of modern computer-based systems as well as their numerous applications has inherently increased the challenges for ensuring trustworthiness. Trustworthiness encompasses vital characteristics of a system such as safety (the non-occurrence of catastrophic consequences for the environment the system works in), security (the non-occurrence of unauthorized disclosure of information), integrity (the non-occurrence of inadequate information alteration), availability (the readiness for correct service of the system), reliability (the property of the system to continuously provide service) or more generically dependability. The overall trustworthiness of a system is connected to all the aforementioned properties and should be regarded holistically. Functional correctness, security, safety, reliability are facets that have to be ensured for the system's components as well as for the system as a whole.

The 1st International Workshop on Trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems (TruMAS 2012) aims at bringing together researchers, engineers and practitioners interested in all the different aspects of trust, dependability and security in Multi-Agent Systems. The workshop is expected to stimulate discussions about the future development of appropriate models, methods, notations, languages and tools for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems. The overall goal is to explore the different facets of trustworthiness in Multi-Agent Systems, how every single aspect can be fostered, and how they relate.

Topics of interests include, but are not limited to:
- Trust and reputation models, metrics and assessment in Multi-Agent Systems
- Dependability facets in Multi-Agent Systems
- Fault-tolerance and robustness in Multi-Agent Systems
- Architectures for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Robust and secure communication in Multi-Agent Systems
- Robust and secure negotiation in Multi-Agent Systems
- Software engineering methodologies for trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Security and access control in open Multi-Agent Systems
- Self-configuration and adaptation
- Formal methods and frameworks to model, analyze, prove, or measure aspects of trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems
- Industrial experiences in the adoption of trust-based Multi-Agent Systems approaches
- Rigorous software development to ensure trustworthiness in Multi-Agent Systems

Since the overall goal of trustworthy Multi-Agent Systems includes the investigation of several cross- disciplinary issues such as a deep understanding of trust vs. trustworthiness, trust-based approaches, dependability, etc..., a synergy between different scientific communities and research disciplines is needed. For this reason, although the workshop seems naturally focused on multi-agent issues, contributions from different disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, communication sciences, as well as from computer science specific sub-disciplines such as software engineering and dependability are welcomed and encouraged.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submitted full papers must not exceed 10 pages in length, including bibliography and well-marked appendices. Papers can be submitted using the PROSE Online Paper Submission system available on the KES-AMSTA'12 Web site. Please remember to select the TruMAS invited session entry in the "Session Name" drop-down box when submitting your paper.

Please use the LNCS templates and style files available on the Springer Web site (Information for LNCS Authors).

Submitted papers will be evaluated by the program committee and chosen for presentation based on their scientific contribution and relevance to the topics of the workshop. At least one author of each accepted paper must register to the workshop and participate presenting the paper.

Proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in a volume of LNCS/LNAI.

CHAIRS

Nicola Dragoni
DTU Informatics
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
ndra@imm.dtu.dk

Manuel Mazzara
School of Computing Science
Newcastle University, UK
manuel.mazzara@newcastle.ac.uk

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Faycal Abouzaid, CRAC, Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Canada
Enrico Denti, DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy
Nicoletta Fornara, Faculty of Communication Sciences, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Katsuhide Fujita, Institute of Engineering Innovation, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Mauro Gaspari, Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Italy
Paolo Giorgini, Information Engineering and Computer Science Department (DISI), University of Trento, Italy
Nathan Griffiths, Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, UK
Koji Hasebe, Academic Computing & Communications Center, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Hiromitsu Hattori, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan
Takayuki Ito, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan
Waqar Jaffry, Department of Artificial Intelligence, VU University, The Netherlands
Andrew J I Jones, Department of Informatics, King's College London, UK
Steve Marsh, Communications Research Centre, Canada
Hernan Melgratti, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Paul Scerri, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Eugen Staab, imc AG, Germany
Daniel Villatoro, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spanish Scientific Research Council, Spain
Mirko Viroli, DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy

Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems (CoopMAS-2012)

The Third Workshop on Cooperative Games in Multiagent Systems                  (CoopMAS-2012)

            http://staff.science.uva.nl/~stephane/coopmas12/

                  Workshop co-located with AAMAS-2012
                            Valencia, Spain
                         June 4th or 5th, 2012

**Key dates**

  * Submission of contributions: February 28th 2012
  * Acceptance notification: March 27th 2012
  * Workshop: June 4th or 5th, 2012

*Submission Instructions*

Submission must follow the Springer LNCS format and should be a maximum of 15 pages.

Papers must be submitted in PDF through easychair:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coopmas2012

*Aims and Focus*

The use of cooperative game theory to study how agents should cooperate and collaborate, along with the related topic of coalition formation, has received growing attention from the multiagent systems, game theory, and electronic commerce communities.

The workshop is intended to focus on topics in cooperation in multi-agent systems, cooperative game theory and cooperative solution concepts, formation of coalitions, negotiation between agents, joint decision making, and voting. We encourage submission of papers describing original or recently published work (in venues that are not typically attended by AAMAS participants, i.e., conferences other than AAMAS/AAAI/IJCAI). We also encourage submission of full version of short papers accepted at AAMAS. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  * Cooperative game theory
  * Coalition formation
  * Joint decision making and voting
  * Representation issues
  * Negotiation
  * Collaborative filtering
  * Market and economics based cooperation
  * Interact with humans (negotiation / collaboration)

The workshop should be of interest to researchers in cooperative game theory and coalition formation, as well as to those who examine collaboration between agents, cooperation in multiagent systems and design and implement collaborating agents. We also welcome participants who are interested in applications of cooperative game theory, which include trading agents, sponsored search and recommender systems.

*Program Committee*
Confirmed PC members (to be completed)
  * Haris Aziz (Technische Universität München, Germany)
  * Georgios Chalkiadakis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
  * Piotr Faliszewski (AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland)
  * Gianluigi Greco (University of Calabria, Italy)
  * Kate Larson (University of Waterloo, Canada)
  * Tomasz Michalak (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  * Maria Polukarov (University of Southampton, United Kingdom)
  * Ariel Procaccia (Carnegie Mellon University, United States)

*Workshop Organizers*

  * Stéphane Airiau (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
  * Yoram Bachrach (Microsoft Research, Cambridge United Kingdom)
  * Edith Elkind (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)   * Lirong Xia (CRCS, Harvard University, United States)

Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems (PAIS-2012)

The Seventh Conference on Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems

29-30 August 2012 ## Montpellier, France

http://www.lirmm.fr/ecai2012

Deadline for submission of full papers: 6 March 2012

######################################################################
## INTRODUCTION                                                     ##
######################################################################

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

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

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

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

######################################################################
## TOPICS OF INTEREST                                               ##
######################################################################

Papers are welcome on all novel and significant applications of
intelligent systems -- the following list of application areas is
indicative only:

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


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

Notification of acceptance/rejection: 
 Monday, 21 May 2012

Camera-ready papers due:
         Sunday, 3 June 2012

Conference:
 29-30 August 2012

######################################################################
## SUBMISSION INFORMATION                                           ##
######################################################################

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

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

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

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

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

######################################################################
## ORGANISATION                                                     ##
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PAIS Conference Co-Chairs:

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

Local Organisation Chair:

 HAVE TO FIND ONE!

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## PROGRAM COMMITTEE                                                ##
######################################################################

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

Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2012)

The 9th International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2012)

September 17-21, 2012. San Jose, CA, USA
http://icac2012.cs.fiu.edu/
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IMPORTANT DATES

Paper and Poster Submission: March 9, 2012, 11:59pm PST
Notification: May 18, 2012
Camera-ready Due: June 8, 2012
Workshop Proposal Submission: February 10, 2012
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OVERVIEW
ICAC is the leading conference on autonomic computing techniques, foundations, and applications. Autonomic computing refers to methods and means for automated management of performance, fault, security, and configuration with little involvement of users or administrators. Systems introducing new autonomic features are becoming increasingly prevalent, motivating research that spans a variety of areas, from computer systems, networking, software engineering, and data management to machine learning, control theory, and bio-inspired computing. ICAC brings together researchers and practitioners across these disciplines to address multiple facets of adaptation and self-management in computing systems and applications from different perspectives. Autonomic computing solutions are sought for clouds, grids, data centers, enterprise software, internet services, data services, smart phones, embedded systems, and sensor networks. In these environments, resources and applications must be managed to maximize performance and minimize cost, while maintaining predictable and reliable behavior in the face of varying workloads, failures, and malicious threats. Papers are solicited from all areas of autonomic computing, including (but not limited to):

* End-to-end techniques for management of resources, workloads,  performance, faults, power/cooling, security, and others.

* Self-managing components, such as server, storage, network  protocols, or specific application elements, and embedded and  mobile end systems such as smart phones.

* Decision and analysis techniques and their use, such as machine  learning, control theory, predictive methods, probability and  stochastic processes, queuing theory methodologies, emergent  behavior, rule-based systems, and bio-inspired techniques.

* Monitoring systems for autonomic computing.

* Hypervisor, operating systems, hardware, or application support  for autonomic computing.

* Novel human interfaces for monitoring and controlling autonomic  systems.

* Management topics, such as specification and modeling of  service-level agreements, behavior enforcement and tie-in with  IT governance.

* Toolkits, frameworks, principles and architectures, from  software engineering practices and experimental methodologies  to agent-based techniques and virtualization.

* Fundamental science and theory of self-managing systems:  understanding, controlling or exploiting system behaviors to  enforce autonomic properties.

* Applications of autonomic computing and experiences with  prototyped or deployed systems solving real-world problems in  science, engineering, business and society.

Papers will be judged on originality, significance, interest, correctness, clarity and relevance to the broader community. Papers should report on experiences, measurements, user studies, or other evaluations, as appropriate. Evaluations of a prototype or large-scale deployment of systems and applications is expected.

PAPER AND POSTER SUBMISSIONS
Full papers (a maximum of 10 pages in the two-column ACM proceedings format) and posters (2 pages) are invited on a wide variety of topics relating to autonomic computing. Submitted papers must be original work, and may not be under consideration for another conference or journal. Complete formatting and submission instructions can be found on the conference web site. Accepted papers and posters will appear in proceedings distributed at the conference and available electronically. Relevant top ICAC'12 papers will be invited for "fast-track" submissions to the ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS).

WORKSHOPS, DEMONSTRATIONS AND EXHIBITION
ICAC'12 welcomes proposals for co-located workshops on topics of interest to the autonomic computing community. Workshop proposals should be submitted to the Workshop Chair, Fred Douglis (f.douglis@computer.org) by February 10, 2012. Workshops are expected to publish proceedings, and should cover areas that complement the main program. ICAC'12 will also feature a demonstration and exhibition session consisting of prototypes and technology artifacts such as demonstrating autonomic software or autonomic computing principles. Entries will be judged by a separate committee led by the demo/exhibit chair.

INDUSTRY SESSION
One of ICAC's important roles is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry. In its industry session, ICAC helps fulfill this role by presenting an industry viewpoint on technologies, products, and market needs. The industry session also addresses current challenges, and opportunities for academic and corporate research collaborations. We encourage industry leaders, including entrepreneurs, product developers, architects, managers, marketers and end users, to submit their papers and posters reflecting such industry perspectives as part of the regular submission process.
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ORGANIZERS

GENERAL CHAIR
Dejan Milojicic, HP Labs

PROGRAM CHAIRS
Dongyan Xu, Purdue University
Vanish Talwar, HP Labs

INDUSTRY CHAIR
Xiaoyun Zhu, VMware

WORKSHOPS CHAIR
Fred Douglis, EMC

POSTERS/DEMO/EXHIBITS CHAIR
Eno Thereska, Microsoft Research

FINANCE CHAIR
Michael Kozuch, Intel

LOCAL ARRANGEMENT CHAIR
Jessica Blaine

PUBLICITY CHAIRS
Daniel Batista, University of SãPaulo Vartan Padaryan, ISP/Russian Academy of Sci. Ioan Raicu, Illinois Inst. of Technology Jianfeng Zhan, ICT/Chinese Academy of Sci.
Ming Zhao, Florida Intl. University

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Tarek Abdelzaher, UIUC
Umesh Bellur, IIT, Bombay
Ken Birman, Cornell University
Rajkumar Buyya, Univ. of Melbourne
Rocky Chang, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Yuan Chen, HP Labs
Alva Couch, Tufts University
Peter Dinda, Northwestern University
Fred Douglis, EMC
Renato Figueiredo, University of Florida
Mohamed Hefeeda, Qatar Computing Research Institute
Joe Hellerstein, Google
Geoff Jiang, NEC Labs
Jeff Kephart, IBM Research
Emre Kiciman, Microsoft Research
Fabio Kon, University of SãPaulo
Michael Kozuch, Intel
Dejan Milojicic, HP Labs
Klara Nahrstedt, UIUC
Priya Narasimhan, CMU
Manish Parashar, Rutgers University
Ioan Raicu, Illinois Inst. of Technology
Omer Rana, Cardiff University
Masoud Sadjadi, Florida Intl. University
Rick Schlichting, AT&T Labs
Hartmut Schmeck, KIT
Karsten Schwan, Georgia Tech
Onn Shehory, IBM Research
Eno Thereska, Microsoft Research
Xiaoyun Zhu, VMware