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

Fifth "Starting Artificial Intelligence Research" Symposium - STAIRS-2010

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## STAIRS-2010 ##         Call for Papers            ## STAIRS-2010 ##
######################################################################

The Fifth "Starting Artificial Intelligence Research" Symposium

16-20 August 2010 ## Lisbon, Portugal

http://ecai2010.appia.pt/

Deadline for submission of papers: Monday, 3 May 2010

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

The STAIRS-10 is the fourth European Starting AI Researcher Symposium.
STAIRS is an international meeting intended to support AI researchers,
from all countries, at the beginning of their career: PhD students or
people holding a PhD for less than one year. STAIRS-2010 will be
co-located with ECAI-2010, the European Conference on AI, in Lisbon,
Portugal, over 16-20 August 2010.

STAIRS offers doctoral students and young post-doctoral AI fellows:

* a first experience on submitting and presenting a paper in an
  international forum with a broad scope and a peer review process

* an opportunity to gather knowledge and exchange ideas related to
  their research problems and approaches together with information on
  European research careers and mobility.

Co-location with both ECAI and PAIS aims at creating a unique and
valuable opportunity for young researchers to gain experience at
presenting their work in a supportive scientific environment, and
obtain constructive feedback on the technical content of the work as
well as how to present the work and other related topics.

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

Papers are welcome on all aspects of contemporary AI, including, but
not restricted to:

* Agents & Multiagent Systems
* Case-Based Reasoning
* Cognitive Modeling & Interaction
* Constraints & Search
* Knowledge Representation & Reasoning
* Machine Learning
* Model-Based Reasoning
* Natural Language Processing
* Perception & Sensing
* Planning & Scheduling
* Robotics
* Uncertainty in AI
* Applications of AI

An extensive list of subtopics is available at the conference website.

######################################################################
## IMPORTANT DATES                                                  ##
######################################################################

Paper submission deadline:
Monday, 3 May 2010

Notification of acceptance/rejection:
Friday, 28 May 2010

Conference:
16-20 August 2010

######################################################################
## PAPER FORMATTING & SUBMISSION INFORMATION                        ##
######################################################################

Papers must not exceed SIX (6) pages in camera-ready
format. Over-length submissions will be rejected without
review. Papers for STAIRS should be submitted using the ECAI
formatting style; details of the style are available at:

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~mjw/ecai2010.zip

This file unpacks to a directory "ecai2010", and contains LaTeX and
other style files. The file "ecai2010.tex" is an example paper in
LaTeX format using the appropriate styles, and can be used as a
template for submissions.

Each accepted paper will be allocated SIX (6) pages in the
proceedings.

Multiple submissions with ECAI and PAIS is allowed if this is clearly
indicated on a front page preceding the paper itself. In borderline
cases single submissions will be preferred over multiple
submissions. In case of multiple acceptances the author(s) are
strictly required to withdraw their paper from all but one of the
events.

The proceedings of STAIRS, together with those of its associated
events, ECAI and PAIS, will be published and distributed by IOS
Press as a book and as a CD-ROM. The authors will be responsible for
producing camera-ready copies of papers, conforming to the ECAI 2010
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.

Submission and review of papers for ECAI-2010 will be managed via the
EasyChair system:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=stairs2010

All submissions will be subject to LIGHT TOUCH review, with the goal
of providing constructive feedback to authors.

Depending on the quality of submissions, a subset of accepted papers
will be invited to submit a revised version to a journal special
issue.

IMPORTANT NOTE: At least one of the authors must be a PhD student, or
a person holding a PhD for less than one year. Papers not satisfying
this criterion will be rejected.

######################################################################
## ORGANISATION                                                    ##
######################################################################

STAIRS General Chair:

Thomas Ågotnes (mailto:Thomas.Agotnes@infomedia.uib.no)
University of Bergen, Norway

######################################################################



----------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Ågotnes
Department of Information Science and Media Studies
University of Bergen
P.O. Box 7802, N-5020 Bergen, Norway
Tel: (+47) 55584105  Fax: (+47) 55589149
Thomas.Agotnes@infomedia.uib.no
http://folk.uib.no/nmita/