April 2015 - Comp-neuro - lists.cnsorg.org

EvAAL 2015 Call for Competition

by Francesco Potortì

EvAAL-ETRI on-site and off-site Indoor Localization Competition <http://evaal.aaloa.org/> In conjunction with IPIN 2015 Banff, Alberta, Canada 13-16 October 2015 ================================================================ We are pleased to announce the EvAAL Indoor Localization Competition, which is to be held during the IPIN 2015 Conference. The competition aims at bringing together academic and industrial research communities to work together on challenging open problems in indoor localization based on mobile devices and sensors, with the purpose of evaluating different approaches and envisioning new research opportunities. Recent years have witnessed increasing interest in location-based services and applications. In most cases, however, location information is limited by the accessibility to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), which is largely unavailable in indoor environments. While the first commercial indoor positioning systems are starting to emerge, no standards exist yet and the field is quickly evolving. The competition will consist of two on-site and one off-site tracks, results will be presented during a dedicated session during the IPIN conference. Prizes will be awarded to the winners. Data collected from competitors' systems during the on-site tracks at the conference location will be published for the purpose of research and comparison. Track 1: Smartphone based positioning Track 2: Foot-mounted pedestrian dead reckoning positioning Track 3: Wi-Fi fingerprinting in large environments (off-site) For Track 1 "Smartphone based positioning", the competitors can use any sensor available on the smartphones used. For Track 2 "Foot-mounted positioning", the candidates can use MEMS sensors (inertial, compass and pressure sensors); electronic devices such as tablet, notebook, etc. can be used for control and monitoring. For Track 3 "Wi-Fi fingerprinting", the competitors will have access to a large Wi-Fi fingerprint database, to which they will apply their algorithms offline. The competition will take place during the IPIN conference and the on-ste tracks will be sponsored by ETRI, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute based in Korea. For the on-site tracks, competitors will be given the time to pre-test and setup their solutions prior to the test day, during which the systems will be measured in real-time. For the off-site track, the ground truth will be disclosed during the conference. Evaluation criteria for the competition, restrictions on the accepted technologies, technical rules to follow and a description of the benchmarks are detailed in the technical annex of this call (to be provided by mid-March). Possible refinements of the annex, also based on participating competitors' comments, will be timely distributed to all participants. The annex will include information such as the site map, the distribution of wireless communication devices and more. A "competitor" can be any individual or group of individuals working as a single team, associated to a single or a number of organizations. Competitors apply for admission to the competition by providing a short (2 to 4 pages) technical description of their system, including details on algorithms and protocols. The Program Committee will accept or refuse the application in a short time, based on technical feasibility and logistic constraints. In case of acceptance, competitors are invited to submit a paper to the conference. The paper will be subjected to peer review: accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of IPIN 2015. Competitors may choose to not submit a paper, but in any case they are required to make an oral presentation of their system during a dedicated session at the IPIN conference. Results from the competition and the raw data from the competitors' systems will be published after the competition. Application by guests, who will have the opportunity to test their systems in the same way as competitors, but whose results will not be disclosed, will be granted on an individual base. One full registration to the conference is required from each competitor or guest system; registration covers the presentation of a paper describing the system. The winners of the competition will be announced during the conference. ETRI will award a 2000$ prize to the best placed teams of tracks 1 and 2, together with a paid invitation to hold a talk at ETRI (KR). The winner of track 3 will receive a prize worth 500$. We encourage submissions from both academia and industry (there are no restrictions on the composition of competing teams) with the aim of seeking innovative solutions based on mobile devices and sensors for indoor applications. Please check the conference web site for more information and regular updates on the progress of the competition. Important Dates --------------------------------------------------------------- Admission request: 10 June 2015 Notification of admission and invitation to submit a paper: shortly after request --------------------------------------------------------------- Related links --------------------------------------------------------------- Submission site: <https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=20021> Technical annex: soon to be published on <http://evaal.aaloa.org> --------------------------------------------------------------- Organizing Committee -------------------- Competition chair: Francesco Potortì <Potorti(a)isti.cnr.it> Local chair: Kyle O'keefe (CA) On-site software chair: Michele Girolami (CNR-ISTI, IT) Off-site track chair: Joaquín Torres Sospedra (Universitat Castellón, ES) TPC chair (on-site): Paolo Barsocchi (CNR-ISTI, IT) TPC chair (off-site): Raúl Montoliu Colás (Universitat Castellón, ES) -- Francesco Potortì (ricercatore) Voice: +39.050.621.3058 ISTI - Area della ricerca CNR Mobile: +39.348.8283.107 via G. Moruzzi 1, I-56124 Pisa Skype: wnlabisti (entrance 20, 1st floor, room C71) Web: http://fly.isti.cnr.it

April 23, 2015

Summer Internships with Sports Neurotech Company

by Jason Sherwin

deCervo (www.deCervo.com) is considering applicants for a selective summer internship program at its base in New York City. Join us in bringing neuroscience out of the lab and onto the field. Current projects include ongoing partnerships with Major League Baseball teams and NCAA Division I Football. See our recently launched Kickstarter page for more info on deCervo projects: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1662440606/decervoprofile2015-baseball… Contact us through our website, www.deCervo.com, for more details! -- Jason Sherwin, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer deCervo Columbia Startup Lab 69 Charlton Street NY, NY 10014 www.deCervo.com twitter.com/deCervoProfile facebook.com/deCervoProfile angel.co/decervo ------------------------------------------------------------------ sponsored link: yahoo recommended - http://msn.medsplacerx.com ------------------------------------------------------------------

April 22, 2015

NEURON course discounts extended

by Ted Carnevale

The early registration discounts for this year's NEURON summer courses were supposed to end on Monday, April 20, but we have been able to arrange to continue them until Friday, May 15. NEURON Fundamentals June 20-23 addresses all aspects of using NEURON to model individual neurons, and also introduces parallel simulation and the fundamentals of modeling networks. Includes a healthy serving of Python. Parallel Simulation with NEURON June 24-26 is for users who are already familiar with NEURON and need to create models that will run on parallel hardware. Pays special attention to powerful strategies and idioms for implementing and managing models, measuring and improving performance, and debugging. Each day includes a block of time for working on your own code with expert help close at hand. For more information, including course fees and the registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2015/nscsd2015.html --Ted

April 22, 2015

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE

by Santamaria, Cookie

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE The BioCircuits Institute (BCI) and Departments of Physics, Chemistry/Biochemistry, Bioengineering, and Psychology and Neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego invite applications for a postdoctoral position in systems neuroscience, for experiments leading to the neuromorphic engineering of cognitive abilities. The ideal candidate will have experience with electrophysiology, with awake behaving animals, with neural modeling, and/or with biologically inspired integrated circuits and systems. Close interaction with other project researchers in computational and theoretical neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and neuromorphic engineering is involved. We will accept applications immediately. To be considered, please submit your complete application by Friday, 31 July 2015. We will begin making selections from the completed applications on 3 August 2015. The Committee will continue to accept and review completed applications as they are received until the position is filled. Appointments are for two years (in one-year increments) with the possibility of a third. Send your statement of qualifications and interest with curriculum vitae, your two most significant publications and three letters of reference to Tim Gentner, Henry Abarbanel, Gert Cauwenberghs, Katja Lindenberg, Mikhail Rabinovich, and Terrence Sejnowski via email to: <postdoc.muri(a)gmail.com<mailto:postdoc.muri@gmail.com>>. A Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree is required prior to the appointment. UCSD is an EO/AA employer.

April 22, 2015

RLDM2015: Early registration deadline (April 28th) fast approaching

by Yael Niv

The 2nd Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2015) www.rldm.org June 7-10, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada ====================================================== Registration for RLDM2015 is now open at http://rldm.org/rldm2015/registration/ Early registration deadline: April 28th, 11:59PM EST (less than a week from today) Early registration fees are $480 CAD (Canadian dollars) for regular registration and $250 CAD for student/postdoc for meeting + tutorials, or somewhat less for meeting only. Late registration is considerably more expensive so please register early! Registration fees include three light breakfasts and all coffee breaks, two lunches, and one banquet dinner. RLDM2015 Invited speakers: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/invited-speakers2015/ RLDM2015 Tutorials: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/tutorials/ To ensure that you receive future announcements about RLDM2015 please join our mailing list at http://tinyurl.com/RLDMlist (you must log in to google to see the “join list” button, and choose “all email” from the options at the bottom).

April 22, 2015

CFP for BigData2015: International Conference in Mauritius

by Grace Allas

*** CALL FOR PAPERS *** http://sdiwc.net/conferences/bigdata2015/ The Second International Conference on Data Mining, Internet Computing, and Big Data (BigData2015) University of Mauritius, Le Reduit, Moka, Mauritius June 29 – July 01, 2015 All registered papers will be included in SDIWC Digital Library. ========================================================== The conference aims to enable researchers build connections between different digital applications. The event will be held over three days, with presentations delivered by researchers from the international community, including presentations from keynote speakers and state-of-the-art lectures. RESEARCH TOPICS ARE NOT LIMITED TO: * Data Mining Tasks & Algorithms Explorative and visual data mining Mining text and semi-structured data Multimedia mining (audio/video) Segmentation/Clustering/Association Web mining Artificial neural networks Link and sequence analysis Evolutionary computation/meta heuristics * Data Mining Integration & Process Distributed and grid based data mining Metadata and ontologies Mining large scale data Attribute discretization and encoding Feature selection and transformation Model interpretation Data cleaning and preparation * Data Mining Applications Bioinformatics Business/Corporate/Industrial Data Mining Credit Scoring Data Mining in Logistics Database Marketing Direct Marketing Engineering Mining Medicine Data Mining Military Data Mining Security Data Mining Social Science Mining Time series analysis and visualization Anomaly detection Association rule learning Classification Cloud based infrastructure (applications, storage and resources) Cluster analysis Crowd-sourcing Data fusion and integration Data-mining grids Distributed databases Distributed file systems Ensemble learning Genetic algorithms Machine learning Massively parallel-processing (MPP) databases Natural language processing Neural networks Pattern recognition Predictive modelling * Internet Computing Design and analysis of internet protocols and engineering Digital libraries/digital image collections Electronic commerce and internet Grid based computing and internet tools Internet and emerging technologies Internet and video technologies Internet applications and appliances Internet banking systems Internet based decision support systems Internet law and compliance Internet security and trust Markup Languages Metacomputing Mobile computing and the internet Network architectures and network computing Novel Java applications on internet Quality of service Search engines Social networks The WWW and intranets The internet and Cloud computing Web based computing Web interfaces to databases Web site design and coordination Search-based applications Sentiment analysis Signal processing Simulation Supervised and unsupervised learning ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadline : May 29, 2015 Notification of Acceptance : 2 - 4 weeks from the submission date Camera Ready Submission : Open from now until June 09, 2015 Registration Date : Open from now until June 09, 2015 Conference Dates : June 29 - July 01, 2015 Researchers are encouraged to submit their work electronically. All papers will be fully refereed by a minimum of two specialized referees. Before final acceptance, all referees comments must be considered. Paper Submission: hhttp:// sdiwc.net/conferences/bigdata2015/paper-submission/ Write us for more details: bigdata15(a)sdiwc.net

April 22, 2015

SAND7 Announcement

by Barbara Dorney

> > The seventh international workshop on Statistical Analysis of Neural Data > (SAND7) will take place May 27-29, 2015, in Pittsburgh, PA. > SOME TRAVEL SUPPORT REMAINS AVAILABLE > There will be talks by senior investigators and junior investigators. > http://sand.stat.cmu.edu <http://sand.stat.cmu.edu/> > There will also be a poster session, to which all participants are > invited to contribute. > Talks and posters may involve new methodology, investigation of > existing methods, or > application of state-of-the-art analytical techniques. > Here are the confirmed keynote speakers: > Marlene Cohen (University of Pittsburgh) > Adrienne Fairhall (University of Washington) > Michael Miller (Johns Hopkins) > Mark Schnitzer (Stanford) > Sebastian Seung (Princeton) > Matt Wilson (MIT) > This workshop series is concerned with analysis of neural signals > from various sources, > including EEG, fMRI, MEG, 2-Photon, and extracellular recordings. It > aims to define > important problems in neuronal data analysis and useful strategies > for attacking them; > foster communication between experimental neuroscientists and those > trained in statisti- > cal and computational methods encourage young researchers, including > graduate students, > to present their work; and expose young researchers to important > challenges and oppor- > tunities in this interdisciplinary domain, while providing a small > meeting atmosphere to > facilitate the interaction of young researchers with senior colleagues. > The organizers are Emery Brown, Elizabeth Buffalo, Rob Kass, Liam > Paninski, Sri Sarma and Jonathan Victor.

April 22, 2015

CFP: IEEE SDRANCAN-2015 with IEEE GLOBECOM 2015, San Diego, CA, USA, Dec 6 - 10, 2015.

by Sandra Sendra

[Apologies, if you receive multiple copies due to cross posting] *CALL FOR PAPERS* *IEEE International Workshop on Advances in Software Defined Radio Access Networks and Context-aware Cognitive Networks 2015 (IEEE SDRANCAN-2015)* in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM 2015, San Diego, CA, USA, Dec 6 - 10, 2015. URL: http://ieee-sdrancan-2015.cwins.org/ *OVERVIEW* Future generation wireless systems will require a paradigm shift in how they are networked, organized, configured, optimized, and recovered automatically based on their operating situations. With the emergence of Software Defined Access Networks and Context-Aware Cognitive Networks (SDRANCAN), wireless users could get seamless wireless connectivity and services regardless of the frequency bands that they are using as a backhaul. Context-Aware cognitive networks provides dynamic adaptive services and applications for wireless users through automatic configuration of devices and their parameters, systems, and services based on the users? contexts. We believe that this workshop is important for future wireless networks and will help to bridge the gap between traditional wireless networks and future wireless networks through both software defined access networks and context-aware cognitive networks. SDRANCAN-2015 will serve as a forum for researchers from academia, government and industries to exchange ideas, present new results and provide future visions on these topics. Original technical papers on the advances in Software Defined Access Networks and Context-Aware Cognitive Networks as well as those that describe practical deployment and implementation experiences are solicited for presentation and publication. *TOPICS OF INTEREST* Topics of interest include but not limited to: Fundamental limits Network architecture Wireless virtualization Network virtualization Software defined networks Cloud-based and/or wired infrastructure Cognitive vehicular ad hoc networks Network visualization Secrecy capacity and rate-equivocation of wireless channels. Admission control in heterogeneous networks Security and Network coding Storage and processing Quality-of-service Smart protocols Case studies and testbeds Cognitive and context aware cyber physical systems Mobile and vehicular networks Data dissemination techniques in context-aware systems Trust, security and privacy issues Socio-economic models Self-organization, Self-configuration, Self-optimization and Self recovery Biological-inspired networking Parameter estimation for adaptation of wireless communication systems Network economics and game theory Interference mitigation and awareness OpenFlow Networking Cognitive networks The workshop accepts only novel, previously unpublished papers. All submissions should be written in English with a maximum paper length of six (6) printed pages (10-point font) including figures without incurring additional page charges (maximum 1 additional page with over-length page charge if accepted) http://globecom2015.ieee-globecom.org/authors *- General Chairs -* Jaime Lloret Mauri, Polytechnic Univ. of Valencia, Spain Danda B. Rawat, Georgia Southern University, USA *- Publicity Chair -* Sandra Sendra, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia *- Technical Program Committee -* Venkatesan Ekambaram, Qualcomm, USA Bhed B. Bista, Iwate Prefectural University, Japan Sachin Shetty, Tennessee State University, USA Gongjun Yan, University of Southern Indiana, USA Sabu M. Thampi, IIITM-K, India Rajesh K. Sharma, Ilmenau Univ. of Technology, Germany ChunSheng Xin, Old Dominion University, USA Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, IIUM, Malaysia Chandra Bajracharya, Georgia Southern University, USA Javier Aguiar, University of Valladolid, Spain Carlos Baladron, University of Valladolid, Spain Kayhan Zrar Ghafoor, Univ. Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia Sandra Sendra, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain Joel Rodrigues, University of Beira Interior, Portugal =================================================== ===================================================

April 21, 2015

Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics (NCCD)

by Peter Latham

August 30 - September 2, 2015 Bilbao, Spain http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/nccd/nccd15/ Second call, and registration is now open!!! The goal of this workshop is to bring together experimentalists and theoreticians who seek to understand how circuit dynamics underlies representation and function in the nervous system, and to foster real discussion. This year the workshop will focus on the interplay between excitation (E) and inhibition (I) in cortical circuits. The balance between E and I, an idea proposed twenty years ago to account for the stochastic nature of cortical activity, has been seminal in the understanding of basic principles of neural network dynamics. We are seeking talks that, building on this paradigm, present recent findings on topics such as neuronal variability and stochastic dynamics, the role of the different subtypes of interneurons,plasticity and structure in EI networks, brain state and network dynamics, etc. The workshop will be limited to about 70 people, the hope being to foster real interaction and discussion. Thanks to a very generous grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, we will have a limited number of travel grants (10-15) for students and postdocs. Details will follow shortly. Important dates: May 15: Abstracts due (there will be posters and contributed talks) May 31: Early registration due Confirmed invited speakers Dean Buonomano, University of California at Los Angeles Jess Cardin, Yale School of Medicine Brent Doiron, University of Pittsburgh Mike Hausser, UCL Carl Petersen, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Karel Svoboda, Janelia Farm Tim Vogels, University of Oxford Fred Wolf, University of Gottingen Best, Peter Latham Jaime de la Rocha Maneesh Sahani Goncalves Co-organizers

April 21, 2015

[meetings] CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS- Workshop: Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior at SWARM2015

by Poramate Manoonpong

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS- Workshop: Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior at SWARM2015 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wednesday, October 28 (full-day), Kyoto University, Japan Deadline for poster abstract submission: June 30, 2015 Notification of acceptance: July 31, 2015 Workshop Overview ------------------ Animals show fascinating adaptive and versatile abilities. For example, they can move around and at the same time avoid obstacles in order to successfully navigate through their complex cluttered environment for finding their food source. While moving, they can also adapt their locomotion to deal with unknown situations. Furthermore, they can interact with each other to form collective behavior for anti-predator, enhanced foraging, and even increased locomotion efficiency. These complex achievements emerge from tightly as well as loosely coupled interactions between many ingredients including biomechanics (i.e., morphology, muscles, and materials), sensory feedback, centralized/decentralized mechanisms, and communication. Developing these key ingredients and implementing them in artificial systems to approach the level of performance of living creatures remains a grand challenge. To address these issues, our workshop at SWARM 2015 (http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/) "Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior" will bring together leading experts, working in the domains of bio-inspired robotics, swarm robotics, modular robotics, embodied AI, evolutionary robotics, and computational neuroscience, to present their recent developments on robot locomotion and collective behavior and discuss future directions to overcome this challenge. The full-day workshop is composed of the following parts: 1) Invited talks by experts from swarm robotics, bio-inspired locomotion control, and embodied AI, 2) poster presentations, 3) Discussion and future steps We are also pleased to invite contributions in the form of 1 page conf. style abstract http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/ on (but are not limited to) the following topics. The selected contributions will be presented in a form of a poster during the workshop. We particularly encourage young scientists to contribute and attend, even presenting their research at an early stage an engage in discussions. We also welcome live demonstrations on robot locomotion and collective behavior. Submissions have to be sent to poma(a)mmmi.sdu.dk<mailto:poma@mmmi.sdu.dk> in PDF format. One author per accepted workshop contribution (poster, demo) and attendee are required to register (http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/) The Workshop topics include (but are not limited to) the following: ------------------ - Bio-inspired robotics (e.g., walking robots, flying robots, etc.), - Locomotion control, - Collective behavior control, - Swarm and self-organizing systems (e.g., modular robots) ===================== Tentative List of Speakers: · Dario Floreano (Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland) · John Hallam (Centre for BioRobotics, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU, Denmark) · Kasper Støy (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) · André Seyfarth (Locomotion Laboratory, TU Darmstadt, Germany) · Koh Hosoda (Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems, Grad. school of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan) · Yulia Sandamirskaya (Institute for Neural Computation, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) · Shinya Aoi (Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan) · Yuichi Ambe (Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan) · Poramate Manoonpong (Embodied AI & Neurorobotics Lab, Centre for BioRobotics, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU, Denmark) ===================== We hope that you will be able to attend and look forward to seeing you in Kyoto, Japan! The workshop organizers: Florentin Wörgötter, Poramate Manoonpong, Yuichi Ambe, Shinya Aoi

April 19, 2015