- Comp-neuro - lists.cnsorg.org

Advanced Course in Computational Neuroscience 2015

by Máté Lengyel

ADVANCED COURSE IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE 9-29 August 2015, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal + pre-school 5-7 August 2015 http://www.accn.pt Applications deadline: 15 March 2015 DIRECTORS * Gilles Laurent (Max Plank Institute for Brain Research, Germany) * Máté Lengyel (University of Cambridge, UK) * Christian Machens (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) This three-weeks school teaches the central ideas, methods, and practice of modern computational neuroscience through a combination of lectures and hands-on project work. Each morning will be devoted to lectures given by distinguished international faculty on topics across the breadth of experimental and computational neuroscience. During the rest of the day, students will work on research projects in teams of 2-3 people under the close supervision of expert tutors and faculty. Research projects will be proposed by faculty before the course, and will include the modeling of neurons, neural systems, behavior, the analysis of state-of-the-art neural data (behavioral data, multi-electrode recordings, calcium imaging data, connectomics data, etc.), and the development of theories to explain experimental observations. The course is designed for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, computer science, mathematics and psychology. Students are expected to have a keen interest and basic background in neurobiology, a solid foundation in mathematics, as well as some computer experience. An optional three-day pre-school in mathematics and programming is available to students who want to catch up on or fine-tune their math and programming skills. Essential details: * Course size: 24 students maximum * Fee (which covers tuition, lodging, and meals): 2250 EUR (+ 245 EUR for optional pre-school) * Scholarships and travel stipends are available. * Application deadline: 15 March 2015 * Notification of results: April 2015 Information and application http://www.accn.pt Contact address: Tânia Li Chen <tania.chen(a)neuro.fchampalimaud.org> FACULTY * Nicolas Brunel (University of Chicago, USA) * Claudia Clopath (Imperial College London, UK) * Peter Dayan (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience, UCL, UK) * David Fitzpatrick (Max-Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, USA) * Boris Gutkin (École Normale Supérieure, France) * Michael Hausser (Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, UCL, UK) * Moritz Helmstaedter (MPI Brain Research, Germany) * Claus Hilgetag (University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany) * Matthias Kaschube (Frankfurt Institute for Advanced studies, Germany) * Simon Laughlin (University of Cambridge, UK) * Gilles Laurent (MPI Brain Research, Germany) * Máté Lengyel (University of Cambridge, UK) * Jennifer Linden (Ear Institute, UCL, UK) * Christian Machens (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) * Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) * Tony Movshon (New York University, USA) * Michael Orger (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) * Alexandre Pouget (University of Geneva, Switzerland) * Maneesh Sahani (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience, UCL, UK) * Eero Simoncelli (New York University, USA) * Daniel Wolpert (University of Cambridge, UK) -- Mate Lengyel, PhD Computational and Biological Learning Lab Cambridge University Engineering Department Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK tel: +44 (0)1223 748 532, fax: +44 (0)1223 765 587 email: m.lengyel(a)eng.cam.ac.uk web: www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~m.lengyel

Feb. 8, 2015

CFP: Signal Processing Special Issue on Big Data Meets Multimedia Analytics

by 刘伟锋

Dear all, Sorry for the cross posting of this CFP message. CFP: Signal Processing Special Issue on Big Data Meets Multimedia Analytics With the rapid development of computing and sensing technologies, such as the emergence of social networking websites and wearable devices, many new research opportunities and challenges for multimedia content analysis have arisen. Many big data modeling methods, computing algorithms, and signal processing technologies have recently been successfully developed and applied to multimedia content analysis: for example, multi-view learning algorithms have been proposed for exploring the variety of multimedia content; sparse and manifold learning have been developed for high dimensional multimedia data representation; deep learning has produced promising results in large scale multimedia retrieval; and compressive sensing and new sampling schemes have been investigated for big data analytics. Motivated by the inclination to collect a set of recent advances and results in these related topics, provide a platform for researchers to exchange their innovative ideas on big modeling and computing solutions for multimedia content analytics, and introduce interesting utilizations of modeling and computing algorithms for particular social/personal media applications, this special issue will target emergent big modeling and computing methods for multimedia signal processing and understanding (with a special focus on social media and personal data). To summarize, this special issue welcomes a broad range of submissions on the development and use of artificial intelligence and computing techniques for multimedia analytics. We are especially interested in: 1) theoretical advances as well as algorithm developments in big data technology for specific social/personal media analytics problems; 2) reports of practical applications and system innovations in social/personal media analytics; and 3) novel datasets as test beds for new developments, preferably with implemented standard benchmarks. The following list suggests (but is not limited to) possible topics of interest: · Big Data Technology Specifically for Multimedia Analytics · Big Data Technology for Multimedia Annotation, Tagging and Classification · Big Data Technology for Multimedia Abstraction and Summarization · Big Data Technology for Multimedia Indexing and Retrieval · Big Data Technology and Computing for Social Media Analytics · Big Data Technology and Computing for Biological Data · Big Data Technology and Computing for Personal Data Mining · Modeling of Wearable Device Sensor Streams · Personal Data based Social Network Analysis and Web Mining · Cloud Computing for Social Intelligence and Personal Data · Deep Learning for Social Media Analytics · Deep Learning for Security in Social Media Important dates: Manuscript Submission: May 01, 2015 Initial Decision: August 01, 2015 R1 Version: October 01, 2015 Acceptance Notification: November 01, 2015 Final Manuscripts Due: November 15, 2015 Anticipated Publication: January 01, 2016 Submission: Manuscripts (Please follow Signal Processing publishing format, details can be found athttp://www.elsevier.com/ journals/signal-processing/0165-1684/guide-for-authors) should be submitted via the Electronic Editorial System of Elsevier: http://ees.elsevier.com/sigpro/. Please make sure to select the "SI: BDMA" as Article Type during the submission process.

Feb. 8, 2015

INCF Short Course on Information Processing in Neural Systems

by Frank Jäkel

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ INCF Short Course on Information Processing in Neural Systems -- From Single Neurons to Large-Scale Models of Cognition -- May 2-10, 2015 @ Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabrück, Germany +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ One of the big challenges in neuroinformatics is bridging the gap between our biophysical understanding of single cells and of networks of neurons on the one side, and the cognitive functions that are characterized in terms of information processing on the other side. This INCF Short Course will provide lectures and hands-on tutorials ranging from dynamical systems theory to cognitive modeling. Target Audience: PhD candidates and post-docs with backgrounds in neuroinformatics, theoretical neuroscience, complex systems, machine learning, applied mathematics/statistics or cognitive modeling. Topics: Dynamical systems: attractors, bifurcations, etc. (Herbert Jäger) Single neuron dynamics, networks, and computation (Nicolas Brunel) Mean-field theory, neurodynamics, and decision-making (Gustavo Deco) Probabilistic models of population coding and perception (tba) Reservoir computing in simple cognitive systems (Gordon Pipa) Learning of sensory representations in neural systems (Peter König) Neural architectures for biological cognition (tba) Neural networks, kernel methods, and categorization (Frank Jäkel) A tutorial on reservoir computing (Pipa & Jäger) A tutorial on large-scale simulations in Nengo (tba) A tutorial on information processing models with NEST (Marc-Oliver Gewaltig) The yearly, two-day OCCAM workshop (www.occam-os.de) is integrated into the INCF course and participants of the INCF course will also take part in the workshop. Applications will be accepted until March 7, 2015. The registration fee is 250 Euros. We can offer a limited number of travel stipends to support students. More information on the course and on application details can be found on the course webpage: http://www.incf.ni.uos.de/

Feb. 5, 2015

Osnabrueck Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting (OCCAM 2015)

by Frank Jäkel

Dear Colleague, we would like to invite you to register for the 5th +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Osnabrück Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting (OCCAM 2015) "From Simple Neurons to Large-Scale Models of Cognition" May 6-7, 2015. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ List of invited speakers: Nicolas Brunel Gustavo Deco Wolfgang Einhäuser Virginia Flanagin Sonja Grün Marc-Oliver Gewaltig Herbert Jäger Gordon Pipa Kai Vogeley The workshop will take place in Osnabrück, Germany, and will be hosted by the Institute of Cognitive Science (University of Osnabrück). Details can be found below and on the following webpage: http://www.occam-os.de The registration deadline is March 7, 2015 (first come first served). The registration fee is 100,- Euros. This year the OCCAM workshop is co-located with an INCF Short Course on the same topic (http://www.incf.ni.uos.de/) The OCCAM workshop series aims at understanding the principles of information processing in the brain with a particular focus on 3 major topics: 1. Neural coding and representation in hierarchical systems 2. Self-organization in dynamical systems 3. Mechanisms for probabilistic inference There will also be a poster session where conference participants will have the opportunity to present their work. The deadline for submitting an abstract for a poster presentation is also March 7. Best regards, Frank Jäkel, Peter König, Gordon Pipa (Organizing committee)

Feb. 5, 2015

Reminder: UAI 2015 - Call for Workshops

by Irina Rish

UAI 2015 - Call for Workshops http://www.auai.org/uai2015/workshops.shtml Proposals are solicited for workshops to be held in conjunction with the The Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in July 2015. The workshops will be held on Thursday, July 16, 2015 (tentative date). These workshops present an excellent opportunity to address a specific topic of your choice on the intersection of knowledge representation, machine learning and reasoning under uncertainty. We are looking for half-day or full-day workshop proposals. Important dates Workshop proposal deadline February 19, 2015 Proposal acceptance notification March 2, 2015 Workshop submissions due May 8, 2015 (suggested date) Workshop author notification May 22, 2015 (suggested date) Workshop day: July 16, 2015 (tentative) Workshops are a great format for active research on new topics. The ideal workshop covers a compelling subject of current or upcoming research, and includes an impressive set of speakers with diverse backgrounds to discuss the subject. Discussion via panels and identification of open problems and challenges are great components to include. Organization The format, style, and content of accepted workshops is under the control of the workshop organizers and largely autonomous from the main conferences. The workshops can be up to seven hours long, split into morning and afternoon sessions. Workshop organizers are expected to manage the workshop content, specify the workshop format, be present to moderate the discussion and panels, invite experts in the domain, and maintain a website for the workshop. Workshop registration will be handled centrally by the main conference. Submission Instructions Proposals should clearly specify the following: Workshop title (what is it called?) Topic (what is it about?) Motivation (why a workshop on this topic?) Impact and expected outcomes (what will having the workshop do?) Potential list of invited speakers (who might come?) List of related publications (where can we learn more?) Main workshop organizer (who is making it happen?) Other organizers (who else is making it happen?) Bio for each organizer (who are you?) Workshop URL (where will interested parties get more information?) Detailed descriptions of last year's workshops can be found at: http://auai.org/uai2014/workshopsDetails.shtml. Workshop proposals should be submitted via email in PDF format to uai2015.workshops(a)gmail.com by February 19, 2015 (earlier submissions are encouraged as well). Soon after submission, proposers should expect to receive a verification of receipt. Irina Rish Contact: irina.rish(a)gmail.com Workshops chair UAI 2015

Feb. 4, 2015

Last Mile: IMMM 2015 and DATASETS 2015 || June 21 - 26, 2015 - Brussels, Belgium

by Cristina Pascual

INVITATION: ================= The submission deadline is extended to February 18, 2015. Please consider to contribute to and/or forward to the appropriate groups the following opportunity to submit and publish original scientific results to: - IMMM 2015, The Fifth International Conference on Advances in Information Mining and Management - DATASETS 2015, The International Symposium on Challenges for Designing and Using Datasets Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended article versions to one of the IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org ================= ============== IMMM 2015 | DATASETS 2015 | Call for Papers =============== CALL FOR PAPERS, TUTORIALS, PANELS IMMM 2015, The Fifth International Conference on Advances in Information Mining and Management General page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/IMMM15.html Submission page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/SubmitIMMM15.html DATASETS 2015, The International Symposium on Challenges for Designing and Using Datasets General page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/DATASETS.html Submission page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/DATASETS.html#SubmitAPaper Events schedule: June 21 - 26, 2015 - Brussels, Belgium Contributions: - regular papers [in the proceedings, digital library] - short papers (work in progress) [in the proceedings, digital library] - ideas: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library] - extended abstracts: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library] - posters: two pages [in the proceedings, digital library] - posters: slide only [slide-deck posted at www.iaria.org] - presentations: slide only [slide-deck posted at www.iaria.org] - demos: two pages [posted at www.iaria.org] - doctoral forum submissions: [in the proceedings, digital library] Proposals for: - mini-symposia: see http://www.iaria.org/symposium.html - workshops: see http://www.iaria.org/workshop.html - tutorials: [slide-deck posed on www.iaria.org] - panels: [slide-deck posed on www.iaria.org] Submission deadline: February 18, 2015 Sponsored by IARIA, www.iaria.org Extended versions of selected papers will be published in IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org Print proceedings will be available via Curran Associates, Inc.: http://www.proceedings.com/9769.html Articles will be archived in the free access ThinkMind Digital Library: http://www.thinkmind.org The topics suggested by the conference can be discussed in term of concepts, state of the art, research, standards, implementations, running experiments, applications, and industrial case studies. Authors are invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal in the following, but not limited to, topic areas. All tracks are open to both research and industry contributions, in terms of Regular papers, Posters, Work in progress, Technical/marketing/business presentations, Demos, Tutorials, and Panels. Before submission, please check and comply with the editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html IMMM 2015 Topics (for topics and submission details: see CfP on the site) Call for Papers: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/CfPIMMM15.html ============================================================ Mining mechanisms and methods Data mining algorithms; Media adaptive mining; Agent-based mining; Content-based mining; Context-aware mining; Automation of data extraction; Data mining at a large; Domain-driven data mining; Graph-based data mining; Multilabel information; Multimodal mining; Cloud-based mining; Mining using neurocomputing techniques Mining support Querying for mining; Questions for digital investigation; Similarity search; User-generated content; Visualizing data mining; Internationalization and localization techniques for profile/context-based visualization Type of information mining Concept mining; Process mining; Concept mining; Knowledge mining; Knowledge discovery; Mining image and video; Mining patterns; Opinion mining; Graph mining; Ontology mining; Semantic annotations and mining; Document mining; Spatial mining; Speech mining; Text mining; Web mining; XML data mining Pervasive information retrieval Context and location information retrieval; Mobile information retrieval; Geo-information retrieval; Context-aware information retrieval; Access-driven information retrieval; Location-specific information retrieval; Spacial information retrieval; Semantic-driven retrieval Automated retrieval and mining Automated information extraction; Agent-based data mining and information discovery; Agent-based knowledge; Datamining-based agents and multi-agent systems; Agent-mining intelligent applications and systems; Automated retrieval of multimedia streams; Automated retrieval from multimedia archives; Automated copyright infringement detection and watermarking; Automated content summarization; Automatic concept detection, categorization, and genre detection; Automatic speech recognition; Automated cross-media linking Mining features Dimensionality reduction; Feature weighting; Subset selection; Feature extraction; Feature construction; Data streams and time series; Selection in high-dimensional domains; Multilingual data mining; Multimedia mining; String processing and data mining; Mining association rules; Mining social relationships; Mining linked data; Mining sequential episodes from time series; Mining time-dependent data; Un-supervised data mining; Semi-structured data; Mining location-sensitive data; Concept-drift in data mining Information mining and management Data cleaning; Data updating; Segmentation and clustering; Mining transient information; Warehousing; Web syndication; Data filtering and aggregation; Optimal pruning; Data summarization; Knowledge injection, discovery and classification; Uncertainty removal; Managing incompleteness Mining from specific sources Bio data mining; Climate data mining; Data mining in medicine and pharmacology; Data mining in special networks (grids, sensors, etc.); Data management for mobile systems; Data management for sensors; Data mining and management for wireless systems; Dynamic network discovery; Mining from multiple sources; Mining personal semantic data; Mining from social networks; Mining from deep web; Mining from Wikipedia Data management in special environments Data management in sensor and mobile ad hoc networks; Data management in mobile peer-to-peer networks; Data management for mobile applications; Data management in mobile/temporal social networks; Management of community sensing/participatory sensing data; Managing pervasive data, sensor data streams and user devices; Managing mobile semantic data; Manging data-intensive mobile computing; Management of real-time data; Managing security data streams; Managing Mobile Web 2.0 data; Managing data in mobile clouds; Data replication, migration and dissemination in mobile environments; Web data processing and security on mobile devices; Resource advertising and discovery techniques Mining evaluation Statistics on mining; Ranking of mining results; Provenance; Privacy issues; Patterns for mining; Credibility on data mining; Performance of mining information; Data mining and computational intelligence; Intelligent data understanding; Intelligent data analysis Mining tools and applications Data mining applications; Data mining tools and enabling software; Interoperability of information mining tools; Applications for large-scale mining; Content segmentation tools (e.g., shot and semantic scene segmentation); Evaluation methods for TV and radio content analysis tools; Tools for data sets and standard resources DATASETS 2015 Topics (for topics and submission details: see CfP on the site) CfP: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/DATASETS.html#CallForPapers ========================== THEORY The anatomy of designing Datasets Designing context-based Datasets Metadata for Datasets Challenges in designing very large Datasets Updatable and updating Datasets Reference Datasets Datasets families Repositories of Datasets Criteria for selecting appropriate Datasets TYPES Public and private Datasets Open Datasets Big Data and Datasets Trusted Datasets Mining massive Datasets FEATURES Testing and validating Datasets Pitfalls with Datasets Reputation of Datasets Accuracy estimation of Datasets Data links in Datasets APPLICATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS Context-aware Datasets in the Internet of Things Datasets for data mining Datasets used in statistics and machine learning Online Datasets on collective behavior Datasets for analytics and knowledge discovery Regression Datasets Climate Datasets Gene Datasets Health Datasets Economic Datasets Social Datasets Transportation Datasets Urban Datasets Education/scholar Datasets ------------------------ IMMM 2015 Committee: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/ComIMMM15.html DATASETS 2015 Committee: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2015/DATASETS.html#Committees ==================

Feb. 4, 2015

Open Source Brain 2015: Building and sharing standardised neuronal models

by Padraig Gleeson

(Apologies for cross postings) Announcing the third annual Open Source Brain Workshop, May 12-14th 2015, Alghero, Sardinia. http://opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#OSB_2015 The Open Source Brain initiative aims to encourage collaborative, open source model development in computational neuroscience and is primarily supported by the Wellcome Trust. As with past OSB meetings <http://www.opensourcebrain.org/docs#Meetings> this workshop will bring together experimentalists, theoreticians and tool developers who are interested in creating open, community developed models of neuronal systems. Researchers interested in building and sharing models of any brain region and from any species are welcome to attend the meeting. There will be presentations on the latest developments and functionality of the OSB resource and associated technologies including NeuroML and LEMS. There will also be a special focus session on Wed 13th May on *creating and sharing experimentally constrained models of the hippocampus*. *Confirmed speakers* Giorgio Ascoli, Krasnow Institute, George Mason University, USA Tiago Branco, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK Claudia Colpath, Imperial College London, UK Michael Hines, Yale University, USA Peter Jonas, Institute of Science and Technology, Austria Troy Margrie, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK Michele Migliore, National Research Council, Italy & Yale University School of Medicine, USA Yiota Poirazi, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Foundation for Research & Technology Hellas, Greece Stefan Remy, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Bonn, Germany Nelson Spruston, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Virginia, USA Full details of the workshop can be found here: http://opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#OSB_2015. The meeting is free to attend, but registration is required (deadline April 15th). The OSB 2015 organising committee Sergio Solinas Padraig Gleeson Angus Silver Boris Marin ----------------------------------------------------- Padraig Gleeson Room 321, Anatomy Building Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT United Kingdom +44 207 679 3214 p.gleeson(a)ucl.ac.uk -----------------------------------------------------

Feb. 4, 2015

Faculty position opening in software engineering

by Jun Suzuki

University of Massachusetts Boston Department of Computer Science Assistant/Associate Professor The Computer Science Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston invites applications for one full-time position in Software Engineering at the rank of Assistant/Associate Professor, to begin September 1, 2015. We offer an ABET-accredited BS in Computer Science, a BS in Information Technology, an MS with an emphasis on software engineering, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Current faculty interests include bioinformatics, computer and human vision, data mining, databases, graphics, networks, security, software engineering, system modeling, and theoretical computer science. A PhD in computer science or a related area is required. A successful candidate at the Assistant Professor level is expected to establish a highly-recognized, externally-funded independent research program at UMass Boston. Candidates at the Associate Professor level should have a well-established research program with a significant funding record. We offer a competitive salary and start-up package. A complete application consists of a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching, and the names and email addresses of three references. Please submit your application at: http://goo.gl/ZjMvYV Our campus overlooks Boston harbor; our faculty and students enjoy professional life in a center of academia and the software industry. For more information, visit us at http://www.cs.umb.edu Review of applications has begun and will continue until the position is filled. UMass Boston is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Title IX employer. -- Jun Suzuki Associate Professor of Computer Science University of Massachusetts, Boston jxs(a)cs.umb.edu http://www.cs.umb.edu/~jxs/ http://dssg.cs.umb.edu/ @JunSuzukiBoston

Feb. 2, 2015

IJCNN 2015, final CFP: Papers are due on February 5th, 2015

by Giacomo Boracchi

IJCNN 2015 - International Joint Conference on Neural Networks July 12-17, 2015, Killarney Convention Center, Killarney, Ireland http://www.ijcnn.org This is the final Call for Papers, which are due in 3 days : Thursday, February 5th, 2015!! IJCNN is the premier international conference in the area of neural network theory, analysis, and applications. Co-sponsored by the International Neural Network Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, over the last three decades this conference and its predecessors has hosted [past, present, and future] leaders of neural network research. In an era when neural networks are widely used and reported in many areas, scientists, engineers, educators, and students from all over the world can get the best overall view of neural networks, from neuroscience to advanced control systems to cognition, at the IJCNN. *Competitions are underway!* A winning certificate and free registration will be provided to the winner of each competition who attends IJCNN 2015. Remember to submit and related papers (if that is your intent) through the regular IJCNN2015 paper submission system. If you need any other information about the general organisation of the competitions, please do not hesitate to contact : Abir Hussain. IJCNN2015 Competition Chair. Liverpool John MooresU. UK 1) ChaLearn AutoML challenge http://www.codalab.org/AutoML Here is your chance to realize the dream of many researchers in data science: create the "perfect black box", i.e. a learning machine capable of learning from examples without any human intervention. Until June we are progressively introducing 30 classification and regression tasks, with datasets pre-formatted in feature representations. Until February 14 you can win 2 sets of prizes in the: . Round 0 Tweakathon: result or code submission on well known sample datasets (preparation phase) . Round 1 AutoML: code submission on binary classification problems (novice phase) See the challenge website website for submissions, and for questions contact : Isabelle Guyon ClopiNet. California. USA guyon(a)clopinet.com 2) Speech-Music discrimination algorithms in the context of unseen audio data https://sites.google.com/site/aggelospikrakis/ijcnn Without making any assumptions with respect to the origin of the signals. Although the Speech-Music classification problem is already almost two decades old and several algorithms have been proposed over the years, there still remains to answer the question whether the proposed solutions can address audio streams from diverse sources or audio streams that suffer from (mild) spectral and time-stretching distortions. Most published work focuses on evaluating the respective methods on radio broadcasts over the Internet or, in general, on non-reproducible audio streams. To enter the competition, send an email to : Aggelos Pikrakis Uof Piraeus. Greece pikrakis(a)unipi.gr 3) Predict pathological cases in pregnant women during labour using cardiotography data. The challenge is to detect with high accuracy when a child is genuinely compromised before medical intervention is considered. For this competition, participants will be given an open dataset containing 552 intrapartum recordings, which can be access online via physionet.org. Contact : Paul Fergus. IJCNN2015 Competition on pathological pregnanacies. Liverpool John MooresU. UK p.fergus(a)ljmu.ac.uk 4) Neural Network based Weather Prediction Competition The importance of being able to accurately predict Weather cannot be overstated; beyond predicting catastrophic events such as storms or unusually severe spells of cold or heat, weather has a dramatic effect on a population's day to day health and behaviour and a significant impact on the economy. This competition involves the prediction of minimum maximum Temperatures The Dataset covers historic daily values for the period between 1st January 2007 and 30th September 2014, for the Oak Park Weather Station, which is the closest weather station to the IJCNN2015 conference venue. . 20th April 2015: Brief description of the algorithm used and generalisation results. . 20th May 2015: Announcement of the competition results Inquiries and submissions should be made through : David Reid. Liverpool Hope University. UK, reidd(a)hope.ac.uk Hissam Tawfik. IJCNN2015 Weather Competition. Liverpool Hope University. UK tawfikh(a)hope.ac.uk * PLENARY SPEAKERS - Steve Furber, The ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester "The SpiNNaker Project" - Vincenzo Piuri, Professor in Computer Engineering at the University of Milan, Italy "Computational Intelligence Technologies for 3D Surface Reconstruction" - Lee Giles, The David Reese Professor at the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University "Machine Learning and Data Mining for Scholarly Big Data" - Marios M. Polycarpou, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Cyprus, Cyprus "Fault Detection and Isolation in Uncertain Big-Data Environments" - Barak Pearlmutter, Professor, Department of Computer Science, National University of Ireland, Ireland "Critical Dynamics and Pathological Phenomena in the Brain" - Giacomo Rizzolati, Professor of Human Physiology at the University of Parma, Italy "The double life of the motor system: Action production and action understanding" * Deadlines for Submission: - Paper submission deadline: February 05, 2015 (EXTENDED) - Paper Decision notification: March 25, 2015 - Camera-ready submission: April 25, 2015 - Conference: July 12-17, 2015 * Hotel Reservations: The Killarney region is an extremely popular tourist destination, and rooms that have been reserved for IJCNN 2015 will likely disappear as soon as the contracted booking date has passed. For that reason we strongly recommend that you book your hotel room by 01May2015! (see the IJCNN2015 home page for our accommodations at the Gleneagle Hotel, the Brehon Hotel and the River Apartments). * IJCNN Killarney site video: Marianne van Wagner, Executive Co-ordinator of the International Neural Network Society (INNS), commissioned this delightful promotional video for IJCNN2015, based on her own photographs : Killarney tour. It's well worth looking at for the local Irish scenery, and for background information about the conference. (You may have to download it if your internet connection is slow.) Keep working on your paper submissions, and submit your proposals for Tutorials and Workshops SOON! Email any of the Chairs if you wish to discuss your ideas for proposals. IJCNN General Chair De-Shuang Huang, Tongji University, China, Director - Machine Learning and Systems Biology Laboratory IJCNN Program Chair Yoonsuck Choe, Texas A&M University Director, Brain Networks Laboratory Many thanks to our Sponsors and Contributors: - International Neural Network Society - IEEE Computational Intelligence Society - Failte Ireland, National Tourism Development Authority. -- Giacomo Boracchi, PhD DEIB - Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano Via Ponzio, 34/5 20133 Milano, Italy. Tel. +39 02 2399 3467 http://home.dei.polimi.it/boracchi/

Feb. 2, 2015

Masters in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems at University of Sussex

by Thomas Nowotny

Dear comp-neuro community, The Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems MSc is open for applications. One of its core strengths is Computational Neuroscience. For the first time the University of Sussex is offering additional scholarships to MSc students this year. For more information see the EASy MSc website<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/easy/smsc>, download the Flyer<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/easy/documents/easymscposter2015.pdf> or read on below. If you have students who may be interested in this opportunity, please pass this information on and/or consider posting the Flyer<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/easy/documents/easymscposter2015.pdf>. With best regards, Thomas Nowotny -- Prof. Thomas Nowotny CCNR, Sussex Neuroscience Phone: +44-1273-678593 Engineering and Informatics Fax: +44-1273-877873 University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ http://sussex.ac.uk/informatics/tnowotny — Detailed information: Since 1996, the University of Sussex has offered a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Evolutionary and Adaptive Systems (EASy). The study of natural and articial evolutionary and adaptive systems is at the heart of rapidly developing areas from articial intelligence, adaptive behaviour and autonomous robotics to computational neuroscience, consciousness and cognitive science. Sussex is internationally renowned for its research in these areas. The EASy MSc provides a solid foundation with topics including: articial life, adaptive systems, computational neuroscience, neural networks, biologically inspired robotics, dynamical systems approaches to cognition, mathematics of complex systems, neuroscience of consciousness, evolutionary computation and biological Modelling. The well established EASy programme is taught by leading experts and there are many opportunities to interact with the thriving Sussex research community, including the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR), the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Sussex Neuroscience and the Centre for Cognitive Science (COGS). Students have access to specialist facilities including robotics labs, high-performance computing and neuroscience research facilities. Students take eight taught courses, followed by an individual research project during the summer. The project is supervised by a member of faculty. It is not unusual for dissertation work to be published in international conference proceedings or journals. Of the large number of students who have graduated from the EASY MSc, 50% have later obtained doctorates and some have gone on to glittering careers in research. Others have forged thriving business careers, with several setting up highly successful companies. Grants of up to £10,000 are available at Sussex (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/money/scholarships/ ). Additionally, due to a generous donation from Andrew Pegge, two Pegge Scholarships are awarded annually to EASy MSc students. The scholarships are open to all, and awarded on merit. How to Apply: To apply to the EASy MSc please go to: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/pg/applying/ and choose the EASy MSc taught programme. Is EASy Right for Me? Are you excited by fundamental questions in adaptive behaviour, biology and technology such as: How are insects so successful despite their tiny brains? Or, can we build machines as intelligent as animals? Are you interested in embodied AI? The origin of consciousness? Complexity? Whatever your background, if you answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, our MSc is right for you. More information: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/easy/smsc or email Andy Philippides <andrewop(a)sussex.ac.uk>

Feb. 2, 2015