Welcome to INTERSPEECH 2019 – Willkommen in Graz, Austria, Sept 15-19, 2019 www.interspeech2019.org

Important Dates Coming Up Soon

• Proposals due for Special Sessions and Challenges: Friday, November 30, 2018
  See Call for Special Sessions and Challenges [please add link!] further below!

• Proposals due for Satellite Workshops: to be submitted to ISCA as soon as possible!
  See Call for Satellite Workshop [please add link!] further below!

• Sponsoring and Exhibition opportunities: see http://www.interspeech2019.org/sponsorship_and_exhibition/letter_to_our_partners

What is new?

INTERSPEECH 2019 is the 20^th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association ISCA and this anniversary edition will introduce several innovative features. These innovations will certainly contribute to raise the attractiveness of the conference beyond the high levels developed already over the past two decades:

Survey presentations have been evolved from the perspective talks at INTERSPEECH 2018 in Hyderabad. The presentations will be scheduled at the start of suitable oral presentation sessions, and will be allocated a 40-minute time slot for presentation and discussion. Presentations should aim to give an overview of the state-of-the-art for a specific topic covered by one or more of the main technical areas of the conference. The presenters will also be invited to submit survey papers to the ISCA supported journals of Computer, Speech and Language and Speech Communication. For further details, see our Call for Survey Presentations [please add link!] further below.

Childcare – the INTERSPEECH Kids: Bring your family along to Graz, Austria! Childcare will be provided free of charge for conference participants. For terms and conditions, see the conference webpage http://www.interspeech2019.org/venue_and_travel/childcare. To secure a place for your kids, we recommend to apply for this service at your earliest convenience.

Hackathons will set a stimulating atmosphere for the most creative developers in our community and beyond: through jams and challenges, we will bring together some of our brightest minds, students who are speech science and technology aficionados and who come to Graz as conference participants, as well as students who are representing the highly interdisciplinary community of several partner universities in Graz and beyond. Watch out for details to appear soon on our website http://www.interspeech2019.org or contact directly our hackathon chairs Elmar Nöth (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Johanna Pirker (TU Graz) at hackathon@interspeech2019.org.

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INTERSPEECH 2019

 GRAZ – AUSTRIA SEPTEMBER 15th – 19th 2019 WWW.INTERSPEECH2019.ORG

 https://interspeech2019.org

CROSSROADS OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS FOR TUTORIALS, SPECIAL SESSIONS/CHALLENGES, AND SHOW & TELL

INTERSPEECH is the world‘s largest and most comprehensive conference on the science and technology of spoken language processing. INTERSPEECH conferences emphasize interdisciplinary approaches addressing all aspects of speech science and technology, ranging from basic theories to advanced applications. In addition to regular oral and poster sessions, INTERSPEECH 2019 will feature plenary talks by internationally renowned experts, tutorials, special sesssions and challenges, show & tell sessions, and exhibits. A number of satellite events will also take place around INTERSPEECH 2019.

Original papers are solicited in, but not limited to, the following areas:

1. Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition

2. Phonetics, Phonology, and Prosody

3. Analysis of Paralinguistics in Speech and Language

4. Speaker and Language Identification

5. Analysis of Speech and Audio Signals

6. Speech Coding and Enhancement

7. Speech Synthesis and Spoken Language Generation

8. Speech Recognition – Signal Processing, Acoustic Modeling, Robustness, an Adaptation

9. Speech Recognition – Architecture, Search, and Linguistic Components

10. Speech Recognition – Technologies and Systems for New Applications

11. Dialog Systems and Analysis of Conversation

12.Spoken Language Processing – Translation, Information Retrieval, Summarization,

     Resources, and Evaluation

A complete list of the scientific areas and topics including special sessions is available at » www.interspeech2019.org

PAPER SUBMISSION Papers intended for INTERSPEECH 2019 should be up to four pages of text. An optional fifth page could be used for references only. Paper submissions must conform to the format defined in the paper preparation guidelines and as detailed in the author’s kit on the conference webpage. Please be aware that INTERSPEECH 2019 will use new templates and submissions will be accepted only in the new format. Submissions may also be accompanied by additional files such as multimedia files, to be included on the proceedings’ USB drive. Authors must declare that their contributions are original and have not been submitted elsewhere for publication. Papers must be submitted via the online paper submission system. The working language of the conference is English, and papers must be written in English.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to your participation in INTERSPEECH 2019.

IMPORTANT DATES

» November 30, 2018 Special session/challenges proposals due

» February 1, 2019 Tutorial proposals due

» February 15, 2019 Submission portal opens

» February 28, 2019 Satellite workshops/events proposals due

» March 29, 2019 Paper submission deadline

» April 5, 2019 Final paper submission deadline

» April 26, 2019 Show & Tell proposals due

» June 17, 2019 Acceptance/rejection notification

» June 24, 2019 Registration opens

» July 1, 2019 Camera-ready paper due

General Chairs:

Gernot Kubin, TU Graz, Austria

Zdravko Kacˇicˇ, University of Maribor, Slovenia

Technical Chairs:

Thomas Hain, U Sheffield, UK

Björn Schuller, U Augsburg/Imperial College, Germany/UK

Organising Committee Members:

Michiel Bacchiani, Google NY, USA

Gerhard Backfried, Sail Labs Vienna, Austria

Jamilla Balint, TU Graz, Austria

Eugen Brenner, TU Graz, Austria

Mariapaola D‘Imperio, Aix Marseille U, France

Dina ElZarka, U Graz, Austria

Tim Fingscheidt, TU Braunschweig, Germany

Anouschka Foltz, U Graz, Austria

Anna Fuchs, AVL Graz, Austria

Panayiotis Georgiou, USC Los Angeles, USA

Franz Graf, Joanneum Research Graz, Austria

Markus Gugatschka, MU Graz, Austria

Martin Hagmüller, TU Graz, Austria

Petra Hödl, U Graz, Austria

Robert Höldrich, KU Graz, Austria

Mario Huemer, JKU Linz, Austria

Dorothea Kolossa, RU Bochum, Germany

Christina Leitner, Joanneum Research Graz, Austria

Stefanie Lindstaedt, KNOW Centre Graz, Austria

Helen Meng, CU Hong Kong, China

Ineke Mennen, U Graz, Austria

Florian Metze, CMU Pittsburgh, USA

Pejman Mowlaee, Widex/TU Graz, Denmark/Austria

Franz Pernkopf, TU Graz, Austria

Lukas Pfeifenberger, Ognios Salzburg, Austria

Christopf Prinz, Sail Labs Vienna, Austria

Michael Pucher, ÖAW Vienna, Austria

Philipp Salletmayr, Nuance Vienna, Austria

Barbara Schuppler, TU Graz, Austria

Dagmar Schuller, audEERING, Germany

Wolfgang Wokurek, U Stuttgart, Germany

Kai Yu, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

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INTERSPEECH 2019: Call for Satellite Workshops

The Organizing Committee of INTERSPEECH 2019 is now inviting proposals for satellite workshops, to be held in proximity to the main conference.

Proposals should be submitted as soon as possible to the ISCA workshop portal (https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaproposals/workshop.php) since every satellite workshop needs ISCA endorsement!

The Organizing Committee will work to facilitate the organization of such satellite workshops, to stimulate discussion in research areas related to speech and language, at locations in Europe, and around the same time as INTERSPEECH 2019. We are particularly looking forward to proposals from neighboring countries. If you are interested in organizing a satellite workshop, or would like a planned event to be listed as an official satellite event, please contact the Satellite Workshop Chairs at workshops@interspeech2019.org. See http://interspeech2019.org/calls/satellite_events for further details.

As possible sites for your satellite events may we propose the following cities within easy reach from the conference location (either by train, bus, or rental car):

• Graz, Austria, the INTERSPEECH 2019 host city, with several supporting institutions;

• Maribor, Slovenia, just 50 km away, where we provide local support via the University of Maribor;

• Vienna, Austria, just 200 km away, where we provide local support via the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Important Dates

• Submission to ISCA workshop portal: As soon as possible since every satellite workshop needs ISCA endorsement!

• Once ISCA endorsement has been granted, requests for co-registration with INTERSPEECH2019 have to be submitted by February 28, 2019.

• Confirmation as an INTERSPEECH2019 satellite event by March 15, 2019.

If you have any questions about whether a potential event would be a good candidate for an INTERSPEECH 2019 satellite workshop feel free to contact the Satellite Workshop Chairs at workshops@interspeech2019.org.

Sincerely

Jessica Siddins (U Graz)
Zdravko Kačič (U Maribor)
Michael Pucher (ÖAW Vienna)

Satellite Workshop Chairs for INTERSPEECH 2019

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INTERSPEECH 2019: Call for Special Sessions & Challenges

Important Dates

Proposal submission deadline: Friday, November 30, 2018
Notification of pre-selection: Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Final list of special sessions: Monday, June 17, 2019

Special Sessions & Challenges

Submissions of Special Sessions & Challenges proposals are encouraged for INTERSPEECH 2019, covering interdisciplinary topics and/or important new emerging areas of interest related to the main conference topics. Submissions related to the special focus of the conference, Crossroads of Speech and Language(http://www.interspeech2019.org/about/conference_theme), are particularly welcome. Apart from supporting a particular theme, special sessions may also have a format that is different from a regular session.

Each special session proposal must contain the following information.

• The title of the proposed special session.

• The names and affiliations of the organizers, including contact information and a brief biography for each organizer.

• Up to five bullet points explaining what factors make the proposed session special.

• A summary (up to one page) stating the importance of the session’s topic and objectives. Furthermore, the session format should be clearly defined. The summary should also explain why the topic cannot be properly covered by regular conference sessions.

• A tentative list of researchers who could contribute papers to the session. Note that with a nominal 50% acceptance rate for Interspeech papers, this means that special sessions should have a minimum of 12 anticipated submissions, unless their format allocates time to something other than paper presentations.

• Additional or non-standard resources (e.g., data, equipment, poster stands, etc.) required for organizing the special session.

Proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee for relevance and significance. Papers for approved Special Sessions have to be submitted following the same schedule and procedure as regular papers; the papers will undergo the same review process by anonymous and independent reviewers. Special session organizers will be involved in the reviewer assignment and in the final decisions.

Special session proposers are invited to submit a proposal via email to the Special Session Chairs Tim Fingscheidt (TU Braunschweig), Mariapaola d’Imperio (Aix-Marseille U), and Franz Pernkopf (TU Graz) at special_sessions@interspeech2019.org no later than Friday, November 30, 2018. Please do not hesitate to ask before submitting your proposal if something is not fully clear to you. Notification of pre-selection is scheduled for Tuesday, January 1, 2019. Final acceptance will take place shortly after paper decisions are completed, depending on the number of accepted papers submitted to each special session.

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NEW! INTERSPEECH 2019: Call for Survey Presentations NEW!

Important Dates

Proposal submission deadline: Friday May 3, 2019
Notification of selection: Monday, June 17, 2019

Survey Presentations

Interspeech is the annual flagship conference of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), which brings together a truly interdisciplinary group of experts from academia and industry to present and discuss the latest research, technology advances and scientific discoveries in a five-day event. As such Interspeech constantly innovates and adapts. Beyond plenary talks, oral and poster presentations recent years have seen new ideas on how to engage with experts and industry.

The 20th edition of Interspeech conferences, to take place in Graz, Austria, will introduce a range of new presentation formats. Given the complexity of speech communication science and technology the need for detailed technical review of sub-areas of research has become more critical than ever.

We invite proposals for innovative and engaging Research Survey Presentations. The talks are aimed to be scheduled at the start of suitable oral presentation sessions, and will be allocated a 40-minute time slot for presentation and discussion. Presentations should aim to give an overview of the state of the art for a specific topic covered by one or more of the main technical areas of Interspeech 2019, namely

1. Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition

2. Phonetics, Phonology, and Prosody

3. Analysis of Paralinguistics in Speech and Language

4. Speaker and Language Identification

5. Analysis of Speech and Audio Signals

6. Speech Coding and Enhancement

7. Speech Synthesis and Spoken Language Generation

8. Speech Recognition — Signal Processing, Acoustic Modeling, Robustness, Adaptation

9. Speech Recognition — Architecture, Search, and Linguistic Components

10. Speech Recognition — Technologies and Systems for New Applications

11. Spoken Dialog Systems and Analysis of Conversation

12. Spoken Language Processing — Translation, Information Retrieval, Summarization, Resources and Evaluation

Proposals for Survey Presentations are required to include

• The presenter’s name, title, and short bio (100 words), and (if applicable) a list of co-contributors.

• Title, an outline and a description of the proposed talk (max 500 words). The description should include statements on the relevance of the talk, and the potential target audience.

• A current CV of the presenter including a list of publications

Proposals will be evaluated by the technical programme and organising committees for relevance and significance, taking balance across areas and the available presentation slots into account (maximum 10 presentations). The presenters of the Interspeech 2019 survey talks will be invited to submit survey papers to the ISCA supported journals of Computer, Speech and Language and Speech Communication with the aim to be included in a Special Issue on the State of the Art in Speech Science and Technology.

Survey presentation proposers are invited to submit a proposal via email to the Technical Program Chairs: tpc-chairs@interspeech2019.org no later than Friday May 3, 2019. Please do not hesitate to contact the technical chairs for any questions that may arise prior to proposal submission.  Notification of selection is scheduled for June 17, 2019.

Thomas Hain and Björn Schuller

INTERSPEECH 2019 Technical Program Chairs

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INTERSPEECH 2021
Brno, Czech Republic, August 30 - September 3, 2021
Chairs : Hynek Hermansky and Honza Cernocky 
22^nd INTERSPEECH event

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SIGDIAL 2019

11?13 September 2019, Stockholm, Sweden

Call for Special Sessions

http://workshops.sigdial.org/conference20

Special Session Submission Deadline: January 28, 2019 Special Session Notification: February 18, 2019

The Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL) organizers welcome the submission of special session proposals.

A SIGDIAL special session is the length of a regular session at the conference, and may be organized as a poster session, a panel session, a poster session with panel discussion, or an oral presentation session.

Special sessions may, at the discretion of the SIGDIAL organizers, be held as parallel sessions.

The papers submitted to special sessions are handled by the special session organizers, but for the submitted papers to be in the SIGDIAL proceedings, they have to undergo the same review process as regular papers. The reviewers for the special session papers will be taken from the SIGDIAL program committee itself, taking into account the suggestions of the session organizers, and the program chairs will make acceptance decisions. In other words, special session organizers decide what appears in the session, while the program chairs decide what  appears in the proceedings and the rest of the conference program.

We welcome special session proposals on any topic of interest to the discourse and dialogue communities. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to Explainable AI, Evaluation, Annotation, and End?to?end systems.

Submissions:

Those wishing to organize a special session should prepare a two-page proposal containing: a summary of the topic of the special session; a list of organizers and sponsors; a list of people who may submit and participate in the session; and a requested format (poster/panel/oral  session).

These proposals should be sent to conference[at]sigdial.org by the special session proposal deadline. Special session proposals will be reviewed jointly by the general chair and program co?chairs.

Links:

Those wishing to propose a special session may want to look at some of the sessions organized at recent SIGDIAL meetings.

http://www.sigdial.org/workshops/conference19/sessions.htm

https://robodial.github.io/

http://articulab.hcii.cs.cmu.edu/sigdial2016/

SIGDIAL 2019 Organizing Committee

General Chair:

Satoshi Nakamura, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

Program Chairs:

Milica Ga?i?, Cambridge University, UK

Ingrid Zukerman, Monash University, Australia

Local Chair:

Gabriel Skantze, KTH, Sweden

Sponsorship Chair:

Mikio Nakano, Honda Research Institute Japan, Japan

Mentoring Chair:

Alex Papangelis, Uber AI, USA

Publication Chair:

Stefan Ultes, Daimler AG, Germany

Publicity Chair:

Koichiro Yoshino, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

SIGdial President:

Jason Williams, Apple, USA

SIGdial Vice President:

Kallirroi Georgila, University of Southern California, USA

SIGdial Secretary:

Vikram Ramanarayanan, Educational Testing Service (ETS) Research, USA

SIGdial Treasurer:

Ethan Selfridge, Interactions, USA

SIGdial President Emeritus:

Amanda Stent, Bloomberg, USA

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6th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON STATISTICAL LANGUAGE AND SPEECH PROCESSING
 
SLSP 2018
 
Mons, Belgium
 
October 15-17, 2018
 
Co-organized by:
 
NUMEDIART Institute
University of Mons
 
LANGUAGE Institute
University of Mons
 
Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice (IRDTA), Brussels/London
 
http://slsp2018.irdta.eu/
 
**********************************************************************************
 
AIMS:
 
SLSP is a yearly conference series aimed at promoting and displaying excellent research on the wide spectrum of statistical methods that are currently in use in computational language or speech processing. It aims at attracting contributions from both fields. Though there exist large, well-known conferences and workshops hosting contributions to any of these areas, SLSP is a more focused meeting where synergies between subdomains and people will hopefully happen. In SLSP 2018, significant room will be reserved to young scholars at the beginning of their career and particular focus will be put on methodology.
 
VENUE:
 
SLSP 2018 will take place in Mons, which was European Capital of Culture in 2015. The venue will be:
 
University of Mons
31 Bvd Dolez, 7000 Mons
Belgium
 
SCOPE:
 
The conference invites submissions discussing the employment of statistical models (including machine learning) within language and speech processing. Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to:
 
anaphora and coreference resolution
authorship identification, plagiarism and spam filtering
computer-aided translation
corpora and language resources
data mining and semantic web
information extraction
information retrieval
knowledge representation and ontologies
lexicons and dictionaries
machine translation
multimodal technologies
natural language understanding
neural representation of speech and language
opinion mining and sentiment analysis
parsing
part-of-speech tagging
question-answering systems
semantic role labelling
speaker identification and verification
speech and language generation
speech recognition
speech synthesis
speech transcription
spelling correction
spoken dialogue systems
term extraction
text categorisation
text summarisation
user modeling
 
STRUCTURE:
 
SLSP 2018 will consist of:
 
invited talks
peer-reviewed contributions
posters
 
INVITED SPEAKERS:
 
Thomas Hain (University of Sheffield), Crossing Domains in Automatic Speech Recognition
 
Simon King (University of Edinburgh), Does 'End-to-End' Speech Synthesis Make any Sense?
 
Isabel Trancoso (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon), Analysing Speech for Clinical Applications
 
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:
 
Steven Abney (University of Michigan, US)
Srinivas Bangalore (Interactions LLC, US)
Jean-François Bonastre (University of Avignon et Pays du Vaucluse, FR)
Pierrette Bouillon (University of Geneva, CH)
Nicoletta Calzolari (Italian National Research Council, IT)
Erik Cambria (Nanyang Technological University, SG)
Kenneth W. Church (Baidu Research, US)
Walter Daelemans (University of Antwerp, BE)
Thierry Dutoit (University of Mons, BE)
Marcello Federico (Bruno Kessler Foundation, IT)
Robert Gaizauskas (University of Sheffield, UK)
Ralph Grishman (New York University, US)
Udo Hahn (University of Jena, DE)
Siegfried Handschuh (University of Passau, DE)
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson (University of Illinois, Urbana?Champaign, US)
Keikichi Hirose (University of Tokyo, JP)
Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University, US)
Nancy Ide (Vassar College, US)
Gareth Jones (Dublin City University, IE)
Philipp Koehn (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Haizhou Li (National University of Singapore, SG)
Carlos Martín-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, ES, chair)
Yuji Matsumoto (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, JP)
Alessandro Moschitti (Qatar Computing Research Institute, QA)
Hermann Ney (RWTH Aachen University, DE)
Jian-Yun Nie (University of Montréal, CA)
Elmar Nöth (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, DE)
Cecile Paris (CSIRO Data61, AU)
Jong C. Park (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, KR)
Alexandros Potamianos (National Technical University of Athens, GR)
Paul Rayson (Lancaster University, UK)
Mats Rooth (Cornell University, US)
Paolo Rosso (Technical University of Valencia, ES)
Alexander Rudnicky (Carnegie Mellon University, US)
Tanja Schultz (University of Bremen, DE)
Holger Schwenk (Facebook AI Research, FR)
Vijay K. Shanker (University of Delaware, US)
Richard Sproat (Google Research, US)
Tomoki Toda (Nagoya University, JP)
Gökhan Tür (Google Research, US)
Yorick Wilks (Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, US)
Phil Woodland (University of Cambridge, UK)
Dekai Wu (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, HK)
Junichi Yamagishi (University of Edinburgh, UK)
 
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
 
Stéphane Dupont (Mons)
Thierry Dutoit (Mons, co-chair)
Kévin El Haddad (Mons)
Kathy Huet (Mons)
Sara Morales (Brussels)
Manuel J. Parra Royón (Granada)
Gueorgui Pironkov (Mons)
David Silva (London, co-chair)
 
SUBMISSIONS:
 
Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (all included) and should be prepared according to the standard format for Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).
 
Submissions have to be uploaded to:
 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=slsp2018
 
PUBLICATIONS:
 
A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS/LNAI series will be available by the time of the conference.
 
A special issue of Computer Speech and Language (Elsevier, JCR 2016 impact factor: 1.900) will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation.
 
REGISTRATION:
 
The registration form can be found at:
 
http://slsp2018.irdta.eu/Registration.php
 
DEADLINES (all at 23:59 CET):
 
Paper submission: May 27, 2018
Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: July 3, 2018
Final version of the paper for the LNCS/LNAI proceedings: July 13, 2018
Early registration: July 13, 2018
Late registration: October 1, 2018
Submission to the journal special issue: January 17, 2019
 
QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:
 
david@irdta.eu
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
 
Université de Mons
 
Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice (IRDTA), Brussels/London

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*Note: paper submission deadline extended till 18 July*
================================
2nd International Workshop on Multimodal Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (MVAR 2018)
at ISMAR 2018, Munich, Germany, October 16, 2018
http://mvar.science.uu.nl/2018/
================================

MVAR is the 2nd Workshop on Multimodal VR and AR, investigating any aspects about multimodality and multimodal interaction in relation to VR and AR. What are the most pressing research questions? What are difficult challenges? What opportunities do other modalities than vision offer for VR and AR? What are new and better ways for interaction with virtual objects and for an improved experience of VR and AR worlds?

We invite researchers and visionaries to submit their latest results on any aspects that are relevant for multimodality and interaction in VR and AR. Contributions of more fundamental nature (e.g., psychophysical studies and empirical research about multimodality) are welcome as well as more technical contributions (including use cases, best-practice demonstrations, prototype systems, etc.). Position papers and reviews of the state-of-the art and ongoing research are invited, too. Submissions do not necessarily have to address multiple modalities, but work focusing on single modes that go beyond the state-of-the-art of ?purely visual? systems (e.g., papers about smell, taste, and haptics) are suited, as well.

*Important dates*

Jul 18, 2018: Paper submissions (final, extended deadline!)
Aug 14, 2018: Notifications
Sep 04, 2018: Camera ready papers
Oct 16, 2018: MVAR workshop at ISMAR in Munich

*Topics of interest*

- Multisensory experiences and improved immersion, including audio-visual installations, haptics/tactile, smell/olfactory sensations, taste/gustation (contributions focusing on single, but enhancing senses are welcome), perception of virtual objects, etc.
- Multimedia & sensory input, including affective computing and human behavior sensing for VR/AR, multisensory analysis, integration, and synchronization, speech, gestures, tracking for AR/VR, virtual humans and avatars, etc.
- Multimodal output, including smart and ambient environments, multimedia installations, etc.
- Interaction design & new approaches for interaction in AR/VR, incl. tangible interfaces, multimodal communication & collaborative experiences, social aspects in AR/VR interaction, gesture-based interaction design, 3D interaction, advanced interaction devices, etc.
- System design & infrastructure for multimodal AR/VR, including real-time and other performance issues, rendering of different modalities, distributed and collaborative architectures, etc.
- Applications, incl. use cases, prototypes, or prove of concepts for new and innovative approaches in serious and leisure domains.

*Further information*

For more information about aims, submission guidelines and criteria, etc. please refer to the workshop's website at http://mvar.science.uu.nl/2018/

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4th International Workshop on

Multimodal Analyses enabling Artificial Agents in Human-Machine Interaction

(MA3HMI 2018)

October 16th, 2018 in Boulder, USA.

In conjunction with ICMI2018.

http://MA3HMI.cogsy.de

Scope:

One of the aims in building multimodal user interfaces and combining them with technical devices is to make the interaction between user and system as natural as possible. The most natural form of interaction may be how we interact with other humans. Although technology is still far from human-like, and systems can reflect a wide range of technical solutions. They are often represented as artificial agents to facilitate smooth inter-actions. While the analysis of human-human communication has resulted in many insights.

Transferring these to human-machine interactions remains challenging especially if multiple possible interlocutors are present in a certain area. This situation requires that multimodal inputs from the main speaker (e.g., speech, gaze, facial expressions) as well as possible co-speaker are recorded and interpreted. This interpretation has to occur at both the semantic and affective levels, including aspects such as the personality, mood, or intentions of the user, anticipating the counterpart. These processes have to be performed in real-time in order for the system to respond without delays, in a natural environment.

The MA3HMI workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on the analysis of multimodal data as a means to develop technical devices that can interact with humans. In particular, artificial agents can be regarded in their broadest sense, including virtual chat agents, empathic speech interfaces and life-style coaches on a smart-phone. More general, multimodal analyses support any technical system being located in the research area of human-machine interaction. For the 2018 edition, we focus on the environment and situation an interaction is situated in extending the investigations on real-time aspects of human-machine interaction. We address the synergy of situation, context, and interaction history in the development and evaluation of multimodal, real-time systems.

We solicit papers that concern the different perspectives of such human-machine interaction. Tools and systems that address real-time conversations with artificial agents and technical systems are also within the scope of the workshop.

Topics (but not limited to):

a) Multimodal Environment Analyses

- Multimodal understanding of situation and environment of natural interactions

- Annotation paradigms for user analyses in natural interactions

- Novel strategies of human-machine interaction in terms of situation and environment

b) Multimodal User Analyses

- Multimodal understanding of user behavior and affective state

- Dialogue management using multimodal output

- Multimodal understanding of multiple users behavior and affective

- Annotation paradigms for user analyses in natural interactions

- Novel strategies of human-machine interactions

c) Applications, Tools, and Systems

- Novel application domains and embodied interaction

- Prototype development and uptake of technology

- User studies with (partial) functional systems

- Tools for the recording, annotation and analysis of conversations

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: July 30th, 2018

Notification of Acceptance: September 10th, 2018

Camera-ready Deadline: September 15th, 2018

Workshop Date: October 16th, 2018

Submissions:

Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers (8 pages) and short papers (5 pages) in ACM format as specified by ICMI 2018. Accepted papers will be published as post-proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. All submissions should be anonymous.

Organisers:

Ronald Böck, University Magdeburg, Germany

Francesca Bonin, IBM Research, Ireland

Nick Campbell, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Ronald Poppe, Utrecht University, Netherland

--

Dr.-Ing. Dipl.-Inf. Ronald Böck

FEIT IIKT-Cognitive Systems

Building 03, Room 322

Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg

Universitaetsplatz 2, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany

Phone: +49 391 67 50061

E-mail:

ronald.boeck@ieee.org

ronald.boeck@ovgu.de

Web: http://www.kognitivesysteme.de

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Boulder, Colorado, October 16th, 2018
http://h3-icmi2018.cse.tamu.edu

Workshop in conjunction with:
20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
Boulder, Colorado, USA, October 16-20th, 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS
In the Internet of Things era, digital human interaction with the habitat environment can be perceived as the continuous interconnection and exchange of cognitive, social, and affective signals between an individual or a group, and any type of environment built for humans. Through the integration of various interconnected devices, we can collect multimodal data including speech, spoken content, physiological, psychophysiological, and environmental signals, that enable the sensing of a person?s activity, mood, emotions, preferences, and/or health state, and ultimately provide appropriate feedback. Applications of these include artificial conversational agents, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, that enable voice powered human computer interaction to provide new information or conduct procedural tasks, in-the-moment automatic habitat adaptation systems that provide comfort and relaxation, human health and well-being support systems that are able to track the progress of a disease, detect high-risk episodes, and ultimately provide feedback or take appropriate. For example, such systems can monitor linguistic and acoustic markers of patients with depression, predict suicidal tendencies, and take appropriate action, or track individuals? stress levels and guide them through mini-interventions. Some of the challenges involved in these tasks include the diverse nature of the acquired data, the high variability present in habitat environments, and the inherent unpredictability and multi-faceted nature of human behavior. The H3 workshop aims to bring together experts from academia and industry spanning a set of multi-disciplinary fields, including computer science, speech and spoken language understanding, construction science, life-sciences, health sciences, and psychology, to discuss their respective views of the problem and identify synergistic and converging solutions.

A special issue of a journal based on the selected contributions from the workshop is planned.

WORKSHOP TOPICS
We encourage submissions including, but not limited to, the following topics:
* Open challenges in capturing and modeling human-habitat interaction (e.g., scarcity of available data)
* Audio processing applications for habitat environments, including speech recognition, speaker identification, emotion and mood recognition
* Spoken language understanding applications that consider user state, emotions, personalization, and other user or environment context
* Physiological signal processing, including noise removal, motion artifact elimination, feature extraction
* Integration of environmental sensors (e.g., temperature, humidity, lighting) for building context-specific models of human behavior and affect
* Human-computer interaction in the habitat environment (e.g., conversational agents, assistive/leisure robots)
* Well-being and clinical applications including promoting user comfort, or heath-state monitoring and intervention
* Human interaction with virtual reality environments
* Privacy and ethical considerations when developing smart environments and related applications

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International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI)

Boulder, Colorado, October 16-20th, 2018

https://icmi.acm.org/2018/

Call for Doctoral Consortium Contributions

EXTENDED June 25th, Decisions July 20th, Camera Ready July 31st.

Submission and general info: https://icmi.acm.org/2018/index.php?id=cfdc  

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The goal of the ICMI Doctoral Consortium is to provide PhD students with an opportunity to present their work to a group of mentors and peers from a diverse set of academic and industrial institutions, to receive feedback on their doctoral research plan and progress, and to build a cohort of young researchers interested in designing and developing multimodal interfaces and interaction. We invite students from all PhD granting institutions who are in the process of forming or carrying out a plan for their PhD research in the area of designing and developing multimodal interfaces. The Consortium will be held on October 16, 2018. We expect to provide economic support to most attendees that will cover part of their costs (travel, registration, meals etc.).

Who should apply?

While we encourage applications from students at any stage of doctoral training, the doctoral consortium will benefit most the students who are in the process of forming or developing their doctoral research. These students will have passed their qualifiers or have completed the majority of their coursework, will be planning or developing their dissertation research, and will not be very close to completing their dissertation research. Students from any PhD granting institution whose research falls within designing and developing multimodal interfaces and interaction are encouraged to apply.

Submission Guidelines

Graduate students pursuing a PhD degree in a field related to designing multimodal interfaces should submit the following materials:

1) Extended Abstract: A four-page description of your PhD research plan and progress in the ACM SigConf format. Your extended abstract should follow the same outline, details, and format of the ICMI short papers. The submissions will not be anonymous. In particular, it should cover:

  - The key research questions and motivation of your research,

  - Background and related work that informs your research,

  - A statement of hypotheses or a description of the scope of the technical problem,

  - Your research plan, outlining stages of system development or series of studies,

  - The research approach and methodology,

  - Your results to date (if any) and a description of remaining work,

  - A statement of research contributions to date (if any) and expected contributions of your PhD work.

2) Advisor Letter: A one-page letter of nomination from the student's PhD advisor. This letter is not a letter of support. Instead, it should focus on the student's PhD plan and how the Doctoral Consortium event might contribute to the student's PhD training and research.

3) CV: A two-page curriculum vitae of the student.

All materials should be prepared in PDF format and submitted through the ICMI submission system.

Review Process

The Doctoral Consortium will follow a review process in which submissions will be evaluated by a number of factors including (1) the quality of the submission, (2) the expected benefits of the consortium for the student's PhD research, and (3) the student's contribution to the diversity of topics, backgrounds, and institutions, in order of importance. More particularly, the quality of the submission will be evaluated based on the potential contributions of the research to the field of multimodal interfaces and its impact on the field and beyond. Finally, we hope to achieve a diversity of research topics, disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and home institutions in this year's Doctoral Consortium cohort. We do not expect more than two students to be invited from each institution to represent a diverse sample. Women and other underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply.

Financial Support

We hope to provide most student attendees with partial financial support to cover the costs of attending the Doctoral Consortium and the conference. However, the details on the number of students to be funded and funding coverage is currently unknown, as we are currently working on raising funds. More detail on travel support will be announced on the Doctoral Consortium page of the main conference website.

Attendance

All authors of accepted submissions are expected to attend the Doctoral Consortium and the main conference poster session. The attendees will present their PhD work as a short talk at the Consortium and as a poster at the conference poster session. A detailed program for the Consortium and the participation guidelines for the poster session will be available after the camera-ready deadline.

Process

- Submission format: Four-page extended abstract using the ACM format (https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template#aL2).

- Submission system: To be updated.

- Selection process: Peer-Reviewed

- Presentation format: Talk on consortium day and participation in the conference poster session

- Proceedings: Included in conference proceedings and ACM Digital Library

- Doctoral Consortium Co-chairs: Roland Goecke (U Canberra) and Yelin Kim (SUNY Albany)

Dates

Submission deadline: EXTENDED to June 25th 2018

Notifications: July 20th 2018

Camera-ready deadline: July 31st 2018

Doctoral Consortium Date: October 16th 2018

Questions?

For more information and updates on the ICMI 2018 Doctoral Consortium, visit the Doctoral Consortium page of the main conference website (https://icmi.acm.org/2018/index.php?id=cfdc)

For further questions, contact the Doctoral Consortium co-chairs:

- Roland Goecke (U Canberra) Roland.Goecke@canberra.edu.au

- Yelin Kim (SUNY Albany) yelinkim@albany.edu

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International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI)

Boulder, Colorado, October 16-20th, 2018

https://icmi.acm.org/2018/

Second Call for Late Breaking Results

Due August 1st, 2018, Notifications August 31st, Camera-ready Sept 7th.

Submission and general info: https://icmi.acm.org/2018/index.php?id=cflbr  

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Call for Demonstrations and Exhibits

EXTENDED DATES: Due August 3rd, 2018, Notifications August 8th, Camera-ready August 12th.

Submission and general info: https://icmi.acm.org/2018/index.php?id=cfd   

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We invite you to submit your proposals for demonstrations and exhibits to be held during the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI 2018), located in Boulder, Colorado. October 16-20th, 2018.

Demonstrations and Exhibits

The ICMI 2018 Demonstrations & Exhibits session is intended to provide a forum to showcase innovative implementations, systems and technologies demonstrating new ideas about interactive multimodal interfaces. They can also serve to introduce commercial products.

Proposals may be of two types: demonstrations or exhibits. The main difference is that demonstrations include a two page paper, which will be included in ICMI proceedings, while the exhibits only need to include a brief outline (no more than one page; not included in ICMI proceedings). We encourage both the submission of early research prototypes and interesting mature systems. In addition, authors of accepted regular research papers are invited to participate in the demonstration sessions as well.

The theme of the ICMI 2018 conference is Multi-modal Understanding of Multi-party Interactions. Demonstrations in this area will benefit from more exposure to visitors, and will allow visitors to interact with the material.

Demonstration Submission

A description of the demonstration must be submitted electronically through the main ICMI conference management system:

https://new.precisionconference.com/user/login?society=sigchi/

Demo description(s) must be in PDF format, according to the ACM conference format, of no more than two pages in length including references - template available at:

https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template

Demo proposals should include a description with photographs and/or screen captures of the demonstration and, if possible, the URL of a website where a live version or video of the proposed demo is available. Please note that the accepted demonstration descriptions will be included in ICMI proceedings.

The selection process is juried by committee, according to criteria such as: suitability as a demo, scientific or engineering feasibility of the proposed demo system, application, or interactivity, alignment with the conference focus, potential to engage the audience, and overall quality and presentation of the written proposal. Authors are encouraged to address such criteria in their proposals (paper submission), along with preparing the short papers mindful of the quality and rigorous scientific expectations of an ACM publication.

The curated demo program will be selected from the submitted proposals as well as invited demos from among regular conference papers accepted for presentation at the conference which the committee deems suitable for demonstration.

The demo and exhibit paper submissions should not be anonymous. However, all ACM rules and guidelines related to paper submission should be followed (e.g. plagiarism, including self-plagiarism).

Exhibit Submission

Exhibit proposals should be submitted following the same guidelines, formatting, and due dates as for demo proposals. The main difference is that exhibits proposals should be shorter in length (up to one page) and more suitable for very mature systems (commercial or almost commercial). Exhibits won't have a paper published in the ICMI 2018 proceedings.

Important Dates - EXTENDED FINAL DEADLINE

Submission of demo and exhibit proposals: August 3rd, 2018 (23:59PM, PST)

Demo and exhibit notification of acceptance: August 8th, 2018

Submission of demo final papers: August 12th, 2018 (23:59PM, PST)

Attendance

At least one author of all accepted Demonstrations and Exhibits submissions must register for and attend the conference, including the conference demonstrations and exhibits session(s).

Questions?

For more information and updates on the ICMI 2018 Demonstrations and Exhibits, visit the main conference website https://icmi.acm.org/2018/index.php?id=cfd. For further questions, contact the Demonstrations and Exhibits co-chairs (wolfgang.minker@uni-ulm.de and abhinav@iitrpr.ac.in)

- Wolfgang Minker (Ulm University)

- Abhinav Dhall (IIT Ropar)

New this year! The ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) is soliciting submissions for a new venue this year: Late-Breaking Results (LBR). The goal of the LBR venue is to provide a way for researchers to share emerging results at the conference. Accepted submissions will be presented in a poster session at the conference, and the extended abstract will be published in the new Adjunct Proceedings (Companion Volume) of the main ICMI Proceedings. Like similar venues at other conferences, the LBR venue is intended to allow sharing of ideas, getting formative feedback on early-stage work, and furthering collaborations among colleagues.

HIGHLIGHTS:

- Submission deadline: August 1st, 2018

- Notifications: August 31st, 2018

- Camera-ready deadline: September 7th, 2018

- Conference Dates: October 16-20th, 2018

- Submission format: Anonymized, four pages not including references, in the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstracts format (https://sigchi.org/templates)

- Selection process: Peer-Reviewed

- Presentation format: Participation in the conference poster session

- Proceedings: Included in Adjunct Proceedings and ACM Digital Library

- LBR Co-chairs: Cosmin Munteanu (University of Toronto Mississauga) and Lisa Anthony (University of Florida)

WHAT IS LATE-BREAKING WORK?

Late-Breaking Work (LBR) submissions represent work such as preliminary results, provoking and current topics, novel experiences or interactions that may not have been fully validated yet, cutting edge or emerging work that is still in exploratory stages, smaller-scale studies, or in general, work that has not yet reached a level of maturity expected for the full-length main track papers. However, LBR papers are still expected to bring a contribution to the ICMI community, commensurate with the preliminary, short, and quasi-informal nature of this track.

WHY SUBMIT TO THE LATE-BREAKING WORK TRACK AT ICMI?

Accepted LBR papers will be presented as posters during the conference. This provides an opportunity for researchers to receive feedback on early-stage work, explore potential collaborations, and otherwise engage in exciting thought-provoking discussions about their work in an informal setting that is significantly less constrained than a paper presentation. The LBR (posters) track also offers those new to the ICMI community a chance to share their preliminary research as they become familiar with this field.

Late-Breaking Work papers appear in the Adjunct Proceedings (Companion Volume) of the ICMI Proceedings. Copyright is retained by the authors, and the material from these papers can be used as the basis for future publications as long as there are ?significant? revisions from the original, as per the ACM and ACM SIGCHI policies.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Extended Abstract: An anonymized, four-page paper, not including references, in the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstracts format (https://sigchi.org/templates). The paper should be submitted in PDF format and through the ICMI submission system in the 'Late-Breaking Work' track. Due to the tight publication timeline, it is recommended that authors submit a very nearly finalized paper that is as close to camera-ready as possible, as there will be a very short timeframe for preparing the final camera-ready version and no deadline extensions can be granted.

Anonymization: Authors are instructed not to include author information in their submission. In order to help reviewers judge the situation of the LBR to prior work, authors should not remove or anonymize references to their own prior work. Instead, we recommend that authors obscure references to their own prior work by referring to it in the third person during submission. If desired, after acceptance, such references can be changed to first-person.

REVIEW PROCESS

LBRs will be evaluated to the extent that they are presenting work still in progress, rather than complete work which is under-described in order to fit into the LBR format. The LBR track will undergo an external peer review process. Submissions will be evaluated by a number of factors including (1) the relevance of the work to ICMI, (2) the quality of the submission, and (3) the degree to which it ?fits? the LBR track (e.g., in-progress results). More particularly, the quality of the submission will be evaluated based on the potential contributions of the research to the field of multimodal interfaces and its impact on the field and beyond.

ATTENDANCE

At least one author of all accepted LBR submissions must register for and attend the conference, including the conference poster session.

QUESTIONS?

For more information and updates on the ICMI 2018 Late-Breaking Results (LBR), visit the LBR page of the main conference website https://new.precisionconference.com/user/login?society=sigchi/ For further questions, contact the LBR co-chairs (cosmin@taglab.ca and lanthony@cise.ufl.edu)

- Cosmin Munteanu, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada

- Lisa Anthony, University of Florida, USA

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First International Workshop on Multimedia Content Analysis in Sports @ ACM Multimedia, October 22-26, 2018, Seoul, Korea

We'd like to invite you to submit your paper proposals for the 1st International Workshop on Multimedia Content Analysis in Sports to be held in Seoul, Korea together with ACM Multimedia 2018. The ambition of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to share ideas on current multimedia/multimodal content analysis research in sports. We welcome multimodal-based research contributions as well as best-practice contributions focusing on the following (and similar, but not limited

to) topics:

– annotation and indexing

– athlete and object tracking

– activity recognition, classification and evaluation

– event detection and indexing

– performance assessment

– injury analysis and prevention

– data driven analysis in sports

– graphical augmentation and visualization in sports

– automated training assistance

– camera pose and motion tracking

– brave new ideas / extraordinary multimodal solutions

Please refer to the workshop website for further information:

http://www.multimedia-computing.de/mmsports/

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission Due:             July 8, 2018

Acceptance Notification:     August 5, 2018

Camera Ready Submission:     August 12, 2018

Workshop Date:                TBA; either Oct 22 or Oct 26, 2018

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• Bipolar Disorder Sub-challenge (BDS) ? participants have to classify patients suffering from bipolar disorder into remission, hypo-mania and mania, as defined by the young mania rating scale, from audio-visual recordings of structured interviews (BD corpus); performance is measured by the unweighted average recall over the three classes.

• Cross-cultural Emotion Sub-challenge (CES) ? participants have to predict the level of three emotional dimensions (arousal, valence, and likability) time-continuously in a cross-cultural setup (German => Hungarian) from audio-visual recordings of dyadic interactions (SEWA corpus); performance is the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) averaged over the dimensions.

• Gold-standard Emotion Sub-Challenge (GES) ? participants have to generate a gold-standard (i.e., a single time series of emotion labels) from individual ratings of emotional dimensions (arousal, valence) that will be evaluated by a multimodal (audio, video, physiology) emotion recognition system from recordings of dyadic interactions (RECOLA corpus); performance is the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) averaged over the dimensions.

• Multimodal Affect Sensing

• Audio-based Health/Emotion Recognition
• Video-based Health/Emotion Recognition
• Physiological-based Health/Emotion Recognition
• Multimodal Representation Learning
• Semi-supervised and Unsupervised Learning
• Multi-view learning of Multiple Dimensions
• Personalised Health/Emotion Recognition
• Context in Health/Emotion Recognition
• Multiple Rater Ambiguity and Asynchrony

• Application
• Multimedia Coding and Retrieval
• Mobile and Online Applications 

• Paper submission: June 30, 2018
• Notification of acceptance: July 31, 2018
• Camera ready paper: August 14, 2018
• Workshop: October 22-26, 2018 (to be communicated)

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CALL FOR PAPERS

XV1^th International Conference of Creole Studies

'Creole Worlds, Creole Languages and Development: Educational, Cultural and Economic Challenges'

28 October 2018 - 3 November 2018, Mahé, Seychelles

The International Committee for Creole Studies (Comité International des Etudes Créoles (CIEC)) has organized International Conferences on Creole Studies for the past fifty years, at regular intervals. In 2018, the XVIth International Conference of Creole Studies will be held in Seychelles; the organization has been entrusted to the University of Seychelles in liaison with the CIEC.

The international community (UNESCO, UNDP etc.) and the Organization Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) support the educational linguistic policy and the possible institutionalization of Creole languages in the dozen of Creole-speaking countries (France and its Departments, Haiti, Dominica, Mauritius, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, San Tome and Principe) that are members of OIF. Creole studies are called upon to contribute decisively to these programs and endeavours.

The importance of Creole studies stems primarily from its contributions to the linguistic, cultural and social development of Creole -speaking societies. Beyond, the study of the genesis and development of Creole social, linguistic and cultural systems constitutes a remarkable field of study for human and social sciences, because 'Creole' societies have been formed recently (three to four centuries of existence as a rule) and because of how they are composed and evolve.

The XVIth International Symposium on Creole Studies will focus on:

'Creole Worlds, Creole Languages, Development: Educational, Cultural and Economic Challenges'.

This theme invites philosophers, historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, linguists and other researchers in human and social sciences to present their work on contemporary Creole societies in their historical, linguistic, social, political, economic and cultural evolution.

The focus of the colloquium will be on the following four major themes:

A. Creole languages and education

B. Creole Worlds and their Cultural and Economic Challenges of Development

C. Creole languages in a multilingual environment: description and analysis of the dynamics of Creole languages

D. Creole grammar: typology, variation and teaching

Presentation of the themes of the Conference

A. Creole languages and education

Faced with the challenges of education for all, in basic and middle schools, sovereign countries that use a French Creole language have introduced some measure of Creole language teaching in their schools. Some states, such as Seychelles or Haiti, have acquired a vast experience in the domain that should be examined. Mauritius has recently also embarked on this venture which calls for evaluation. The Creole-speaking Outremer Departments, whose creoles are recognized regional languages of France and which benefit from the texts regulating the teaching of regional languages in France, have also many educational practices to share.

B. Creole Worlds and their Cultural and Economic Challenges of Development

Anthropology and the history of Creole worlds are called upon to account for how the creole-speaking social formations, resulting from European colonial expansion, are facing the challenges of development and globalization.

The role of Creole languages in the development of economy (tourism, reception of migrants, etc.) has to be assessed.

Literary production in the Creole speaking islands of the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean has developed greatly in recent years in French and English as well as in Creole languages. The study of this renewal of literature and cultural practices also forms part of theme B.

The migratory movements of creole speakers (see also topic C) will also be discussed.

What are the paths of the institutionalization of the Creole languages in their respective areas of influence (see the question of Creole language academies)? Creole militant practices may also be mentioned.

C. Creole languages in a multilingual environment: description and analysis of the dynamics of Creole languages.

Recent globalization have caused many displacements of Creole-speaking populations towards more developed economic zones. New Creole-speaking communities have thus been created outside the territories of birth, such as Haitian communities in North America, populations from the Creole speaking Departments in metropolitan France, Mauritians in Australia and Seychellois in the United Kingdom. Creole speaking newcomers are found in prosperous creole-speaking areas, for instance, Haitians in Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean.Immigration to Creole-speaking areas also leads to the emergence of neo-learners of Creole languages. Globalization has led to an unprecedented diffusion of Creole languages, including via language and culture industries. These new sociolinguistic situations of diffusion have hardly been described to date. Similarly, little is known about the impact of these migratory movements on the dynamics of Creole languages. To these themes may be added the study of the genesis and evolution of Creole languages.

D. Creole grammar: typology, variation and teaching

The description of Creole language systems (phonology, grammar) remains necessary. The analysis of the variation of Creole languages and of their linguistic systems is still unsatisfactory. This theme should bring together contributions that attempt to analyze and explain phonological, morphological and grammatical systems in a typological perspective.

This theme may also include work on grammar for teaching. Indeed, in Haiti, the Seychelles and Mauritius, as in the French DROMs, questions arise concerning 'grammar models' and the use of linguistic analyses for teacher training and for teaching of Creole languages as first languages.

Questions

Topics that could be addressed, either in the form of individual papers or as workshops (please contact the organizers), include the following:

- 'Creole' diasporas and their linguistic practices

- Creole varieties developed outside the territories of birth

- The linguistic varieties of neo-learners of Creole languages

- The co - presence of Creole and French

- The development of literacy programs in Creole

- Bilingual education programs integrating the Creole language

- Literatures of Creole-speaking countries

- The state of research on Creole language corpora

- Creole development at school

- Morphology, Syntax etc. of creole languages

- The diachronic studies of Creole languages

- Relations between Creole languages and languages of the slave population (African languages, Malagasy, etc.)

- Creole history, landscape and society

- Creolization and the development of Creole societies

- Philosophy and history of ideas in Creole societies.

Enoch Aboh, Christian Barat, Arnaud Carpooran, Penda Choppy, Guillaume Fon Sing, Renaud Govain, Marie-reine Hoareau, Thom Klingler, Sibylle Kriegel, Ralph Ludwig, Carpanin Marimoutou, Salikoko Mufwene, Joelle Perreau, Laurence Pourchez, Lambert-Félix Prudent, Gillette Staudacher-Valliamee, Albert Valdman, Justin Valentin, Daniel Véronique

The papers and proposals for workshops may be included in one of the themes of the Conference and / or in a cross-cutting theme.

Proposals for papers or workshops (groupings of 3/4 papers) written in French, English or any French Creole language, with the address and institutional affiliation of the communicant (s) must reach the following e-mail address: Ciec.Sez2018@gmail.combefore 15 January 2018.

The abstracts will describe the theme of the paper, the database, the results expected and will not exceed 3,000 characters or 500 words (including bibliography). Submit 2 copies of the proposal, one anonymous (which will be used for the review), the other with the author's name, address and institutional affiliation.

After evaluation, acceptance or refusal of the proposal will be notified as from the 9 April 2018.

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11th International Conference on Natural Language Generation

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Workshop on Prosody and Meaning: Information Structure and Beyond

Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), Aix-en-Provence, France, 8 November 2018

Call for Papers

We invite submissions for the Workshop Prosody and Meaning: Information Structure and Beyond, to be held at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), Aix-en-Provence, France, 8 November 2018.

The Workshop is co-located with the 22^nd SemDial Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue, 8-10 November 2018.

Aim

Signaling the information structure of utterances has been shown to be one of the main dimensions of prosodic meaning in many languages, and remains a driving force behind the research on the typological variety of prosodic systems. Other aspects of prosodic meaning that have been investigated are the role of prosody in the generation of implicatures, in speech-act dynamics, in dialogue management, or in the marking of various kinds of questions, owing much to collaborations between phonologists and semanticists/pragmaticists. Other recent advances in the field are supported by the development of corpus resources and of new experimental methods for the investigation of the empirical validity of specific theoretical claims.

This workshop aims at bringing together theoretical and psycholinguists working on the prosody/meaning interface in different languages as well as computational linguists developing tools for prosody-meaning corpus annotation, exploration and processing.

Invited Speakers

Michael Wagner, McGill University

Pilar Prieto, ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Topics

Topics include, but are not limited to:

- prosodic reflexes of information structure in different languages and their relationship with other grammatical reflexes of information structure (morphological or syntactical),

- the relationship between information structure, ellipsis or clause fragments and prosody,

- the interplay between information structure and other aspects of prosodic meaning such as speech acts, attitude signaling, or turn-taking management,

- more generally, the role of prosody in the management and interpretation of discourse and dialogue.

Submissions

We invite the submission of abstracts for oral or poster presentations. Abstracts should be anonymous, in English, and should not exceed one page (2.5 cm margins, 12pt font size), with an extra page for examples, figures and references.

Important dates

Abstract deadline: 27 May 2018

Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2018

Workshop: 8 November 2018

Organisers

Cristel Portes, Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL), Université d’Aix-Marseille (AMU),

Arndt Riester and Uwe Reyle, Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung (IMS), Universität Stuttgart.

Scientific committee

Stefan Baumann (University of Cologne),
Roxane Bertrand (CNRS, Aix-Marseille University),
Bettina Braun (University of Constance),
Daniel Büring (University of Wien),
Sasha Calhoun (University of Wellington),
Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie (CNRS, Université de Nantes),
Kordula De Kuthy (University of Tübingen),
Mariapaola D’Imperio (Aix-Marseille University),
James German (Aix-Marseille University),
Daniel Hole (University of Stuttgart),
Frank Kügler (University of Cologne),
Amandine Michelas (CNRS, Aix-Marseille University),
Caterina Petrone (CNRS, Aix-Marseille University),
Giuseppina Turco (CNRS, Université Paris Diderot),
Pauline Welby (CNRS, Aix-Marseille University),
Margaret Zellers (University of Kiel)

More information are available on the Workshop webpage: https://semdial.hypotheses.org/prosody

Please direct any enquiries about the Workshop to: cristel.portes@lpl-aix.fr

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(2018-11-26) The 11th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP 2018), Taipei, Taiwan

International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP) is a biennial conference for scientists, researchers, and practitioners to report and discuss the latest progress in all theoretical and technological aspects of spoken language processing. Since 1998, it has been successfully held in Singapore (1998), Beijing (2000), Taipei (2002), Hong Kong, (2004), Singapore (2006), Kuming (2008), Tainan (2010), Hong Kong (2012), Singapore (2014), and Tianjin (2016). ISCSLP is the flagship conference of SIG-CSLP, ISCA.

The 11th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP 2018) will be held on November 26-29, 2018 in Taipei.

While ISCSLP is focused primarily on Chinese languages, works on other languages that may be applied to Chinese speech and language are also encouraged. The working language of ISCSLP is English.

Important dates

Feb 22, 2018   Submission of special session proposals

Apr 30, 2018   Submission of tutorial proposals

Jun 11, 2018    Submission of regular and special session papers

Aug 01, 2018   Submission of demo proposals

ISCSLP2018 conference website: http://iscslp2018.org/

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Workshop on the Processing of Prosody across Languages and Varieties (ProsLang)
Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), New Zealand
29-30 November 2018
 
Call for Papers
We invite submissions for the Workshop on the Processing of Prosody across Languages and Varieties (ProsLang), to be held at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), New Zealand, 29-30 November 2018.
 
The Workshop is coordinated with the 17th Speech Science & Technology Conference,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, 4-7 December 2018.
 
Aim
As an integral part of spoken language, prosody has been shown to play an important role in many speech production and perception processes. However, our knowledge of the role of prosody in speech processing draws on a relatively narrow range of (mostly closely related) languages. There is an urgent need for more psycholinguistic research looking at commonalities and differences in the use of prosodic cues in speech processing across different languages, and also different varieties of major languages. This workshop aims to bring together researchers working in this area. We are particularly interested in research on: (i) the role of prosody in semantic interpretation, including information structure; and (ii) prosody as an organisational structure for speech production and perception, including multimodal perspectives.
 
Invited Speakers
Anne Cutler, MARCS, Western Sydney University
Bettina Braun, Universität Konstanz
Jennifer Cole, Northwestern University
Janet Fletcher, University of Melbourne
Nicole Gotzner, Leibniz-ZAS Berlin
 
Topics
Topics include, but are not limited to, cross-linguistic and cross-varietal commonalities and differences in:
- the role of prosody in signalling information structure, particularly in the activation and resolution of contrast and contrastive alternatives
- the integration of prosody and morphosyntactic cues in speech comprehension, e.g. as cues to information structure
- the role of prosody in the management and interpretation of discourse
- prosodic structure as an organisational frame in speech production or perception
- links between prosodic structure and multimodal speech cues such as gesture
 
Submissions       
We invite submissions of one-page abstracts following the guidelines on the Workshop website:
https://proslang.wordpress.com/about/ 
  
*** Abstract deadline extended: 23 April 2018 ***
Notification of acceptance: 30 April 2018
Workshop: 29-30 November 2018
 
Organisers
Sasha Calhoun, Paul Warren, Olcay Türk, Mengzhu Yan, VUW; Janet Fletcher, University of Melbourne
Please direct any enquiries about the Workshop to: proslangworkshop@gmail.com.
  
  

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FIRST JOINT CALL for Workshop Proposals: ACL/COLING/EMNLP/NAACL 2018

Proposal Submission Deadline: October 22, 2017

Notification of Acceptance: November 17, 2017

The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), the International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING), the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), and the Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL HLT) invite proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with ACL 2018, COLING 2018, EMNLP 2018, or NAACL HLT 2018. We solicit proposals on any topic of interest to the ACL communities. Workshops will be held at one of the following conference venues:

ACL 2018 (the 56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics) will be held in Melbourne, Australia, July 15 - July 20, 2018, with workshops to take place on July 19-20: http://acl2018.org/

COLING 2018 (the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics) will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, August 20 - August 25, 2018, with workshops to be held on August 20-21, 2018: http://coling2018.org/

NAACL HLT 2018 (the 16th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies) will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, June 1 - June 6, 2018 with workshops to be held on June 5-6, 2018: http://naacl2018.org/

EMNLP 2018 (the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 2018) will be held later in 2018 (after the other three conferences). Exact details on dates and venue for EMNLP workshops will be announced later.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Proposals should be submitted as PDF documents. Note that submissions should essentially be ready to be turned into a Call for Workshop Papers within one week of notification (see Timelines below).

The proposals should contain:

- A title and brief (2-page max) description of the workshop topic and content.

- The names, affiliations, and email addresses of the organizers, with one-paragraph statements of their research interests, areas of expertise, and experience in organising workshops and related events.

- A list of Programme Committee members, with an indication of which members have already agreed. It is highly desirable for proposals to have at least 75% of the Programme Committee reviewers confirmed at the time of the submission. Organizers should do their best to estimate the number of submissions (especially for recurring workshops) in order to: (a) ensure a sufficient number of reviewers so that each paper receives 3 reviews, and (b) anticipate that no one is committed to reviewing more than 3 papers. This practice is likely to ensure on-time, and more thorough and thoughtful reviews.

- A list of invited speakers, if applicable, with an indication of which ones have already agreed and which are indicative, and sources of funding for the speakers.

- An estimate of the number of attendees.

- A description of any shared tasks associated with the workshop, and estimate of the number of participants.

- A description of special requirements and technical needs.

- The preferred venue(s) (ACL/COLING/NAACL/EMNLP), if any, and description of any constraints (e.g. if the workshop is compatible with only one of these events, logistically, thematically or otherwise)

- If the workshop has been held before, a note specifying where previous workshops were held, how many submissions the workshop received, how many papers were accepted (also specify if they were not regular papers, e.g. shared task system description papers), and how many attendees the workshop attracted.

Note that the only financial support available to workshops is a single free workshop registration for an invited speaker; all other costs must be borne independently by the workshop organizers.

In addition, you will need to specify the following information when you submit via the START System (not in the PDF proposal):

- A very brief advertisement or tagline for the workshop, up to 140 characters, that highlights any key information you wish prospective attendees to know, and which would be suitable to be put onto a web-based survey (see below).

- A URL for the workshop website which will be shown in the web-based survey.

- A list of organizers’ names which will be shown in the web-based survey.

The proposals should be submitted no later than October 22, 2018, 11:59 PM Samoa Standard Time (SST) (UTC/GMT-11). Submission is electronic, using the Softconf START conference management system at

https://www.softconf.com/i/acl-workshops2018

The workshop proposals will be evaluated according to their originality and impact, as well as the quality of the organizing team and Programme Committee. In addition, to estimate the attendance of the different workshops, a new voting mechanism will be implemented, where attendees of ACL-affiliated events from the past 3-5 years will be able to vote on which workshops they would like to attend in 2018. (A representative prototype of the survey is shown here, but is subject to change: https://goo.gl/3cuZON.) The overall diversity of the workshops will also be taken into account to ensure the conference program is varied and balanced. The workshop co-chairs will work together to assign workshops to the four conferences, taking into account the location preferences and technical constraints provided by the workshop proposers.

Organizers of accepted proposals will be responsible for publicizing and running the workshop, including reviewing submissions, producing the camera ready workshop proceedings, and organizing the meeting days. It is crucial that organizers commit to all deadlines. In particular, failure to produce the camera ready proceedings on time will lead to the exclusion of the workshop from the unified proceedings and author indexes.  Workshop organizers cannot accept submissions for publication that will be (or have been) published elsewhere, although they are free to set their own policies on simultaneous submission and review. Since the conferences will occur at different times, the timelines for the submission and reviewing of workshop papers, and the preparation of camera-ready copies, will be different for each conference. Suggested timelines for each of the conferences are given below. Workshop organizers should not deviate from this schedule unless absolutely necessary, and with explicit agreement from the relevant Workshop Chairs.

The ACL has a set of policies on workshops. You can find the ACL's general policies on workshops, the financial policy for workshops, and the financial policy for SIG workshops at:

http://aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php?title=Conference_Handbook

TIMELINE FOR 2018 WORKSHOPS

Timeline:

October 22, 2018: Proposal Submission Deadline

November 17, 2018: Notification of Acceptance

Individual dates:

* ACL:

Dec 11, 2018: First Call for Workshop Papers

Mar 5, 2018: Second Call for Workshop Papers

April 8, 2018: Workshop Paper Due Date

May 7, 2018: Notification of Acceptance

May 28, 2018: Camera-ready papers due

July 19-20, 2018: Workshop Dates

* COLING:

TBA: First Call for Workshop Papers

TBA: Second Call for Workshop Papers

TBA: Workshop Paper Due Date

TBA: Notification of Acceptance

TBA: Camera-ready papers due

Aug 20-21, 2018: Workshop Dates

* NAACL:

27 November 2017: First Call for Workshop Papers

8 January 2018: Second Call for Workshop Papers

2 March 2018: Workshop Paper Due Date

2 April 2018: Notification of Acceptance

16 April 2018: Camera-ready papers due

5-6 June 2018: Workshop Dates

* EMNLP:

TBA: First Call for Workshop Papers

TBA: Second Call for Workshop Papers

TBA: Workshop Paper Due Date

TBA: Notification of Acceptance

TBA: Camera-ready papers due

TBA: Workshop Dates

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS

* ACL:

Brendan O’Connor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Eva Maria Vecchi, University of Cambridge

* COLING:

Tim Baldwin, University of Melbourne

Yoav Goldberg, Bar Ilan University

Jing Jiang, Singapore Management University

* NAACL:

Marie Meteer, Brandeis University

Jason Williams, Microsoft Research

* EMNLP:

TBA

For inquiries, send email to the workshop organizers at:

acl-coling-emnlp-naacl-workshops@googlegroups.com

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5^th INTERNATIONAL WINTER SCHOOL ON BIG DATA
 
BigDat 2019
 
Cambridge, United Kingdom
 
January 7-11, 2019
 
Co-organized by:
 
Cambridge Big Data Initiative, University of Cambridge
 
Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice (IRDTA)
Brussels / London
 
http://bigdat2019.irdta.eu/
 
********************************************************
 
--- Early registration deadline: October 15, 2018 ---
 
********************************************************
 
SCOPE:
 
BigDat 2019 will be a research training event with a global scope aiming at updating participants on the most recent advances in the critical and fast developing area of big data, which covers a large spectrum of current exciting research and industrial innovation with an extraordinary potential for a huge impact on scientific discoveries, medicine, engineering, business models, and society itself. Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views with the audience.
 
Most big data subareas will be displayed, namely foundations, infrastructure, management, search and mining, security and privacy, and applications (to biological and health sciences, to business, finance and transportation, to online social networks, etc.). Major challenges of analytics, management and storage of big data will be identified through 2 keynote lectures, 24 four-hour courses, and 1 round table, which will tackle the most active and promising topics. The organizers are convinced that outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated students. Interaction will be a main component of the event.
 
An open session will give participants the opportunity to present their own work in progress in 5 minutes. Moreover, there will be two special sessions with industrial and recruitment profiles.
 
ADDRESSED TO:
 
Master's students, PhD students, postdocs, and industry practitioners will be typical profiles of participants. However, there are no formal pre-requisites for attendance in terms of academic degrees. Since there will be a variety of levels, specific knowledge background may be assumed for some of the courses. Overall, BigDat 2019 is addressed to students, researchers and practitioners who want to keep themselves updated about recent developments and future trends. All will surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with major researchers, industry leaders and innovators.
 
STRUCTURE:
 
3 courses will run in parallel during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they wish to attend as well as to move from one to another.
 
VENUE:
 
BigDat 2019 will take place in Cambridge, a city home of a world-renowned university. The venue will be:
 
University of Cambridge
Department of Engineering
Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1PZ
 
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
 
tba
 
PROFESSORS AND COURSES:
 
Thomas Bäck (Leiden University), [introductory/intermediate], Data Driven Modeling and Optimization for Industrial Applications
 
Richard Bonneau (New York University), [introductory] Large Scale Machine Learning Methods for Integrating Protein Sequence and Structure to Predict Gene Function
 
Altan Cakir (Istanbul Technical University), [introductory/intermediate] Processing Big Data with Apache Spark: From Science to Industrial Applications
 
Jiannong Cao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), [introductory/intermediate] Cross-domain Big Data Fusion and Analytics
 
Nitesh Chawla (University of Notre Dame), [intermediate/advanced] Network Science: Representation Learning and Higher Order Networks
 
Nello Cristianini (University of Bristol), [introductory] The Interface between Big Data and Society
 
Geoffrey C. Fox (Indiana University, Bloomington), [intermediate] High Performance Big Data Computing
 
David Gerbing (Portland State University), [introductory] Data Visualization with R
 
Craig Knoblock (University of Southern California), [intermediate/advanced] Building Knowledge Graphs
 
Geoff McLachlan (University of Queensland), [intermediate/advanced] Applying Finite Mixture Models to Big Data
 
Folker Meyer (Argonne National Laboratory), [intermediate] Skyport2: A Multi Cloud Framework for Executing Scientific Workflows
 
Wladek Minor (University of Virginia), [introductory/advanced] Big Data in Biomedical Sciences
 
Soumya Mohanty (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), [introductory/intermediate] Swarm Intelligence Methods for Statistical Regression
 
Sankar K. Pal (Indian Statistical Institute), [introductory/advanced] Machine Intelligence and Soft Granular Mining: Features, Applications and Challenges
 
Lior Rokach (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), [introductory/advanced] Ensemble Learning
 
Michael Rosenblum (University of Potsdam), [introductory/intermediate] Synchronization Approach to Time Series Analysis
 
Hanan Samet (University of Maryland), [introductory/intermediate] Sorting in Space: Multidimensional, Spatial, and Metric Data Structures for Applications in Spatial and Spatio-textual Databases, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Location-based Services
 
Rory Smith (Monash University), [intermediate/advanced] Statistical Inference: Optimal Methods for Learning from Signals in Noise
 
Jaideep Srivastava (University of Minnesota), [intermediate] Social Computing ? Concepts and Applications
 
Mayte Suárez-Fariñas (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai), [intermediate] A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Longitudinal Data Using R
 
Jeffrey Ullman (Stanford University), [introductory] Big-data Algorithms That Aren't Machine Learning
 
Andrey Ustyuzhanin (National Research University Higher School of Economics), [intermediate/advanced] Surrogate Modelling for Fun and Profit
 
Wil van der Aalst (RWTH Aachen University), [introductory/intermediate] Process Mining: Data Science in Action
 
Zhongfei Zhang (Binghamton University), [introductory/advanced] Relational and Multimedia Data Learning
 
OPEN SESSION
 
An open session will collect 5-minute voluntary presentations of work in progress by participants. They should submit a half-page abstract containing title, authors, and summary of the research to david@irdta.eu by December 30, 2018.
 
INDUSTRIAL SESSION:
 
A session will be devoted to 10-minute demonstrations of practical applications of big data in industry. Companies interested in contributing are welcome to submit a 1-page abstract containing the program of the demonstration and the logistics needed. At least one of the people participating in the demonstration must register for the event. Expressions of interest have to be submitted to david@irdta.eu by December 30, 2018.
 
EMPLOYER SESSION:
 
Firms searching for personnel well skilled in big data will have a space reserved for one-to-one contacts. It is recommended to produce a 1-page .pdf leaflet with a brief description of the company and the profiles looked for, to be circulated among the participants prior to the event. At least one of the people in charge of the search must register for the event. Expressions of interest have to be submitted to david@irdta.eu by December 30, 2018.
 
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: (to be completed)
 
Sara Morales (Brussels)
Manuel J. Parra-Royón (Granada)
David Silva (London, co-chair)
Filippo Spiga (Cambridge, co-chair)
Richard E. Turner (Cambridge)
 
REGISTRATION:
 
It has to be done at
 
http://bigdat2019.irdta.eu/registration/
 
The selection of up to 8 courses requested in the registration template is only tentative and non-binding. For the sake of organization, it will be helpful to have an approximation of the respective demand for each course. During the event, participants will be free to attend the courses they wish.
 
Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed and the on-line registration facility disabled when the capacity of the venue is exhausted. It is highly recommended to register prior to the event.
 
FEES:
 
Fees comprise access to all courses and lunches. There are several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration deadline.
 
ACCOMMODATION:
 
Suggestions for accommodation are available on the event website.
 
CERTIFICATE:
 
A certificate of successful participation in the event will be delivered indicating the number of hours of lectures.
 
QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:
 
david@irdta.eu
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
 
Cambridge Big Data Initiative, University of Cambridge

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CALL FOR PAPERS:

30th Conference on Electronic Speech Signal Processing (ESSV) 2019

Venue: TU Dresden, Germany

Web: www.essv.de/essv2019

ORGANIZERS:

Peter Birkholz, Simon Stone (TU Dresden, Germany)

CONFERENCE TOPICS:

* Speech recognition and natural language understanding
* Speech synthesis and natural language generation
* Measuring, processing, and modeling articulation
* Phonetic, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects in technical applications
* Multimodal dialog systems
* Models of speech acquisition
* Acoustic and visual pattern recognition
* Musical, biological, and technical signals ? applications and processing
* Applications in medical, healthcare, and rehabilitation technologies
* Cognitive and neural systems
* Speech technology in industrial and home environments

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

* Ercan Altinsoy
* Sidney Fels
* Christian Herbst
* Jose Gonzalez
* Korin Richmond

IMPORTANT DATES:

* Conference: March 6 - 8, 2019
* Submission deadline for extended abstract (1 page): November 30, 2018
* Notification of acceptance: until December 14, 2018
* Camera-ready paper submission deadline: January 25, 2019

CONFERENCE LANGUAGES:

German and English

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13th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS
 
LATA 2019
 
Saint Petersburg, Russia
 
March 25-29, 2019
 
Organized by:
           
Saint Petersburg State University
and
Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice, Brussels/London
 
http://lata2019.irdta.eu/
*************************************************************************
 
AIMS:
 
LATA is a conference series on theoretical computer science and its applications. LATA 2019 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from classical theory fields as well as application areas.
 
VENUE:
 
LATA 2019 will take place in Saint Petersburg, whose historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The venue will be Saint Petersburg State University.
 
SCOPE:
 
Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to:
 
algebraic language theory
algorithms for semi-structured data mining
algorithms on automata and words
automata and logic
automata for system analysis and programme verification
automata networks
automatic structures
codes
combinatorics on words
computational complexity
concurrency and Petri nets
data and image compression
descriptional complexity
foundations of finite state technology
foundations of XML
grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, unification, categorial, etc.)
grammatical inference and algorithmic learning
graphs and graph transformation
language varieties and semigroups
language-based cryptography
mathematical and logical foundations of programming methodologies
parallel and regulated rewriting
parsing
patterns
power series
string processing algorithms
symbolic dynamics
term rewriting
transducers
trees, tree languages and tree automata
weighted automata
 
STRUCTURE:
 
LATA 2019 will consist of:
 
invited talks
peer-reviewed contributions
 
INVITED SPEAKERS:
 
tba
 
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:
 
Krishnendu Chatterjee (Institute of Science and Technology Austria, AT)
Bruno Courcelle (University of Bordeaux, FR)
Manfred Droste (University of Leipzig, DE)
Travis Gagie (Diego Portales University, CL)
Peter Habermehl (Paris Diderot University, FR)
Tero Harju (University of Turku, FI)
Radu Iosif (Verimag, FR)
Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto University, JP)
Juhani Karhumäki (University of Turku, FI)
Lila Kari (University of Waterloo, CA)
Juha Kärkkäinen (University of Helsinki, FI)
Bakhadyr Khoussainov (University of Auckland, NZ)
Sergey Kitaev (University of Strathclyde, UK)
Shmuel Tomi Klein (Bar-Ilan University, IL)
Olga Kouchnarenko (University of Franche-Comté, FR)
Thierry Lecroq (University of Rouen, FR)
Markus Lohrey (University of Siegen, DE)
Sebastian Maneth (University of Bremen, DE)
Carlos Martín-Vide (Rovira i Virgili University, ES, chair)
Giancarlo Mauri (University of Milano-Bicocca, IT)
Filippo Mignosi (University of L'Aquila, IT)
Victor Mitrana (Polytechnic University of Madrid, ES)
Joachim Niehren (INRIA Lille, FR)
Alexander Okhotin (Saint Petersburg State University, RU)
Dominique Perrin (University of Paris-Est, FR)
Matteo Pradella (Polytechnic University of Milan, IT)
Jean-François Raskin (Université Libre de Bruxelles, BE)
Marco Roveri (Bruno Kessler Foundation, IT)
Wojciech Rytter (University of Warsaw, PL)
Kai Salomaa (Queen's University, CA)
Sven Schewe (University of Liverpool, UK)
Helmut Seidl (Technical University of Munich, DE)
Ayumi Shinohara (Tohoku University, JP)
Hans Ulrich Simon (Ruhr-University of Bochum, DE)
William F. Smyth (McMaster University, CA)
Frank Stephan (National University of Singapore, SG)
Martin Sulzmann (Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, DE)
Jorma Tarhio (Aalto University, FI)
Stefano Tonetta (Bruno Kessler Foundation, IT)
Rob van Glabbeek (University of New South Wales, AU)
Margus Veanes (Microsoft Research, US)
Mahesh Viswanathan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, US)
Mikhail Volkov (Ural Federal University, RU)
Fang Yu (National Chengchi University, TW)
Hans Zantema (Eindhoven University of Technology, NL)
 
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
 
Alexander Okhotin (Saint Petersburg, co-chair)
Manuel Parra-Royón (Granada)
Dana Shapira (Ariel)
David Silva (London, co-chair)
 
SUBMISSIONS:
 
Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (all included) and should be prepared according to the standard format for Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). If necessary, exceptionally authors are allowed to provide missing proofs in a clearly marked appendix.
 
Submissions have to be uploaded to:
 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lata2019
 
PUBLICATIONS:
 
A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference.
 
A special issue of a major journal will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation.
 
REGISTRATION:
 
The registration form can be found at:
 
http://lata2019.irdta.eu/Registration.php
 
DEADLINES (all at 23:59 CET):
 
Paper submission: November 11, 2018
Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: December 16, 2018
Final version of the paper for the LNCS proceedings: December 23, 2018
Early registration: December 23, 2018
Late registration: March 11, 2019
Submission to the journal special issue: June 29, 2019
 
QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:
 
david (at) irdta.eu
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
 
?????-????????????? ??????????????? ???????????
 
IRDTA ? Institute for Research Development, Training and Advice, Brussels/London

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The Second (2019) IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval (MIPR'19)

http://www.ieee-mipr.org
San Jose, CA, USA
March 28-30, 2019

New forms of multimedia data (such as text, numbers, tags, networking, signals,
geo-tagged information, graphs/relationships, 3D/VR/AR and sensor data, etc.)
has emerged in many applications in addition to traditional multimedia data
(image, video, audio). Multimedia has become the biggest of big data as
the foundation of today's data-driven discoveries. Almost all disciplines of
science and engineering, as well as social sciences, involve multimedia data
in some forms, such as recording experiments, driverless cars, unmanned aerial
vehicles, smart communities, biomedical instruments, security surveillance.
Some recent events demonstrate the power of real-time broadcast of unfolding
events on social networks. Multimedia data is not just big in volume, but also
multi-modal and mostly unstructured. Storing, indexing, searching, integrating,
and recognizing from the vast amounts of data create unprecedented challenges.
Even though significant progress has been made processing multimedia data,
today's solutions are inadequate in handling data from millions of sources
simultaneously.

The IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Information
Processing and Retrieval (IEEE-MIPR) aims to provide a forum for original research
contributions and practical system design, implementation, and applications
of multimedia information processing and retrieval for single modality or
multiple modalities. The target audiences will be university researchers,
scientists, industry practitioners, software engineers, and graduate students
who need to become acquainted with technologies for big data analytics, machine
intelligence, information fusion in multimedia information processing and retrieval.
A collection of keynotes, open panels, and workshops will be held, together
with paper/poster sessions.

The conference will accept regular papers (6 pages), short papers (4 pages),
and demo papers (2 pages). Authors are encouraged to compare their approaches,
qualitatively or quantitatively, with existing work and explain the strength
and weakness of the new approaches. Selected submissions will be invited to submit
to journal special issues.

The conference includes (but not limited) the following topics of multimedia
data processing and retrieval.

Multimedia Retrieval
  * Multimedia Search and Recommendation
  * Web-Scale Retrieval
  * Relevance Feedback, Active/Transfer Learning
  * 3D and sensor data retrieval
  * Multimodal Media (images, videos, texts, graph/relationship) Retrieval
  * High-Level Semantic Multimedia Features

Machine Learning/Deep Learning/Data Mining
  * Deep Learning in Multimedia Data and / or Multimodal Fusion
  * Deep Cross-Learning for Novel Features and Feature Selection
  * High-Performance Deep Learning (Theories and Infrastructures)
  * Spatio-Temporal Data Mining

Content Understanding and Analytics
  * Multimodal/Multisensor Integration and Analysis
  * Effective and Scalable Solution for Big Data Integration
  * Affective and Perceptual Multimedia
  * Multimedia/Multimodal Interaction Interfaces with humans

Multimedia and Vision
  * Multimedia Telepresence and Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality
  * Visual Concept Detection
  * Object Detection and Tracking
  * 3D Modeling, Reconstruction, and Interactive Applications

Systems and Infrastructures
  * Multimedia Systems and Middleware
  * Telepresence and Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality
  * Software Infrastructure for Data Analytics
  * Distributed Multimedia Systems and Cloud Computing

Data Management
  * Multimedia Data Collections, Modeling, Indexing, or Storage
  * Data Integrity, Security, Protection, Privacy
  * Standards and Policies for Data Management

Novel Applications
  * Multimedia applications for health and sports
  * Multimedia applications for culture and education
  * Multimedia applications for fashion and living
  * Multimedia applications for security and safety
  * Any other novel applications

Internet of Multimedia Things
  * Real-Time Data Processing
  * Autonomous Systems such as Driverless Cars, Robots, and Drones
  * Mobile and Wearable Multimedia

Important Dates:
===============
  * Workshop proposals: September 15, 2018
  * Workshop notification: October 1, 2018
  * Paper submission: October 1, 2018
  * Notification of acceptance: November 20, 2018
  * Camera ready due: January 20, 2019 
  * Author registration due:  January 20, 2019


General Co-Chairs:
===============
Mohan Kankanhalli, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Rainer Lienhart, Universitat Augsburg, Germany
Chengcui Zhang, University of Alabama, USA


Program Co-Chairs:
===============
Min Chen, University of Washington, USA
Leonel Sousa, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Guan-Ming Su, Dolby Labs, USA
Yonghong Tian, Beijing University, China

--

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CALL FOR PAPERS
IWSDS 2019: International Workshop on Spoken Dialogue 
Systems Technology
Place: Siracusa, Sicily, Italy
Main Conference Dates: April 24-26, 2019
Web site: https://iwsds2019.unikore.it/

https://easychair.org/cfp/IWSDS2019 

http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=80840&copyownerid=128361 

========================================

The  INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SPOKEN DIALOGUE SYSTEMS 
TECHNOLOGY (IWSDS) 2019 invites paper submissions in any 
topic related to the main conference theme 'Increasing 
naturalness and flexibility in spoken dialogue 
interaction:'

* Dialogue systems and reasoning
* Machine learning methods for spoken dialogue systems
* Multi-party and multi-lingual dialogue systems
* Open and multi domain systems
* Engagement and emotion in human-robot interactions
* Spoken dialog systems for low-resource languages
* Big data and large scale spoken dialogue systems
* Domain Transfer and adaptation techniques for spoken 
dialog systems
* Spoken dialogue systems applications
* Connecting spoken dialogue systems to global AI
* Personalized conversational agents
* Human-Robot dialogue systems
* Resources for creating dialogue systems
* Multimodal dialogue systems
* Reasoning and Q&A through dialogue interactions

However, submissions are not limited to these topics, and 
submission of papers in all areas of spoken dialogue 
systems is encouraged. We particularly welcome papers that 
can be illustrated by a demonstration, and will organize 
the conference in order to best accommodate these papers, 
whatever their category.

As usual, a selection of accepted papers will be published 
in a book by Springer following the conference (Springer 
LNEE series, SCOPUS and other important indexes).

Authors are requested to submit PDF files of their 
manuscripts using the paper submission system: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iwsds2019

We distinguish between the following categories of 
submissions:

* Long Research Papers are reserved for reports on mature 
research results. The expected length of a long paper 
should be in the range of 8-12 pages, including 
references.
* Short Research Papers should be in the range of 4-6 
pages, including references. Authors may choose this 
category if they wish to report on smaller case studies or 
ongoing but interesting and original research efforts.
* Position Papers deal with novel research ideas or 
view-points which describe trends or fruitful starting 
points for future research and elicit discussion and are 
not much researched. They should be 2 pages long, 
excluding references.
* Demo Submissions - System Papers: Authors who wish to 
demonstrate their system may choose this category and 
provide a description of their system and demo. System 
papers should not exceed 6 pages in total.

IWSDS 2019 requires that all authors wishing to present a 
paper take into account:

* The paper is substantially original and will not be 
submitted to any other conference or journal during the 
IWSDS 2019 review period.
* The paper does not contain any plagiarism.
* The paper will be presented by one of the authors 
in-person at the conference site according to the schedule 
published. Any paper accepted in the technical program, 
but not presented on-site will be withdrawn from the 
official conference proceedings.

----------------------------------------------------
Important dates:

Paper submission deadline: December 10, 2018
Acceptance/rejection notification: January 25, 2019
Camera-ready paper due: February 15, 2019
Early bird registration deadline: February 26, 2019
Conference dates: April 24-26, 2019
----------------------------------------------------

Templates for formatting are available on the conference 
website: https://iwsds2019.unikore.it

* Latex Style and Template: 
https://iwsds2019.unikore.it/resources/svmult.zip
* Word Template: 
https://iwsds2019.unikore.it/resources/T1-book.zip
* Requirements for submitting figures that are acceptable: 
https://iwsds2019.unikore.it/resources/Art_Guidelines.pdf

For more information, you can visit the official website 
of the conference: https://iwsds2019.unikore.it/


General Chairs
   Sabato Marco Siniscalchi
   Haizhou Li (Curtesy Assistant)

Technical Program Chairs
    Sandro Cumani
    Valerio Mario Salerno

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ESANN 2019: European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks,

Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning

Bruges, Belgium, 24-25-26 April 2019 

http://www.esann.org/

Call for papers

The call for papers is available at http://www.esann.org/.  The deadline for submitting papers is November 19, 2018.

The ESANN conferences cover machine learning, artificial neural networks, statistical information processing and computational intelligence. Mathematical foundations, algorithms and tools, and applications are covered.  In addition to regular sessions, 7 special sessions will be organized on the following topics:

- Streaming data analysis, concept drift and analysis of dynamic data sets

- Embeddings and Representation Learning for Structured Data

- Parallel and Distributed Machine Learning: Theory and Applications

- Societal Issues in Machine Learning: When Learning from Data is Not Enough

- Reliable Machine Learning

- Statistical physics of learning and inference

- 60 Years of Weightless Neural Systems

ESANN 2019 builds upon a successful series of conferences organized each year since 1993. ESANN has become a major scientific event in the machine learning, computational intelligence and artificial neural networks fields over the years.

The conference will be organized in Bruges, one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Europe. Designated as the 'Venice of the North', the city has preserved all the charms of the medieval heritage. Its center, which is inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list, is in itself a real open air museum.

We hope to receive your submission to ESANN 2019 and to see you in Bruges next year!

-----------------------------------------------------

If you do not wish to receive mailings about ESANN conferences, please fill the following form and send it to esann@uclouvain.be (do not reply to this e-mail!):

Name: ....................

First Name: ....................

E-mail address: ....................

Tick one of the following boxes:

O I do not wish to receive any mailing (both printed and e-mails) about the ESANN conference

O I do not wish to receive emails about the ESANN conference, but I accept to receive the printed versions of the call for papers and program (maximum 2 postal mails per year)

O I do not wish to receive postal mails about the ESANN conference, but I accept to receive e-mails (maximum 3 per year)

-----------------------------------------------------

========================================================

ESANN - European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks,

Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning

http://www.esann.org/

* For submissions of papers, reviews, registrations:

Michel Verleysen

Univ. Cath. de Louvain - Machine Learning Group

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2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)
12-17 May 2019 ? Brighton, UK
Special Session Proposal Deadline: 20 August 2018
Tutorial Proposal Deadline: 22 October 2018
Paper Submissions Deadline: 29 October 2018
Signal Processing Letters Deadline: 14 January 2019
Sponsored by IEEE SPS

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Les 8èmes Journées de Phonétique Clinique auront lieu à l¹Université de
Mons. Les informations relatives tant aux aspects organisationnels qu¹au
fonctionnement scientifique de ces JPC suivront prochainement.

Mais déjà, nous vous engageons à bloquer dans vos agendas les dates
arrêtées: du 14 au 16 mai 2019.

Très cordialement,

V. Delvaux, B. Harmegnies, K. Huet, M. Piccaluga

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Dialog System Technology Challenge 7 (DSTC7)
Call for Participation: Data distribution has been started
Website: http://workshop.colips.org/dstc7/index.html

========================================

Background
-----------------
The DSTC shared tasks have provided common testbeds for the dialog
research community since 2013.

From its sixth edition, it has been rebranded as 'Dialog System
Technology Challenge' to cover a wider variety of dialog related problems.

For this year's challenge, we opened the call for track proposals and
selected the following three parallel tracks by peer-reviews:

- Sentence Selection Track
- Sentence Generation Track
- Audio Visual Scene-aware dialog (AVSD) Track

Participation is welcomed from any research team (academic, corporate,
non-profit, government).

Important Dates
------------------------
- Jun 1, 2018: Training data is released
- Sep 10, 2018: Test data is released
- Sep 24, 2018: Entry submission deadline
- Oct or Nov 2018: Paper submission deadline
- Spring 2019: DSTC7 special session or workshop (venue: TBD)

DSTC7 Organizing Committee
--------------------------------------------
- Koichiro Yoshino - Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan
- Chiori Hori - Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), USA
- Julien Perez - Naver Labs Europe, France
- Luis Fernando D'Haro - Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore

DSTC7 Track Organizers
-------------------------------------
Sentence Selection Track:
- Lazaros Polymenakos - IBM Research, USA
- Chulaka Gunasekara - IBM Research, USA
- Walter S. Lasecki - University of Michigan, USA
- Jonathan Kummerfeld - University of Michigan, USA

Sentence Generation Track:
- Michel Galley - Microsoft Research AI&R, USA
- Chris Brockett - Microsoft Research AI&R, USA
- Jianfeng Gao - Microsoft Research AI&R, USA
- Bill Dolan - Microsoft Research AI&R, USA

Audio Visual Scene-aware dialog (AVSD) Track:
- Chiori Hori - Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), USA
- Tim K. Marks - Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), USA
- Devi Parikh - Georgia Tech, USA
- Dhruv Batra - Georgia Tech, USA

DSTC Steering Committee
---------------------------------------
- Jason Williams - Microsoft Research (MSR), USA
- Rafael E. Banchs - Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore
- Seokhwan Kim - Adobe Research, USA
- Matthew Henderson - PolyAI, Singapore
- Verena Rieser - Heriot-Watt University, UK

Contact Information
---------------------------------------
Join the DSTC mailing list to get the latest updates about DSTC7:

- To join the mailing list: send an email to
listserv@lists.research.microsoft.com and put 'subscribe DSTC' in the
body of the message (without the quotes).
- To post a message: send your message to dstc@lists.research.microsoft.com.

For specific enquiries about DSTC7:
- Please feel free to contact any of the Organizing Committee members
directly.

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