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[SIPTA] White Paper: Introduction to Bayesian Networks for Research and Analytics

by Stefan Conrady

Sept. 3, 2013

[SIPTA] WPMSIIP 2013 - Final Announcement

by Alessandro Antonucci

WPMSIIP 2013 (5-10 Sept 2013, Lugano, Switzerland) Sixth Workshop on Principles and Methods of Statistical Inference with Interval Probability http://ipg.idsia.ch/wpmsiip2013 Dear friends and colleagues, The Imprecise Probability Group (ipg.idsia.ch) at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) organizes a workshop on principles and methods of statistical inference with interval (and more generally imprecise) probability. This workshop is a follow-up to five earlier WPMSIIPs held in Durham (2008, 2010), Munich (2009, 2012), and Ljubljana (2011). The workshop runs from Thursday the 5th of September until Tuesday the 10th of September 2013. Each of the five workdays of the workshop will start at 9am and will be focused on a specific topic. On Sunday the 8th of September a walking tour in the mountain area around Lugano is planned. The major aim of the workshop is to stimulate discussion on ongoing research, therefore especially the afternoons are structured very informally. Everyone, including PhD students, is welcome to participate and/or to present their views on one or more of the covered topics, on one or more days! We welcome any stimulating contribution, ranging from a presentation to a short informal statement. For more information and a tentative programme, please visit: http://ipg.idsia.ch/wpmsiip2013 Your help in circulating this call for participation will be highly appreciated. If you want to join the workshop, please contact Alessandro Antonucci (alessandro(a)idsia.ch). -- _________________________________ Alessandro Antonucci IDSIA Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Via Cantonale (Galleria 2) CH-6928, Manno-Lugano, CH mail: alessandro(a)idsia.ch web: www.idsia.ch/~alessandro skype: alessandro.antonucci tel: +41 58 666 65 15 mob: +39 345 812 70 17 _________________________________

Aug. 12, 2013

[SIPTA] WPMSIIP 2013 - Final Announcement

by Alessandro Antonucci

WPMSIIP 2013 (5-10 Sept 2013, Lugano, Switzerland) Sixth Workshop on Principles and Methods of Statistical Inference with Interval Probability http://ipg.idsia.ch/wpmsiip2013 Dear friends and colleagues, The Imprecise Probability Group (ipg.idsia.ch) at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA) organizes a workshop on principles and methods of statistical inference with interval (and more generally imprecise) probability. This workshop is a follow-up to five earlier WPMSIIPs held in Durham (2008, 2010), Munich (2009, 2012), and Ljubljana (2011). The workshop runs from Thursday the 5th of September until Tuesday the 10th of September 2013. Each of the five workdays of the workshop will start at 9am and will be focused on a specific topic. On Sunday the 8th of September a walking tour in the mountain area around Lugano is planned. The major aim of the workshop is to stimulate discussion on ongoing research, therefore especially the afternoons are structured very informally. Everyone, including PhD students, is welcome to participate and/or to present their views on one or more of the covered topics, on one or more days! We welcome any stimulating contribution, ranging from a presentation to a short informal statement. For more information and a tentative programme, please visit: http://ipg.idsia.ch/wpmsiip2013 Your help in circulating this call for participation will be highly appreciated. If you want to join the workshop, please contact Alessandro Antonucci (alessandro(a)idsia.ch). -- _________________________________ Alessandro Antonucci IDSIA Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Via Cantonale (Galleria 2) CH-6928, Manno-Lugano, CH mail: alessandro(a)idsia.ch web: www.idsia.ch/~alessandro skype: alessandro.antonucci tel: +41 58 666 65 15 _________________________________

Aug. 12, 2013

[SIPTA] PhD scholarship in robust learning of Bayesian networks from Swiss NSF

by Cassio Polpo De Campos

The Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA, http://www.idsia.ch) a non-profit oriented research institute for artificial intelligence, affiliated with both University of Lugano and University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland, advertises a full-time position as PhD student in the area of robust learning of Bayesian networks. The position is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. IDSIA offers an international working environment (English is the official language), the possibility of attending conferences and a salary in line with Swiss standards. The work will be performed in close collaboration with experts in probabilistic graphical models, robust learning, data mining, optimization, imprecise probabilities (see http://ipg.idsia.ch for more information). It includes theoretical advances in robust structure learning of probabilistic graphical models, as well as design and development of algorithms. In order to have a closer look into our research on this topic, we suggest the following paper from JMLR: http://jmlr.org/papers/v12/decampos11a.html The ideal candidate has a strong commitment to research and to the completion of the PhD program, has obtained a Master degree in a quantitative area, has very good communication skills in English, good programming skills, and ability to work in a collaborative environment. For applying, please follow the instructions available at http://www.supsi.ch/home/supsi/lavora-con-noi/2013-08-05.html The closing date for applications is August 5th 2013 (this deadline may be extended at the discretion of the recruiting committee). Expected starting date at the latest in the beginning of 2014. For further information, please contact: Cassio de Campos (cassio(a)idsia.ch).

July 24, 2013

[SIPTA] Temporary/Visiting Lectureship in Statistics - Durham University

by COOLEN F.P.A.

Dear Colleagues, We have a temporary lectureship at Durham, see the announcement and link below. The main reason is sudden absence of a colleague for the coming academic year, whose main teaching load (final year course on Bayesian Statistics) needs to be covered. Ideally we find someone who can start in October and teach that module (materials are readily available) - but starting a bit later (to commence teaching from January) is also possible. We might even be able to change the specific module that the person teaches, but that would be less ideal. This is a good opportunity for a career-young person, to get a year experience. The overall teaching load is low and therefore there should be substantial time for research, where we hope that the person who joins us will be interested in topics closely related to our own interests - so anyone with interest in imprecise methods is welcome to apply! It is also possibly of interest to someone at more advanced stage of their career, who may be able to take a year's leave from their institution, so please contact us asap if this would be of interest to you. Please forward this email to anybody who you think may be interested! Thanks Frank ________________________________________ JOB: Temporary/Visiting Lectureship in Statistics - Durham University This is a temporary lectureship for up to one year, starting October or January, and may suit someone looking to spend a period of time collaborating with our research group in Durham. Please apply via the weblink, where there are further details. Temporary Lecturer in Statistics https://ig5.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_durham01.asp?newms=jj&id=82387 Closing date: 21 August 2013 To provide teaching cover for a leave of absence the department of mathematical sciences will appoint a lecturer to contribute to the teaching of statistics for a period of up to one year. We will be especially interested in candidates with experience of researching or teaching in the area of Bayesian statistics. There is flexibility in the starting date which could be either October 2013 or January 2014. The successful candidate will have an excellent research record in an area of statistics or probability and would be expected to continue to undertake and publish original research and contribute to the research activities of the department and to undertake teaching and administrative duties as assigned by the Head of Department of Mathematical Sciences. Applications are particularly welcome from women and black and minority ethnic candidates, who are under-represented in academic posts in the University. Contact details: Professor Frank Coolen 0191 33 43048 frank.coolen(a)durham.ac.uk Professor Michael Goldstein 0191 33 43065 michael.goldstein(a)durham.ac.uk Professor David Wooff 0191 33 43121 d.a.wooff(a)durham.ac.uk

July 23, 2013

[SIPTA] [CFP]SeRSy@RecSys - DEADLINE EXTENSION

by Thomas Lukasiewicz

Apologies for possible multiple posts --------------------------------------------- !!! SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENSION !!! NEW DATES Submission due: August 1, 2013 Author notification: September 10, 2013 Camera-ready version due: September 17, 2013 Workshop date: October 13, 2013 --------------------------------------------- ============================ CALL FOR PAPERS ============================ 2nd International Workshop on Recommender Systems meet Big Data & Semantic Technologies - SeRSy 2013 in conjunction with RecSys 2013, Hong Kong, October 12-16, 2013 http://recsys.acm.org/recsys13/sersy/ http://sisinflab.poliba.it/sersy2013/ MOTIVATION ---------- Recommendation techniques generally rely on data referring to three types of objects: users, items and their relations. The widespread success of Semantic Web techniques, creating a Web of interoperable and machine readable data, offers novel strategies to represent data that might improve the current state of the art of recommender systems, in order to move towards a new generation of recommender systems which fully understand the items they deal with. Indeed, more and more semantic data are published following the Linked Data principles, that enable to set up links between objects in different data sources, by connecting information in a single global data space - the Web of Data. Today, the Web of Data includes different types of knowledge represented in a homogeneous form - sedimentary one (encyclopedic, cultural, linguistic, common-sense) and real-time one (news, data streams). This data might be useful to interlink diverse information about users, items, and their relations, as well as to implement reasoning mechanisms that can support and improve the recommendation process. The challenge is to investigate whether and how this large amount of wide-coverage and linked semantic knowledge can significantly improve complex search and filtering tasks that cannot be merely solved through a straightforward matching of queries (or user profiles) and items. Such tasks involve finding information from large document collections, categorizing and understanding that information, and producing some output, such as an actionable decision. Examples of such tasks include understanding a health problem in order to make a medical decision, or simply deciding which laptop to buy. Recommender systems support users exactly in those complex tasks. TOPICS ------- Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): - Recommendation approaches exploiting Big Data and Semantic technologies - Linked Data for Recommender Systems - Ontology-based recommendation algorithms - Reasoning with Big Data - Discovery of relevant Linked Data sources for recommendation algorithms - Linking, aggregating, intertwining and mining Linked Data for recommender systems - Linked Data in new Recommender Systems architectures - Semantic technologies for Cross-lingual and cross-domain recommender systems - Semantic technologies for improving transparency and explanations - Big datasets for the evaluation - Evaluation methodologies for real time personalization in big datasets - Semantic technologies for improving novelty, diversity and serendipity SUBMISSION ----------------------- We welcome work at all stages of development: papers can describe applied systems, empirical results or theoretically grounded positions. Accepted papers will be published as CEUR workshop proceedings (http://ceur-ws.org) Based on the quality of accepted papers we are planning to schedule a special issue of a top-level journal in 2013. * Full papers (5-6 pages) * Short papers (2-3 pages) * Demos (1-2 pages for description) Papers should be formatted according to the general RecSys2013 submission guidelines. Accepted format is PDF. Please submit your paper via EasyChair at the following URL: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sersy2013 You need to open a personal account upon the first login, if you do not have one. IMPORTANT DATES --------------- Submission due: August 1, 2013 Author notification: September 10, 2013 Camera-ready version due: September 17, 2013 Workshop date: October 13, 2013 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE -------------------- Marco de Gemmis - University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy Tommaso Di Noia - Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy Ora Lassila - Nokia Location & Commerce, Burlington, MA, US Pasquale Lops - University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy Thomas Lukasiewicz - University of Oxford, UK Giovanni Semeraro - University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy PROGRAM COMMITTEE ----------------- Alejandro Bellogin, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Netherlands Marco Brambilla, Politecnico di Milano Iván Cantador, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Bettina Fazzinga, DEIS - University of Calabria Conor Hayes, Digital Enterprise Research Institute Leo Iaquinta, University of Milano-Bicocca Hasan Jamil, University of Idaho Roberto Mirizzi, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories Cataldo Musto, University of Bari Fedelucio Narducci, University of Milano-Bicocca Vito Claudio Ostuni, Politecnico di Bari Alexandre Passant, seevl.net Gerardo Simari, University of Oxford Raphael Troncy, EURECOM Markus Zanker, Alpen-Adria-Universitaet Klagenfurt CONTACT ----------------- e-mail: sersy2013(a)gmail.com Web page: http://sisinflab.poliba.it/sersy2013/ twitter: @sersy2013 linkedin: http://tinyurl.com/sersy2013

July 22, 2013

[SIPTA] Job opportunities at the MCMP Munich

by Niki Pfeifer

Dr.Dr. Niki Pfeifer (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, LMU Munich) offers under the usual equal opportunity conditions one doctoral researcher position OR one early postdoctoral researcher position (i.e., if the PhD is obtained after January 1, 2013) to work in the intersection of philosophy and psychology (65%, TV-L 13, 1 year, extension possibilities will depend on performance and funding situation). Moreover, one student assistant position is vacant. The (post)doctoral researcher will focus on empirical work (developing the research hypotheses, designing the experiments and running the data analysis) in the field of reasoning under uncertainty, focusing on conditionals. One student assistant will support the (post)doctoral researcher with the construction of the experimental material, collection of the data and preparation of the data for analysis. Working language is English or German. Deadline for applications: open, until filled (filled positions will be announced on the project website). For an application send an email including the following items to niki.pfeifer(a)lrz.uni-muenchen.de 1) a letter of motivation 2) curriculum vitae 3) a scan of the most recent academic degrees 4) evidence of English and mathematical skills (e.g., school/university grades) 5) two confidential letters of reference addressing the applicant's qualifications are required for each position. These must be sent by the referees directly to me. The ideal candidate will be an empirically oriented analytical philosopher or an experimental psychologist interested in epistemological problems. For selection criteria and further details see the project website: www.pfeifer-research.de/spp.html I regret that I will not be able to send out negative notifications. -- Dr.Dr. Niki Pfeifer www.pfeifer-research.de Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Germany)

July 22, 2013

[SIPTA] CFP URSW 2013

by Thomas Lukasiewicz

July 22, 2013

[SIPTA] LATA 2014: 1st call for papers

by GRLMC

*To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ************************************************************************* 8th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS LATA 2014 Madrid, Spain March 10-14, 2014 Organized by: Research Group on Implementation of Language-Driven Software and Applications (ILSA) Complutense University of Madrid Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2014/ ********************************************************************* AIMS: LATA is a yearly conference on theoretical computer science and its applications. Following the tradition of the diverse PhD training events in the field developed at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona since 2002, LATA 2014 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from both classical theory fields and application areas (bioinformatics, language technology, artificial intelligence, etc.). VENUE: LATA 2014 will take place in Madrid, the capital of Spain. The venue will be the School of Informatics of Complutense 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, concurrency and Petri nets automatic structures cellular automata codes combinatorics on words compilers computability computational complexity data and image compression decidability issues on words and languages descriptional complexity DNA and other models of bio-inspired computing digital libraries and document engineering foundations of finite state technology foundations of XML fuzzy and rough languages grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, unification, categorial, etc.) grammatical inference and algorithmic learning graphs and graph transformation language varieties and semigroups language-based cryptography language-theoretic foundations of artificial intelligence and artificial life natural language and speech automatic processing parallel and regulated rewriting parsing patterns power series quantum, chemical and optical computing semantics string and combinatorial issues in computational biology and bioinformatics string processing algorithms symbolic dynamics symbolic neural networks term rewriting transducers trees, tree languages and tree automata weighted automata STRUCTURE: LATA 2014 will consist of: invited talks invited tutorials peer-reviewed contributions INVITED SPEAKERS: to be announced PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Dana Angluin (Yale, US) Eugene Asarin (Paris Diderot, FR) Jos Baeten (Amsterdam, NL) Christel Baier (Dresden, DE) Jan Bergstra (Amsterdam, NL) Jin-Yi Cai (Madison, US) Marek Chrobak (Riverside, US) Andrea Corradini (Pisa, IT) Mariangiola Dezani (Turin, IT) Ding-Zhu Du (Dallas, US) Michael R. Fellows (Darwin, AU) Jörg Flum (Freiburg, DE) Nissim Francez (Technion, IL) Jürgen Giesl (Aachen, DE) Annegret Habel (Oldenburg, DE) Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto, JP) Sampath Kannan (Philadelphia, US) Ming-Yang Kao (Northwestern, US) Deepak Kapur (Albuquerque, US) Joost-Pieter Katoen (Aachen, DE) S. Rao Kosaraju (Johns Hopkins, US) Evangelos Kranakis (Carleton, CA) Gad M. Landau (Haifa, IL) Andrzej Lingas (Lund, SE) Jack Lutz (Iowa State, US) Ian Mackie (École Polytechnique, FR) Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, ES, chair) Giancarlo Mauri (Milan, IT) Faron G. Moller (Swansea, UK) Paliath Narendran (Albany, US) Enno Ohlebusch (Ulm, DE) Helmut Prodinger (Stellenbosch, ZA) Jean-François Raskin (Brussels, BE) Wolfgang Reisig (Humboldt Berlin, DE) Marco Roveri (Bruno Kessler, Trento, IT) Michaël Rusinowitch (LORIA, Nancy, FR) Yasubumi Sakakibara (Keio, JP) Davide Sangiorgi (Bologna, IT) Colin Stirling (Edinburgh, UK) Jianwen Su (Santa Barbara, US) Jean-Pierre Talpin (IRISA, Rennes, FR) Andrzej Tarlecki (Warsaw, PL) Rick Thomas (Leicester, UK) Sophie Tison (Lille, FR) Rob van Glabbeek (NICTA, Sydney, AU) Helmut Veith (Vienna Tech, AT) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Ana Fernández-Pampillón (Madrid) Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair) Antonio Sarasa (Madrid) José-Luis Sierra (Madrid, co-chair) Bianca Truthe (Magdeburg) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) SUBMISSIONS: Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (including eventual appendices) and should be formatted 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://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lata2014 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 extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation. REGISTRATION: The period for registration is open from July 15, 2013 to March 10, 2014. The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2014/Registration.php DEADLINES: Paper submission: October 14, 2013 (23:59 CET) Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: November 25, 2013 Final version of the paper for the LNCS proceedings: December 2, 2013 Early registration: December 9, 2013 Late registration: February 24, 2014 Starting of the conference: March 10, 2014 End of the conference: March 14, 2014 Submission to the post-conference journal special issue: June 14, 2014 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu(a)urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: LATA 2014 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34-977-559543 Fax: +34-977-558386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Departament dEconomia i Coneixement, Generalitat de Catalunya Universidad Complutense de Madrid Universitat Rovira i Virgili

July 20, 2013

[SIPTA] 3 year Research Position at Durham: Analysis of Energy Storage at System Level

by Matthias Troffaes

See job advert below - there is some scope for imprecise probability as well. Cheers, Matthias ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: DENT C.J. <chris.dent(a)durham.ac.uk> Date: Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 8:25 AM Dear all, The School of Engineering and Computing Sciences and the Department of Mathematical Sciences, in association with Durham Energy Institute, are part of a major UK academic consortium on “Energy Storage for Low Carbon Grids”, see http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/K002252/1. This consortium brings together a multidisciplinary team of experts from Imperial College, Cambridge, Cardiff, Durham, Leeds, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, St. Andrews and UCL to study in an integrated way the challenges of storage technologies, their integration into power system planning and operations, the design of the necessary market structures, and the associated operational and financial uncertainties. We are seeking an enthusiastic researcher with background in mathematics or in power system but with strong mathematical skills to work within this consortium carrying out research on the value of storage to power systems. The Durham activity is led by Dr. Chris Dent and Prof. Janusz Bialek (Engineering), and Dr. Matthias Troffaes and Dr. Max Jensen (Mathematical Sciences). This three year post requires well developed research, dissemination and interpersonal skills; the emphasis is on independence and creativity in solving advanced research problems. Topics for study include the value of storage in mitigating extreme events (such as very high demands in the peak season, or very fast increases in net demand), and the value of storage in day-to-day system operation. Informal inquiries should be directed to Dr. Chris Dent (chris.dent(a)durham.ac.uk). Full details (including how to apply) are available at https://ig5.i-grasp.com/fe/tpl_durham01.asp (search for School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, and the job is called "Power Systems Research Associate"). Best regards, Chris Dent

July 15, 2013