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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

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BELIEF 2014 - 3rd International Conference on Belief Functions

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014

Oxford, UK, September 26-28 2014

We are pleased to invite you to participate in the third edition of the International Conference on Belief Functions (BELIEF 2014).

The theory of belief functions, also referred to as evidence theory or Dempster-Shafer theory, was first introduced by Arthur P. Dempster in the context of statistical inference, and was later developed by Glenn Shafer as a general framework for modelling epistemic uncertainty. These early contributions have been the starting points of many important developments, including the Transferable Belief Model and the Theory of Hints.
The theory of belief functions is now well established as a general framework for reasoning with uncertainty, and has well understood connections to other frameworks such as probability, possibility and imprecise probability theories.

In 2012 alone, more than 300 papers on belief functions and their applications have been published worldwide. The ambition of the series of International Conferences on Belief Functions - BELIEF - is to bring together the large and expanding community of mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, engineers, economists and practitioners which work on the theoretical foundations of belief calculus or its application to all fields of applied science.

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PROGRAM & REGISTRATION

A total of 47 papers were accepted for oral presentation at BELIEF 2014. The list of accepted papers is available at:

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/accepted_papers.html

An overview of the conference’s program is available here:

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/program.html

The program includes two invited speakers:

- Professor Thomas Lukasiewicz (Department of Computer Science, Oxford University, UK)

who will tell us about "Uncertainty in the Semantic Web"

- Professor Nando de Freitas (Department of Computer Science, Oxford University, UK)

who will talk about "Deep Beliefs", a really important trend in today's AI.

and a discussion panel on the future of the theory of belief functions.

Details at: http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/invited_talks.html

The social program includes a banquet in beautiful St Hugh’s College, which is also the conference venue:

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/venue.html

during which the Elsevier Best Paper and the ISIF Best Student Paper Awards will be assigned.

The registration page is:

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/registration.html

Early registration fee (until August 8th): GBP 350 (EUR 420) regular, GBP 200 (EUR 240) for students

Late registration fee (after August 8th): GBP 400 (EUR 480) regular, GBP 250 (EUR 300) for students

Accommodation at conference venue (St. Hugh’s College) is still available to book at discount rates.

Information on how to best reach Oxford is available here:

http://cms.brookes.ac.uk/staff/FabioCuzzolin/BELIEF2014/transport.html

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SPRINGER PROCEEDINGS

All accepted papers are going to be published by Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) series, volume number 8764.

AWARDS

A Best Paper award, sponsored by Elsevier, worth 1000 euros will be assigned to the most outstanding technical contribution based on the reviews received by each accepted paper. The final decision will be made by the Belief Functions and Applications Society (BFAS) board.

A Best Student Paper award will be specifically assigned to the best work by a student. This award is sponsored by the International Society of Information Fusion (ISIF). The lead student author will receive a free student registration to attend FUSION 2015.

IJAR SPECIAL ISSUE

Authors of selected papers from the BELIEF 2014 conference will be invited to submit an extended version of their papers for possible inclusion in a special issue of the International Journal of Approximate Reasoning.

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