By filling in the form below, you are registering your interest in attending the School. We will contact you by email as soon as possible (or after the deadline for the bursary applications, if you apply for financial support) to confirm your registration and make arrangements for payment. Note that filling in this form neither constitutes an entitlement to attend the event, nor a legal obligation.
In case of problems, please contact us at [email protected].
Registration Form
More information at the workshop page. ]]>
Call for Participation
The problem of sharing meaning is becoming an increasingly important issue for computational systems, as more and more of these systems are expected to interact with each other and with human users without prior agreement on the semantics of communication, to process and connect unstructured and heterogeneous data generated by different sources, and to coordinate their activities in environments that involve multiple views and objectives. The ESSENCE network studies this problem from an interdisciplinary point of view, bringing together researchers and practitioners from computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics, natural language processing, linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together students and top researchers from all these (and other) communities to discuss key issues in this space, which have hitherto engaged in largely disconnected efforts to understand phenomena related to the emergence and evolution of shared semantics. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- ontology mapping, matching, and learning;
- symbol grounding and anchoring;
- dialogue systems, natural and artificial;
- semantic search, linked data analysis and curation;
- information retrieval, extraction, text processing;
- agent communication and coordination;
- rational models of communication, language games;
- human-robot and robot-robot interaction;
- game-theoretic models of communication and signalling;
- data and sensor fusion, distributed signal processing;
- natural language generation and understanding;
- models of language evolution, emergent semantics;
- automated data integration, machine translation;
- crowdsourced common-sense knowledge bases;
- social network analysis of communication and meaning;
- multilingual and cross-cultural semantic analysis;
- cognitive modelling of language acquisition and development;
- data-to-text generation.
The thematic scope of the workshop is intentionally broad in terms of considering contributions that address some aspect of modelling meaning and its evolution. However, we emphasise that, in line with the ‘Algorithms for Processing Meaning’ theme, submissions that focus on computational aspects of such phenomena will be considered preferentially.
Submission Guidelines
We invite extended abstracts (2-4 pages) and full papers (8 pages, excluding references) for presentation. Papers must be submitted as PDF following the IEEE format (https://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html) through the EasyChair workshop page at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essence2015. Submissions are not anonymous.
As the number of presentations at the workshop is limited, the peer review process will filter and rank submissions so that the highest-quality and most relevant ones get a full presentation slot. In consequence, some papers may be invited for poster presentation and/or short oral presentation. Papers that have been submitted or published elsewhere are welcome, as the primary purpose of the workshop is open discussion and exchange of ideas.
No formal proceedings are planned for the workshop, so that authors are able to publish their accepted papers in other venues. If we receive a sufficient number of high-quality, original publications, we will consider publishing post-proceedings by way of an edited volume or a special issue of an international journal. By submitting a paper authors agree for the final version of this paper to be published online after the workshop, and are responsible for ensuring that copyright agreements with other publishers are honoured in the case of previously published work.
We particularly encourage submissions from junior researchers and PhD students, and will provide extensive financial support to attend the event for a number of invited participants. The workshop will not charge a registration fee to invited attendees, and lunch and coffee breaks will be provided free of charge. For participants who wish to attend without presenting a paper, a modest workshop registration fee of EUR 150 will be charged to cover catering costs and print materials.
IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission deadline: May 5, 2015 (extended)
Author notification: May 8, 2015
Final versions: May 15, 2015
Workshop dates: May 20-22, 2015
Venue
The workshop will be held at the Residence for Researchers of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Barcelona (http://www.resa.es/eng/Residences/Investigadors) from Wednesday 20th to Friday 22nd May 2015.
The Residence also provides good quality budget accommodation in the heart of Barcelona, but participants are free to choose other options for accommodation. Barcelona is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city renowned for its history, culture, and nightlife and is easily accessible by air travel from all major international airports.
Organizing Committee
Kemo Adrian, IIIA-CSIC Barcelona
Gábor Bella, University of Trento (Chair)
Nico Bova, University of Edinburgh
Raquel Fernandez, ILLC Amsterdam
Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento
Mercedes Huertas, University of Trento
Mladjan Jovanovic, University of Trento
Fiona McNeill, Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh
Robert van Rooij, ILLC Amsterdam
Enric Plaza, IIIA-CSIC Barcelona
Michael Rovatsos, University of Edinburgh
Carlos Ruiz, Taiger, Madrid
Marco Schorlemmer, IIIA-CSIC Barcelona
Luc Steels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Remi van Trijp, SONY Research Labs Paris
Mila Vukomanovic, University of Edinburgh
Fellows papers presented at the workshop
- Huertas-Migueláñez, Mercedes, "Crowdsourcing for building and maintaining multilingual knowledge resources", 2015. (pdf)
- Vourliotakis, Aimilios, Rovatsos, Michael & Ruiz Moreno, Carlos, "Validation of entity relations in linked data", 2015. (pdf)
- Schlöder, Julian J., Alex Lascarides, "Interpreting English Pitch Contours in Context", Proceedings of the 19th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue (SemDial 2015, "goDial"), 2015. (pdf)
- Marques, Tânia, "Towards a taxonomy of task-oriented domains of dialogue", Proceeding of the 18th Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA 2015), 2015. (pdf)
- Jovanovic, Mladjan, "Gamifying Knowledge Maintenance", 2015. (pdf)
- Brochhagen, Thomas, "Minimal Requirements for Productive Compositional Signaling", Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015), 2015. (pdf)
- Chocrón, Paula, Schorlemmer, Marco, "Social Coordination Systems with Ontology Heterogeneity", 2015. (pdf)
- Van Eecke, Paul, "Achieving Robustness through the Integration of Language Production in Comprehension", Proceedings of the EuroAsianPacific Joint Conference on Cognitive Science (EAP CogSci), 2015. (pdf)
- Bova, Nicola, Rovatsos, Michael, "Towards a Framework for Winograd Schemas Resolution", 2015. (pdf)
- Adrian, Kemo, "Argumentation and agreement over concept meaning in simple scenarios", 2015. (pdf)
Contact
For any queries related to the workshop, please contact [email protected].
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Moreover, all the videos of the talks delivered by the speakers (along with the slides) are available here!
Have a look at the General Report on the 1st ESSENCE Autumn School by Pavlos Andreadis!
Finally, check out the interviews page!
Stay tuned!
]]>Workshop Programme
The 2nd ESSENCE Workshop is a private event open only to ESSENCE members and invited guests.
Day 1: Thursday 30 October
| 14:00–15:00 | Welcome and Opening of Workshop by Michael Rovatsos |
| 15:00–15:30 | Presentation of the Gender Action Plan by Fiona McNeill |
| 15:30–16:00 | Coffee Break |
| 16:00–18:00 | Cohort 1 Fellows: Poster Session and ‘Rapid Fire Talks’: Yana Knight Tânia Marques Julian Schlöder Thomas Brochhagen Paul van Eecke Mladjan Jovanovic Nicola Bova |
Day 1 (Thursday afternoon) of the workshop is dedicated to opening talks and very short poster presentations from ‘cohort 1’ fellows (recruited in early 2014). Cohort 1 fellows are asked to prepare a poster in advance on their respective research topics. At the workshop the posters will be exhibited in the conference room and fellows will present them in short five-minute talks.
Day 2: Friday 31 October
| 09:30–11:00 | Cohort 2 Fellows: presentations Aimilios Vourliotakis Mercedes Huertas |
| 11:00–11:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:30–13:00 | Cohort 2 Fellows: presentations Kristof Kessler Adrian Kemo |
| 13:00–14:00 | Lunch break |
| 14:00–15:30 | Further discussions and summing up |
| 15:30–16:00 | Coffee break |
| 16:00–17:00 | Empty slot |
Day 2 is dedicated to new ‘cohort 2’ fellows, recruited during Summer 2014. Fellows are asked to prepare a 15-minute talk with slides where they present their planned research topics. After each talk, around 30 more minutes will be allocated for questions and a free discussion of the plan and ideas put forward by the student, involving both seniors and fellows.
The ESSENCE Summer School registration fee is 210€. Prices for accommodation and meals are given in more detail on the Practical Information page. While it is possible in principle to choose your own accommodation, we strongly recommend staying at the School venue, which offers very good value for accommodation and full board, and also will enable to fully benefit from interaction with speakers and members of the ESSENCE community.
- Please note that participants are responsible for their accommodation and travel expenses, unless these are covered by a bursary offered by ESSENCE.
Registration is now closed
]]>Pre-School Event: Sunday 26th October
For ESSENCE Fellows, there will be a pre-School excursion on Sunday 26th October. Information on this excursion can be found here. Please note that this is an internal event that is not open to non-ESSENCE participants.
Day 1: Monday 27th October
| 09:00 - 09:30 | Welcome |
| 09:30 - 11:00 | Tutorial 1 (Part 1) - Ontology Matching by Pavel Shvaiko |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 - 13:00 | Tutorial 1 (Part 2) - Ontology Matching by Pavel Shvaiko |
| 13:00 - 14:30 | Lunch break |
| 14:30 - 16:00 | Tutorial 2 (Part 1) - Iterated Learning by Simon Kirby |
| 16:00 - 16:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:30 - 18:00 | Tutorial 2 (Part 2) - Iterated Learning by Simon Kirby |
| 19:00 - 20:00 | Opening reception |
| 20:00 - 21:00 | Dinner |
Day 2: Tuesday 28th October
| 09:00 - 10:00 | Lecture 1 - Linguistic and Knowledge Resources by Vincenzo Maltese |
| 10:00 - 11:00 | Lecture 2 - Agreement Computing by Carles Sierra |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 - 12:30 | Lecture 3 - Reformation: A Domain-Independent Algorithm for Theory Repair by Alan Bundy |
| 13:00 - 14:30 | Lunch break |
| 14:30 - 16:00 | Tutorial 3 (Part 1) - Dialogue Semantics and Pragmatics by David Schlangen |
| 16:00 - 16:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:30 - 18:00 | Tutorial 3 (Part 2) - Dialogue Semantics and Pragmatics by David Schlangen |
| 20:00 - 21:00 | Dinner |
| 21:00 - 22:00 | After-dinner speaker: Carles Sierra - How to do the PhD and survive it |
Day 3: Wednesday 29th October
| 09:30 - 11:00 | Tutorial 4 (Part 1) - Decision-theoretic Approaches in Multiagent Systems by Matthijs Spaan |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 - 13:00 | Tutorial 4 (Part 2) - Decision-theoretic Approaches in Multiagent Systems by Matthijs Spaan |
| 13:00 - 14:30 | Lunch break |
| 14:30 - 16:00 | Tutorial 5 (Part 1) - Argumentation and Dialogue by Sanjay Modgil |
| 16:00 - 16:30 | Coffee break |
| 16:30 - 18:00 | Tutorial 5 (Part 2) - Argumentation and Dialogue by Sanjay Modgil |
| 20:00 - 21:00 | Dinner |
Day 4: Thursday 30th October
| 09:30 - 11:00 | Course (Part 1) - Taking Control of your Research Project by Sara Shinton |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Coffee break |
| 11:30 - 13:00 | Course (Part 2) - Taking Control of your Research Project by Sara Shinton |
| 13:00 - 14:30 | Closing lunch |
Post-School Event: Thursday 30th and Friday 31st October
2nd ESSENCE Workshop - Ad Hoc Approaches to ESSENCE problems
The Autumn School will be followed by an internal ESSENCE Workshop which is not open to non-network participants.