[PlanetKR] NRAC 2009 First Call for Papers

[Mary-Anne Williams]

===============================
NRAC 2009: First Call for Papers
===============================

http://innovation.it.uts.edu.au/nrac/

The IJCAI-09 Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Action and Change
Pasadena, California; July 11-17

Submission deadline: March 6, 2009
Notification date: April 17, 2009
Camera ready submission deadline: May 8, 2009
IJCAI-09 conference: July 11-17


We invite submissions of research papers for presentation at NRAC 2009, The
IJCAI-09 Workshop on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Action and Change. NRAC 2009 is
a one-day workshop to be held in Pasadena, California as part of
the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09)
workshop program (July 11-13).


Workshop Aims
-------------

An intelligent agent exploring a rich, dynamic world, needs cognitive
capabilities in addition to basic functionalities for perception and
reaction. The abilities to reason nonmonotonically, to reason about actions,
and to change one's beliefs, have been identified as fundamental high-level
cognitive functions necessary for common sense.
Research in all three areas has made significant progress during the last
two decades of the past century. It is, however, crucial to bear in mind the
common goal of designing intelligent agents. Researchers should be aware of
advances in all three fields since often advances in one field can be
translated into advances in another. Many deep relationships have already
been established between the three areas and the primary aim of this
workshop is to further promote this cross-fertilization. A closer look at
recent developments in the three fields reveals just how fruitful such
cross-fertilization can be.

Comparing and contrasting our current formalisms for Nonmonotonic Reasoning,
Reasoning about Action and Belief Revision helps identify the strengths and
weaknesses of the various methods available. It is an important activity
that allows researchers to evaluate the state-of-the-art. Indeed a
significant advantage of using logical formalisms as representation schemes
is that they facilitate the evaluation process.
Moreover, following the initial success, more complex real-world
applications are now within grasp. An implementational testbed is a primary
means by which existing theories of nonmonotonic reasoning, action, and
change are evaluated. Experimentation with prototype implementations not
only helps to identify obstacles that arise in transforming theoretical
solutions into operational solutions, but also highlights the need for the
improvement of existing formal integrative frameworks for intelligent agents
at the ontological level.

For the purpose of developing practical solutions to real-world
problems, some obvious questions arise: What nonmonotonic logics and what
theories of action and change have been implemented? Which ones are
implementable? What can be learned from existing applications? What is
needed to improve their scope and performance?

Despite the progress over the last few years, these questions and other
related problems for theories of nonmonotonic reasoning, action, and change,
still remain open. We hope to explore new approaches to these problems
during the workshop.

This workshop will bring together researchers from all three areas with the
aim to:

Compare and evaluate existing formalisms.
* Report on new developments and innovations.
* Identify new open problems in all three areas.
* Identify possibilities of solution transferral between the areas.
* Identify important challenges for the advancement of the areas.


Format of the Workshop
----------------------

Like previous NRAC workshops, we hope NRAC 2009 to be a highly participatory
and discussion-oriented forum. The day will begin with a distinguished
invited speaker, and will conclude with a panel on the hot issues identified
during the day. Authors of accepted papers will present their work, with
ample time for discussion.

A complete program will be made available as soon as a final decision on
accepted papers has been made.


Registration and Participation
------------------------------

Registration for NRAC 2009 is managed by IJCAI. Forms and Information on
registration, pricing, travel and accommodation are available on the
IJCAI-09 website. Participants are strongly urged to register as soon as
possible to take advantage of discounted registration fees and to secure
accommodation.

We welcome participation and submission from all members of the Artificial
Intelligence research community.


Submission Requirements
-----------------------

NRAC-09 paper submissions must be formatted according to the IJCAI-09 paper
guidelines at http://ijcai-09.org/.

Papers must not exceed 8 formatted pages. Overlength papers will not be
accepted for publication. Papers must be submitted electronically in PDF
format by the due date March 6, 2009. Notification of acceptance will be
given by April 17, 2009.

Please ensure the author names and affiliation are under the title.

Submissions should emphasize and justify their innovation and
significance.

Please note: Papers should describe new unpublished work. Accepted IJCAI-09
Papers and Posters will not be accepted at NRAC-09.

Submission website:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nrac2009


Workshop Chairs and Contact Details
-----------------------------------

Any inquiries about the event should be directed to either of the
workshop chairs:

Benjamin Johnston
 Innovation and Enterprise Research Laboratory
 Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
 University of Technology, Sydney
 Broadway, Sydney NSW 2007 Australia
 johnston at it.uts.edu.au
 Phone: +61 4 0070 3832

Andreas Herzig
 Logic, Interaction, Language, and Computation Group
 Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT)
 Universite Paul Sabatier
 118 route de Narbonne
 F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9 France
 herzig at irit.fr
 Phone: +33 56155 8123
 Fax: +33 56155 6258


Program Committee
-----------------

* Eyal Amir, University of Illinois (USA)
* Gerhard Brewka, University of Leipzig (Germany)
* Xiaoping Chen, University of Science and Technology China (China)
* Jim Delgrande, Simon Fraser Unviersity (Canada)
* Patrick Doherty, University of Linkoping (Sweden)
* Jerome Lang, Universite Paul Sabatier (France)
* Fangzhen Lin, Hong Kong Univ. of Science & Tech (China)
* Wei Liu, University of Western Australia (Australia)
* Thomas Meyer, National ICT Australia (Australia)
* Leora Morgenstern, IBM T.J.Watson Research Center (USA)
* Maurice Pagnucco, University of NSW (Australia)
* Pavlos Peppas, University of Patras (Greece)
* Erik Sandewall, Linkoping University (Sweden)
* Michael Thielscher, Dresden University of Technology (Germany)
* Mary-Anne Williams, University of Technology, Sydney (Australia)


More Information
----------------

More information about NRAC 2009, including any recent changes and news, is
available at the following address:

http://innovation.it.uts.edu.au/nrac/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://discuss.it.uts.edu.au/pipermail/planetkr/attachments/20081220/4e2d903a/attachment.html