[PlanetKR] Commonsense-2009 Paper Submission Deadline Extended PLUS Important Information

[Mary-Anne Williams]

Commonsense-2009 Paper Submission Deadline Extended PLUS Important
Information about Registration and Financial Support

SUMMARY:
 * Paper Submission deadline extended to April 8th
 * Registration rates reduced thanks to Fields Institute Support
 * Inexpensive hotels and flights available

DETAILS:
Due to the current financial climate, we have received several inquiries
about the costs of attending Commonsense-2009. We are happy to announce
that we have just received word that Commonsense-2009 is receiving
generous support from the  Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical
Science at the University of Toronto. As a result, we are able to offer
markedly reduced registration rates:
  Regular registration: $102  (125 Canadian dollars)
  Student registration: $33        (40 Canadian dollars)

Registration includes one dinner plus all coffee and pastry breaks.

Inexpensive hotel rates are available:
 The  University of Toronto  rate  for an inexpensive hotel (clean, safe,
and within walking distance of the University) is 89 Canadian dollars
per night. With tax, it comes to 100.57 Canadian dollars, or less than
82 US dollars.
 An extra adult can be added for 10 Canadian dollars per night, so the
per-person cost of two people sharing a room comes to just under 56
Canadian dollars per night, or less than 46 US dollars.
 The University of Toronto rate for  the Holiday Inn is 129 Canadian
dollars plus tax, which comes to 145.77 Canadian dollars, or under 119
US dollars.

Inexpensive flights to Toronto are also currently available, both within
North America, and from Europe.

The paper submission deadline has been extended to Wednesday, April 8th.
Please refer to the call for papers, attached below


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COMMONSENSE-2009
Ninth International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense
Reasoning

1-3 June 2009, Toronto, Canada; http://www.commonsensereasoning.org

CALL FOR PAPERS

We invite submissions for presentation at Commonsense-2009, the 9th
International Symposium on Logical Formalizations of Commonsense Reasoning,
to be held at the University of Toronto on June 1-3, 2009.

One of the major long-term goals of AI is to endow computers with common
sense. Although we know how to build programs that excel at certain bounded
or mechanical tasks which humans find difficult, such as playing chess, we
have very little idea how to program computers to do well at commonsense
tasks which are easy for humans. One approach to this problem is to
formalizing commonsense reasoning using a formal language like mathematical
logic.

The challenges to creating such a formalization include the accumulation of
large amounts of knowledge about our everyday world, the representation of
this knowledge in suitable formal languages, the integration of different
representations in a coherent way, and the development of explicit reasoning
methods that use these representations. The scaling problem is a particular
challenge: Many bounded tasks which we already know how to build still
cannot scale to broad scenarios involving commonsense knowledge, such as
query answering and web service composition on the semantic web,
corpora-based computational biology, diagnosis, exploration of unfamiliar
domains by robots and autonomous vehicles, and natural-language question
answering.

We aim at a science of commonsense reasoning that enables applications in
such broad domains as well as a deeper understanding of the ways in which
humans engage in commonsense reasoning. This is the focus of
Commonsense-2009. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

 * change, action, and causality
 * aspects of commonsense reasoning applicable to the semantic web
 * ontologies, including space, time, shape, and matter, ontologies
of networks and structures, and business ontologies
 * levels of granularity of ontology and reasoning
 * the formalization of commonsense business knowledge
 * the formalization of risk analysis
 * large commonsense knowledge bases (including work related to
Halo, and work growing out of the HPKB (High Performance Knowledge
Bases) and RKF (Rapid Knowledge Formation) projects)
 * axiomatizations of benchmark commonsense problems (see the Logic
Modelling Workshop and the Common Sense Problem Page for examples)
 * exploration of new commmonsense domains in a preformal way:
e.g., discussion of new microworlds, benchmark problems, or "drosophilae"
 * nonmonotonic reasoning
 * formal models of probabilistic reasoning
 * formal theories of context
 * mental attitudes including knowledge, belief, intention, and planning
 * belief change, update, and revision
 * cognitive robotics
 * reasoning about multi-agent systems and social interactions among
agents
 * applications of formal representations to applications, such as natural
language processing
 * other formal or mathematical tools for capturing commonsense reasoning

The symposium aims to bring together researchers who have studied the
formalization of commonsense reasoning. The focus of the symposium is on
representation rather than on algorithms, and on formal rather than informal
methods. We aim for rigorous and concrete paper submissions.

Traditionally, most papers submitted to this symposium have used some form
of mathematical logic as the underlying representation. However, we also
welcome papers that use other forms of rigorous representations of
commonsense reasoning domains, even if they are not logic based. For
example, we welcome pre-formal representations in precise natural language,
especially if accompanied by rigorous discussion and analysis of the
representation.

Technical papers offering new results in the area are especially welcome;
object-level theories as opposed to meta-level results are preferred.
However, survey papers, papers studying the relationship between different
approaches, and papers on methodological issues such as theory evaluation,
are also encouraged.

SUBMISSION INFORMATION:

Papers or extended abstracts of no more than 6 pages (in AAAI format) should
be submitted as pdf files via the submission website. All submissions will
be reviewed by the Commonsense-2009 program committee. Notification of
acceptance will be given by May 1, 2009.

PUBLICATION:

The working notes of Commonsense-2009 will include all accepted papers and
will be published online and as an Aachen University (Germany), Department
of Computer Science Technical Report (with an ISBN).

BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD:

We are offering a best-paper student award, with a $500 prize to partly
cover the student's travel. Please indicate on the paper if the author is a
student.

MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS ALLOWED

Papers may be submitted to Commonsense-2009 even if they have been submitted
to (or are currently under review by) other conferences or symposia (such as
IJCAI or NRAC). However, previously published papers are not acceptable for
Commonsense-2009, unless they include substantial new results.


PARTICIPATION

Persons wishing to attend the symposium should submit a 1-2 page research
summary including if possible a list of relevant publications. This is not
required for the authors of submitted papers. PhD students need only to send
the title and abstract of their dissertation. All requests for attendance
should be sent to  the chairs (see below) or to cs2009 @
commonsensereasoning.org.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANT DATES

 * Paper or extended abstract submission deadline: April 8, 2009
(midnight, Toronto time)
 * Notification of acceptance: May 1, 2009
 * Camera ready papers due: May 15, 2009
 * Symposium: June 1-3, 2009

PROGRAM CHAIRS

Gerhard Lakemeyer, Aachen University of Technology, gerhard @
informatik.rwth-aachen.de
Leora Morgenstern, New York University, leora @ cs.nyu.edu
Mary-Anne Williams,  University of Technology, Sydney, Mary-Anne @
it.uts.edu.au


Questions? Comments? Contact the program chairs, or write to
cs2009 @ commonsensereasoning.org