[PlanetKR] SARA 2011 Call for Participation

[Michael Genesereth]

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
SARA 2011
Ninth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation

July 17-18, 2011
Parador de Cardona, Spain
(near Barcelona, location of IJCAI 11, July 19-22)

Website: http://logic.stanford.edu/sara2011/

Overview

The ninth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation will be held on July 17-18, 2011 at the Parador de Cardona in Catalonia, Spain, 60 miles Northwest of Barcelona. The symposium will be co-located with the Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS), which will be held at the Parador de Cardona immediately before SARA. SARA 2011 will be followed by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 11), which will be held in Barcelona.

The aim of the Symposium is to provide a forum for interaction among researchers in all areas of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science with an interest in Abstraction, Reformulation, or Approximation (ARA). Topics include (1) the theory of Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation, (2) methods for selecting which of several applicable ARA techniques is best for a given problem, (3) techniques for automatically constructing and selecting appropriate abstractions, reformulations, and approximations, (4) empirical and theoretical studies of the costs and benefits of ARA, and (5) applications of ARA to automated reasoning, automatic programming, cognitive modeling, constraint programming, constraint satisfaction, databases, design, diagnosis, general game playing, general problem solving, machine learning, planning, robotics, scheduling, search, simulation, theorem proving.

Program

The Symposium will consist of paper presentations, discussion sessions, and invited presentations. This year, our keynote speaker will be Stuart Russell from the University of California at Berkeley.  You can find a preliminary program on the program page of the symposium website (http://logic.stanford.edu/sara2011/).

Registration

To register for the symposium, send an email message to the program chairs. You can also register on site, but the organizers would prefer an early email message in order to prepare the logistics for the symposium. There may be a registration fee (approximately $100) to help defray expenses.

Accommodations

The Parador de Cardona is now accepting reservations for SARA 2011 participants. The reservationists prefer that guests communicate with them via email (at cardona at parador.es). Requests should include full name, credit card number, credit card expiration date, number of rooms, and number of guests and should include the phrase "SARA 2011" in the subject line. IMPORTANT: The reservations should be made, if at all possible, by the end of June. After that, the hotel will make any unreserved rooms available to the general public. The hotel phone number is +34 938 691 275, but again the hotel has expressed a preference for email reservations.

The rooms are €193.50 per day for those who stay at the hotel and €85 who attend only during the day. These fees include two coffee breaks, lunch and dinner, as well as breakfast for people staying at the hotel.

Transportation

It is easy to drive to the hotel from Barcelona. The hotel has a parking area that is available for free to all participants. There will be a bus from Barcelona to Cardona on the 16th with a return trip from Cardona to Barcelona on the 18th. Check back for details in early July.

ORGANIZATION

Conference Chairs:
Michael Genesereth, Stanford University, USA
Peter Revesz, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA

Publicity Chair:
Miroslav Velev, Aries Design Automation

Program Committee:
Scot Anderson           Southern Adventist University, USA
Chris Beck              University of Toronto, Canada
Rada Chirkova           North Carolina State University, USA
Berthe Choueiry         University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
Marie desJardins        University Maryland Baltimore County, USA
Rafael Martinez Gasca   University of Seville, Spain
Hector Geffner	        Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Michael Genesereth      Stanford University, USA
Robert Holte	        University of Alberta, Canada
Bart Kuijpers	        Hasselt University, Belgium
Ian Miguel              University of St Andrews, UK
Peter Revesz            University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA
Marie-Christine Rousset University of Grenoble, France
Wheeler Ruml            University of New Hampshire, USA
Nathan Sturtevant	University of Denver, USA
Miroslav Velev          Aries Design Automation, USA
Toby Walsh              University of New South Wales, Australia