Participant Spotlight
David Traum, University of Southern California Research area: Natural Language Processing - Dialogue, virtual humans, pragmatic meaning in dialogue, dialogue systems, multimodal dialogue behavior, culture-specific aspects of dialogue, group dialogue, different genres of interactionDavid Traum, PhD, is a research scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), and a research assistant professor in the Computer Science Department, both at the University of Southern California. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at University of Rochester in 1994. His research focuses on collaboration and dialogue communication between human and artificial agents. He has engaged in theoretical, implementational, and empirical approaches to the problem, studying human-human natural language and multi-modal dialogue, as well as building a number of dialogue systems to communicate with human users. Dr Traum leads the natural language dialogue group at ICT, which collaborates with other groups on research and development of virtual humans. Dr. Traum is author of over 150 technical articles, has served on many conference program committees, and is currently the president emeritus of SIGDIAL, the international special interest group in discourse and dialogue.
NewsSummerFest '09 Summer School: An Introduction to Dialog Systems
David Traum, this week's spotlight, will be presenting a Summer School course at this year's SummerFest. This course will present an overview of some of the most popular approaches to dialogue system organization. We will briefly survey some prominent dialogue domains and systems to engage in dialogue within those domains. We will go over the different functional components of a dialogue system and some different approaches to provide that functionality. Finally, we will focus on the dialogue management component, and discuss different techniques for dialogue management, including keyword, IR-inspired techniques, finite state systems, frame based, plan- and agent-based, and information-state based methods. You can find more information about this course and all our other Summer School courses here: http://sf09.hcsnet.edu.au/summerfest09/summerschool.
Final Call for Papers: HCSNet Workshop on Aphasia Rehabilitation and Neuroplasticity: Translating Principles into Practice
SPECIAL NOTE: WHILE THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS WILL FOCUS ON NEUROPLASTICITY, SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS ON ANY TOPIC RELEVANT TO APHASIA IS ENCOURAGED, AS ARE REPORTS ON PHDS IN PROGRESS.
The primary focus of this interdisciplinary workshop will be on aphasia rehabilitation. Significant advances have been made in our understanding of how the brain responds and recovers from injury and how re-training of skills may be optimised depending on a range of neurobiological and environmental factors. While much of this work has been carried out in animal models or with a focus on motor function, it has been proposed that significant benefits will result if the field of aphasia rehabilitation can harness and translate this new foundational knowledge in neuroplasticity. The governing principles of neuroplasticity may also provide a unifying framework for combining impairment based and social based approaches to aphasia rehabilitation.
Professor Leslie Gonzalez Rothi (University of Florida) is a leader in translating principles of neuroplasticity to aphasia and will give a keynote presentation around this theme. In addition to focusing on neuroplasticity, the workshop will focus on other future interdisciplinary directions in this field including interactions between speech pathology and social psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience, and psychology.
The workshop will be held in Sydney at the MGSM city campus at Circular Quay on the 16th November. HCSNet will fund a number of travel grants of up to $500 to help cover the costs of travel and accommodation for Australian-based HCSNet members from outside the Sydney area who present a paper at the workshop. To find out more please go to: http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/hcsnetevents/2009/hcd-arr2009".
Final Call - Expression of Interest: HCSNet Workshop on Statistical Parametric Mapping for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
The workshop is intended for researchers with basic fMRI experience, who wish to build on their knowledge and skills in the analysis and characterisation of fMRI data in the normal and clinical populations. As numbers are limited, priority will be given to participants working in a speech and/or language-related field, and particularly PhD students and postdoctoral researchers; however, this is not a prerequisite for participation, and invitations to attend will be based on a submission statement. The 3-day workshop will be held at The University of Queensland, Brisbane on the 18th-20th November 2009. The workshop faculty will include national and international experts in the field including; Dr Jenny Crinion (University College London) and Dr Cyril Pernet (University of Edinburgh). Each of the three days will consist of lectures on SPM for fMRI, with related SPM practice sessions.
HCSNet will fund a number of travel grants of up to $500 to help cover the costs of travel and accommodation for Australian-based HCSNet members from outside the Brisbane area. Interested participants are asked to submit an expression of interest (max 300 words) that includes; current position and research area, specific interest in the topic (functional neuroimaging of speech, language and cognition) and why the workshop is relevant for your current and/or future research. Submission deadline is Wednesday 28th October 2009. To find out more please visit: http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/hcsnetevents/2009/spmhcd-09.
SummerFest Early Bird Registration Extended
The Early Bird registration deadline is October 23rd. So if you haven't had a chance to take advantage of the reduced-rate registration fees, please visit our registration page soon: http://sf09.hcsnet.edu.au/summerfest09/register. Rates will increase after this date.
Upcoming Submission Deadlines
We list here upcoming submission deadlines that fall in the next month. A more complete list of submission deadlines can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.
ITNG 2010 The 7th Int'l Conf. on Information Technology: New Generations
Las Vegas, United States
Due date: 23 Oct 2009
URL: WWW.ITNG.INFO
Conference on Sign Linguistics & Deaf Education in Asia
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Due date: 31 Oct 2009
URL: http://csldea.no-ip.info
The First International Workshop on Bio-inspired Human-Machine Interfaces and Healthcare Applications (B-Interface 2010)
Valencia, Spain
Due date: 13 Nov 2009
URL: www.biostec.org/Workshops.htm
WC2010 Word Classes: Nature, Typology, Computational Representation
Rome, Italy
Due date: 15 Nov 2009
URL:
Upcoming Conferences
We list here upcoming conferences and workshops that fall in the next month. A more complete list of events can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.
ICITST-2009 The 4th International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions 2009
London, United Kingdom
Date: 9 Nov 2009 to 12 Nov 2009
URL: http://www.icitst.org
2nd International Clinical Linguistics Conference
Madrid, Spain
Date: 11 Nov 2009 to 13 Nov 2009
URL: http://www.uam.es/2clc
CILS International Conference on Sign Languages
Namur, Belgium
Date: 16 Nov 2009 to 20 Nov 2009
URL: http://www.cils-namur.be
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