SIMBAD 2011 - SIMBAD 2011 1st International Workshop on Similarity-Based Pattern Analysis and Recognition

Website | Edit Freely

Category SIMBAD 2011

Deadline: May 15, 2011 | Date: September 28, 2011-October 02, 2011

Venue/Country: Venice, Italy

Updated: 2011-02-22 12:18:32 (GMT+9)

Call For Papers - CFP

1st International Workshop on Similarity-Based Pattern Analysis and Recognition

28-30 September, 2011

Venice, Italy

http://www.dsi.unive.it/~simbad

MOTIVATIONS AND OBJECTIVES

Traditional pattern recognition techniques are intimately linked to

the notion of "feature spaces." Adopting this view, each object is

described in terms of a vector of numerical attributes and is

therefore mapped to a point in a Euclidean (geometric) vector space so

that the distances between the points reflect the observed

(dis)similarities between the respective objects. This kind of

representation is attractive because geometric spaces offer powerful

analytical as well as computational tools that are simply not

available in other representations. Indeed, classical pattern

recognition methods are tightly related to geometrical concepts and

numerous powerful tools have been developed during the last few

decades, starting from the maximal likelihood method in the 1920's, to

perceptrons in the 1960's, to kernel machines in the 1990's.

However, the geometric approach suffers from a major intrinsic

limitation, which concerns the representational power of vectorial,

feature-based descriptions. In fact, there are numerous application

domains where either it is not possible to find satisfactory features

or they are inefficient for learning purposes. This modeling

difficulty typically occurs in cases when experts cannot define

features in a straightforward way (e.g., protein descriptors vs.

alignments), when data are high dimensional (e.g., images), when

features consist of both numerical and categorical variables (e.g.,

person data, like weight, sex, eye color, etc.), and in the presence

of missing or inhomogeneous data. But, probably, this situation arises

most commonly when objects are described in terms of structural

properties, such as parts and relations between parts, as is the case

in shape recognition.

In the last few years, interest around purely similarity-based

techniques has grown considerably. For example, within the supervised

learning paradigm (where expert-labeled training data is assumed to be

available), the well-established kernel-based methods shift the focus from the

choice of an appropriate set of features to the choice of a suitable

kernel, which is related to object similarities. However, this shift

of focus is only partial, as the classical interpretation of the

notion of a kernel is that it provides an implicit transformation of

the feature space rather than a purely similarity-based

representation. Similarly, in the unsupervised domain, there has been

an increasing interest around pairwise or even multiway algorithms,

such as spectral and graph-theoretic clustering methods, which avoid

the use of features altogether.

By departing from vector-space representations one is confronted with

the challenging problem of dealing with (dis)similarities that do not

necessarily possess the Euclidean behavior or not even obey the

requirements of a metric. The lack of the Euclidean and/or metric

properties undermines the very foundations of traditional pattern

recognition theories and algorithms, and poses totally new

theoretical/computational questions and challenges.

The workshop will mark the end of the EU FP7 Projects SIMBAD

(http://simbad-fp7.eu), which was devoted precisely to these themes,

and is a follow-up of the ICML 2010 Workshop on "Learning in

non-(geo)metric spaces" (http://www.dsi.unive.it/~icml2010lngs). Its

aim is to consolidate research efforts in this area, and to provide an

informal discussion forum for researchers and practitioners interested

in this important yet diverse subject. The discussion will revolve

around two main themes, which basically correspond to the two

fundamental questions that arise when abandoning the realm of

vectorial, feature-based representations, namely:

- How can one obtain suitable similarity information from data

representations that are more powerful than, or simply different from,

the vectorial?

- How can one use similarity information in order to perform learning

and classification tasks?

We aim at covering a wide range of problems and perspectives, from

supervised to unsupervised learning, from generative to discriminative

models, and from theoretical issues to real-world practical

applications.

Accordingly, topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

- Embedding and embeddability

- Graph spectra and spectral geometry

- Indefinite and structural kernels

- Game-theoretic models of pattern recognition

- Characterization of non-(geo)metric behaviour

- Foundational issues

- Measures of (geo)metric violations

- Learning and combining similarities

- Multiple-instance learning

- Applications

FORMAT

The workshop will feature contributed talks and posters as well as

invited presentations. We feel that the more informal the better, and

we would like to solicit open and lively discussions and exchange of

ideas from researchers with different backgrounds and perspectives.

Plenty of time will be allocated to questions, discussions, and

breaks.

We plan to get videolectures coverage.

ORGANIZATION

Program Chairs

Marcello Pelillo, University of Venice, Italy

Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK

Steering Committee

Joachim Buhmann, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Robert Duin, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Mario Figueiredo, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK

Vittorio Murino, University of Verona, Italy

Marcello Pelillo (chair), University of Venice, Italy

Program Committee

Maria-Florina Balcan, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Joachim Buhmann, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Horst Bunke, University of Bern, Switzerland

Tiberio Caetano, NICTA, Australia

Umberto Castellani, University of Verona, Italy

Luca Cazzanti, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

Nicolo' Cesa-Bianchi, University of Milan, Italy

Robert Duin, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Francisco Escolano, University of Alicante, Spain

Mario Figueiredo, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Ana Fred, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Bernard Haasdonk, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK

Anil Jain, Michigan State University, USA

Robert Krauthgamer, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Marco Loog, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Vittorio Murino, University of Verona, Italy

Elzbieta Pekalska, University of Manchester, UK

Marcello Pelillo, University of Venice, Italy

Massimiliano Pontil, University College London, UK

Antonio Robles-Kelly, NICTA, Australia

Volker Roth, University of Basel, Switzerland

Amnon Shashua, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Andrea Torsello, University of Venice, Italy

Richard Wilson, University of York, UK

Organization Committee

Samuel Rota Bulo' (chair), University of Venice, Italy

Nicola Rebagliati, University of Venice, Italy

Luca Rossi, University of Venice, Italy

Teresa Scantamburlo, University of Venice, Italy

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission: May 15, 2011

Notifications: June 19, 2011

Camera-ready due: July 2011

Conference: September 28-30, 2011

PAPER SUBMISSION

Papers must be submitted electronically at the conference website

using the EasyChair submission system. Manuscripts should be in pdf

and formatted according to Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer

Science (LNCS) style. Information concerning typesetting can be

obtained directly from Springer at:

http://www.springer.com/comp/lncs/authors.html.

Papers must not exceed 16 pages and should report original work.

All submitted papers will be subject to a rigorous peer-review

process. Accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings,

which will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer

Science (LNCS) series.

Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to

register and present the paper, if accepted.