Tony Cohn awarded EurAI Distinguished Service Award 2024

Anthony Cohn Photo

It is with great pride and pleasure that we can announce the recipient of the EurAI Distinguished Service Award 2024 is AISB Fellow Anthony (Tony) G. Cohn, Professor of Automated Reasoning at the University of Leeds.Tony has served the European and international AI communities in numerous roles since the 1980s, including as president of both AISB and ECCAI/EurAI, as PC chair of ECAI-1994, and as editor-in-chief of the AI journal. Tony was presented with this award during the 50th Anniversary Session on the History of AI in Europe.

AI and Big Data Expo

AI and Big Data Expo

Expert line-up announced for the upcoming AI & Big Data Expo Global! Explore the latest innovations within AI & Big Data, and join top-level content and thought leadership discussion with industry-leading experts. @ai_expo #AI #BigData

Explore the future of AI & Big Data – Olympia, London between 5th – 6th February 2025. Learn more about the in-person event here: https://www.ai-expo.net/global/ @ai_expo #AI #BigData

Register today for the in-person event exploring AI & Big Data between 5th – 6th February. AI & Big Data will explore the future of #AI and #BigData via live sessions over two days. Find out more: https://www.ai-expo.net/global/ @ai_expo #AI #BigData

AISB Convention 2025 – Call for Symposia Proposals

AISB Convention 2025 – CALL FOR SYMPOSIA PROPOSALS

priority deadline: 2 August 2024
regular deadline: 30 August 2024

14-16 January 2025, University of the West of England UWE, Bristol, UK
https://aisb.org.uk/aisb-convention-2025-non-members/

The society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) annual convention will be held at UWE Bristol, UK on 14-16 January 2025. The convention will follow the same overall structure as previous conventions, namely a set of co-located, parallel symposia, as well as invited and plenary lectures and sessions. We are currently seeking proposals for these symposia. Typical symposia last for one or two days, and can include any type of event of academic benefit: talks, posters, panels, discussions, demonstrations, outreach sessions, etc. Proposals to run symposia are welcomed across all areas of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour, broadly understood. This includes interdisciplinary topics rooted in the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

Possible themes are listed below (not an exhaustive list):

  • Knowledge Representation
  • Discourse and Dialogue
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Computational Intelligence
  • Computational Theory of Mind
  • Philosophical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence
  • Consciousness and Machine Consciousness
  • Human and Machine Creativity
  • Simulation of Human and Animal Behaviour
  • Neural Networks and Machine Learning
  • Computational Neuroscience
  • Robotics and Robot Ethics
  • Epigenetic and Developmental Robotics
  • Autonomous Agents and Agent Based Computing
  • Enactivism
  • Embodied Cognition
  • Ecological Cognition
  • Embedded [Social] Cognition
  • Extended Cognition
  • Affective Intelligence and Behaviour
  • Embodied Audio-Visual Interaction
  • Style in Text; Textual Forensics
  • Robotics, Perception and Art
  • Live Algorithms
  • Cultural, Social and Media Theory and Computing
  • Sensorimotor Theory
  • Cybernetics and Human Knowing
  • Sensory Substitution
  • Distributed Thinking
  • Robot Language and Communication
  • Proposing a Symposium

Symposia Organisation

Each symposium is organised by its own organising committee. The committee proposes the symposium, defines the area(s) and structure for it, issues calls for abstracts/papers etc., manages the process of selecting submitted papers for inclusion, and compiles an electronic file for inclusion in the convention proceedings. Organisers are welcome and encouraged to invite keynote speakers to their symposia, but they are also encouraged to seek external funding in order to pay keynote speakers’ registration fees and other costs. Symposium organisers and all speakers will be expected to pay registration fees.
Proposers are welcome to submit, or be involved with more than one proposal.
Proposers need not already be members of the AISB (though you will be expected to join the AISB if your symposium proposal is accepted).

Symposium proposals will be handled in two phases: For early approval, apply by the priority deadline. This will ensure the symposium is hosted at AISB 2025 if it meets the basic criteria. Proposals received after the priority deadline but before the standard deadline will undergo the same process, but acceptance is subject to conference venue logistics, such as room availability.

Priority deadline for symposium proposals: 2 August 2024
Notification of acceptance (first round): 9 August 2024
Standard deadline for symposium proposals: 30 August 2024
Notification of acceptance (second round): 6 September 2024

Submissions should consist of the following:

  • A title
  • A 300-1000 word description of the scope of the symposium, and its relevance to the convention along with the nature of the academic events (talks, posters, panels, demonstrations, etc.)
  • Whether the symposium is intended as a sequel to a symposium at a previous AISB conference.
  • An indication of whether submissions will be by abstract, extended abstract or full paper.
  • Your preferences about the intended length of the symposium as a number of days (preferably one or two days, but anything from half a day to three days), together with a brief justification.
  • A description (up to 500 words) of any experience you have in organisation of academic research meetings (please note that it is not a requirement that you have such experience).
  • Names and affiliations of any invited speakers that you may have in mind for the symposium.
  • Your names and full contact details, together with, if possible, names and workplaces of the members of a preliminary, partial programme committee.

Please email your completed proposal to symposia-proposals@aisb.org.uk

Venue

The University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) is thrilled to welcome you to our vibrant and dynamic campus, known for its cutting-edge facilities and strong connections with industry. We hope you enjoy your stay and take advantage of all that UWE Bristol and the beautiful city of Bristol have to offer. UWE Bristol’s main campus is located 2 miles from the M4 and M5 motorways and has good links with Bristol Parkway train station and city centre buses.

AISB partnering with Big Data & AI World 2024

We’re excited to announce that we are partnering with Big Data & AI World 2024 again this year. The event is taking place on 6 & 7 March at ExCeL, London. We will also be partnering with the Frankfurt edition of Big Data & AI World in May.

It would be great to see you there, register for free to join us: Click here to register

Register for BDAIW2024

Follow the latest news and speaker lineup: Stellar speaker lineup announced for Tech Show London 2024

AISB Seminar/Webinar: Alan Bundy – The History of the DReaM Group

AISB Seminar/Webinar
Alan Bundy
The History of the DReaM Group
8 March 2021
5pm

 

In this first installation of the new AISB Seminar series, we welcome Prof Alan Bundy, AISB Fellow and recent awardee of the EurAI Distinguished Service Award.

Abstract: I describe the history of the DReaM Group (Discovery and Reasoning in Mathematics), which I created after my arrival at the University of Edinburgh in 1971. The group has been characterised by its diversity of approaches to the representation of and reasoning with knowledge, including: deduction; meta-level reasoning; learning, especially of new reasoning methods; representation creation and change; as well as applications to problems as diverse as formal verification, analogical blending and computational creativity.

View the recording at https://aisb.org.uk/aisb-events/.

Free Robotics Webinars

The Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at the University of Plymouth started their post-graduate & research CRNS@Webinar, a series of virtual research workshops that started in the fall 2020 semester.

The focus of these workshops is to create an interactive and virtual platform where students from our postgraduate programs, PhDs and our academic staff from different research groups can have the opportunity to engage with researchers from national and international academic and research institutions on advanced topics in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Robotics.

Each webinar lasts about 45 minutes, and features a guest lecturer and an interactive Q&A session.

The webinars are streamed live via Zoom, where they are recorded and archived prior consent of the speakers and can be accessed for free any time after the seminar (webinar archive).

Spring slots for the Seminar are available and interested speakers should use the provided contact on the webinar page.

Alan Bundy to receive the 2020 EurAI Distinguished Service Award

AISB Fellow Prof Alan Bundy  will receive this year’s EurAI Distinguished Service Award. This award is presented every two years to a person having contributed significantly to the advancement of AI. Nominations have to be supported by a EurAI member society such as AISB. We are very happy that our nomination was supported by EurAI leading to this remarkable award being presented to Alan Bundy.
The award will be officially announced during the opening ceremony of ECAI 2020 on Sunday, 30 August 2020 and Alan will also be honoured at both the Fellows lunch and the EurAI General Assembly.

Alan Bundy is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include: the automation of mathematical reasoning, with applications to reasoning about the correctness of computer software and hardware; and the automatic construction, analysis and evolution of representations of knowledge. His research combines artificial intelligence with theoretical computer science and applies this to practical problems in the development and maintenance of computing systems. He is the author of over 300 publications and has held over 60 research grants.

He is a fellow of several academic societies, including the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB). His awards include the IJCAI Research Excellence Award (2007), the CADE Herbrand Award (2007) and a CBE (2012). He was: Edinburgh’s founding Head of Informatics (1998-2001); founding Convener of UKCRC (2000-05); and a Vice President and Trustee of the British Computer Society with special responsibility for the Academy of Computing (2010-12). He was also a member of: the Hewlett-Packard Research Board (1989-91); the ITEC Foresight Panel (1994-96); both the 2001 and 2008 Computer Science RAE panels (1999-2001, 2005-8); and the Scottish Science Advisory Council (2008-12).

AIAI becomes AIAI

The Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) was created by the University of Edinburgh in 1983 to work alongside its academic Department of Artificial Intelligence to encourage the development and take-up of artificial intelligence methods. Over the years it has created many innovative applications of AI with a wide range of clients, government agencies and collaborators. In 2001 it became part of the Centre for Intelligent Systems and their Applications (CISA) within the School of Informatics at Edinburgh continuing to lead its AI applications-orientated work. On 1st December 2019, the name of the Centre was changed to the “Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute” (AIAI) to reflect both the continuing research and applications aspects of the work. Applied AI work continues to be performed by staff, students and collaborators across the School of Informatics.

Austin Tate, Emeritus Professor of Knowledge-Based Systems, University of Edinburgh

Note: an extended version of this announcement, together with details of the history of Artificial Intelligence research at Edinburgh since 1963, will feature in the upcoming issue of the AISB Quarterly magazine.