SoCS 2010: The Third Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Search

CALL FOR PAPER AND PARTICIPATION

SOCS-2010

The Third International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SOCS-2010)

Heuristic search and other forms of combinatorial search are currently very active areas of research in Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Planning and other areas of Computer Science.

The International Symposium on Combinatorial Search (SoCS) is meant to bring researchers in such areas together to exchange their ideas and cross-fertilize the field.

SoCS is targeting researchers and submissions in all fields that use combinatorial search, including artificial intelligence, planning, robotics, constraint programming, operations research and bioinformatics.

Relevant Topics

Analysis of search algorithms
Automated synthesis of lower bounds
Bounding and pruning techniques
Continuous problem solving
External-memory and parallel search
Incremental and active learning in search
Meta-reasoning and search
Methodology and critiques of current practice
Model-based search
Meta-reasoning and search
Random vs. systematic search strategy selection
Pattern databases
Portfolios of search algorithms
Real-time search
Search focus in goal-directed problem solving
Search space discretization for continuous state-space problems
Self-configuring and self-tuning algorithms
Symmetry handling
Time, memory, and solution quality trade-offs

Special Scope This Year: Search in Planning

Recently, search techniques and heuristics have been effectively applied to classic planning problems. SoCS-2010 will include a special session covering search in planning. We invite all researchers who use search in planning to participate and/or submit their work to SoCS-2010. In particular, we are interested in position papers covering the relationship between these fields.

Submission Information

We encourage researchers and attendees of SoCS to submit papers to the symposium. Submissions should be in AAAI format and up to 8 pages long. Submissions should report on substantial, original and new research.

We also encourage submissions of position papers which are intended for the discussion of ideas and concepts related to search. Examples would be thoughtful critiques of the field, historical perspectives and analysis, methodological contributions, insightful reports on new and demanding applications, and papers related to the challenge area of this years conference.

Submissions will be carefully peer-reviewed by multiple reviewers.

SoCS papers should be submitted to:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=socs10

Multiple Submissions

In order to foster the exchange of ideas at SoCS, we encourage authors to submit papers describing new research which has been accepted to other venues. Authors should clearly indicate where a paper has been or will be published. Such papers will undergo a light reviewing process in order to ensure that they are of interest to the SoCS community. Authors will later need to submit a two-page abstract describing the work for inclusion in the proceedings by the camera-ready deadline.

The SOCS Proceedings

New this year: SoCS will have a formal archival proceedings. However, authors of accepted papers (who submitted up to eight-page papers) can choose one of the two following publication options.

A full paper. Up to eight pages will be allocated in the proceedings for such papers. Papers that will appear as full papers in the formal SoCS proceedings cannot be published elsewhere.
Abstract only. Authors may choose to only include an abstract of their work in the formal archival proceedings. Up to two pages will be allocated in the proceedings for abstract papers. Full versions of such papers with significantly more material than the SoCS abstract are generally publishable in other venues. Similarly, a paper that was accepted/published elsewhere is welcomed as regular, full-paper submission to SoCS but may only appear as an abstract in the formal archival proceedings.

Position papers and papers published in other venues should be clearly labelled so as to ensure proper reviewing.

The decision whether to have a full version in the proceedings or only an abstract may be made by the authors near the date when the camera-ready version is needed.

Special Student Activities

SoCS is a student friendly event; we strongly encourage students to attend. In addition, we hope that we will be able to help students with funding for their trip to SoCS. SoCS 2010 will have a special session, called the student introduction session. In this session, each student will have a few minutes to introduce himself/herself and his research interests and achievements to the entire community. We strongly encourage all students who are attending SOCS to actively participate in this event. More information on how to register to this event can be found in the SoCS student page.

Dates and Location

SoCS will be co-located with AAAI-2010 and will take place at the Stone Mountain Resort, Atlanta, Georgia beginning with an evening banquet on Thursday, July 8 and finishing on the afternoon of Saturday, July 10, 2010.

Important dates: Submission: April 2, 2010
Notification: May 5, 2010
Camera ready: June 18, 2010
SOCS: July 8-10, 2010

SOCS web site: http://socs10.search-conference.org

SOCS-2010 chairs:
Nathan Sturtevant, University of Alberta, Canada. nathanst@cs.ualberta.ca
Ariel Felner, Ben-Gurion University, Israel. felner@bgu.ac.il