2012 International Conference on Social Computing,
Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction (SBP12)

Conference Website: http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012/

April 3 - April 5, 2012

University of Maryland
College Park, MD


- Pre-conference Tutorial Sessions: April 2, 2012
- SBP12 Conference (Single Track), April 3-5, 2012
- Cross-Fertilization Roundtables, April 3 (Afternoon), 2012


Sponsored by (an up to date list of sponsors will be listed on the conference website)
Sponsors for SBP 2011 included:

- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- Office of Naval Research (ONR)
- Army Research Organization (ARO)
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)


ABOUT SBP


The SBP conference is the result of merging two successful international conferences
on closely related subjects:

- the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Prediction (SBP)
- the International Conference on Computational Cultural Dynamics (ICCCD)

The combined conference retains the acronym SBP, with ?Behavioral? replaced by ?Behavioral-Cultural?.

Social computing harnesses the power of computational methods to study social behavior within a social
context. Cultural behavioral modeling refers to representing behavior and culture in the abstract, and
is a convenient and powerful way to conduct virtual experiments and scenario planning. Both social
computing and cultural behavioral modeling are techniques designed to achieve a better understanding of
complex behaviors, patterns, and associated outcomes of interest. Moreover, these approaches are
inherently interdisciplinary; subsystems and system components exist at multiple levels of analysis
(i.e., ?cells to societies?) and cross disparate disciplines.


Conference Offerings and Opportunities

SBP12 is a highly interdisciplinary conference offering a rare and exciting opportunity for behavioral
and social science researchers to come together with computational and computer scientists and other
related disciplines in order to:

- Gain fundamental working knowledge in a discipline outside one?s own through half-day pre-conference
tutorials (More information will be posted to the conference website as it becomes available).
- Showcase SBP research at paper and poster sessions.
- Meet people in complementary disciplines through deliberate exercises aimed at exploring potential
research partnerships during the cross-fertilization roundtable session.

Because this conference is being held in the Washington, D.C. area there will be a unique opportunity to
meet with program staff across a variety of federal agencies including: Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Office of Naval Research (ONR), Army Research Organization (ARO), National Institutes
of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This conference is emphatically interdisciplinary and provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, program staff from federal agencies and graduate students in disciplines such as sociology, behavioral science, psychology, cultural study, health sciences, economics, computer science, engineering, information systems, and operations research to convene in one place. In addition, the conference will
pay special attention to application papers. Attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding of how social and behavioral computing and evaluation can inform critical decision and policy making. The program will include invited speakers from government, industry, and academia, as well as research presentations and discussions.

*** Call for Papers and Posters ***

Papers and posters are solicited on research issues, theories, and applications. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to,

Military and security applications of SBP
- Group formation and evolution in the political context
- Technology and flash crowds
- Networks and political influence
- Information diffusion
- Group representation and profiling
- Reasoning about terrorist group behaviors and policies towards them

Health applications of SBP
- Social network analysis to understand health behavior
- Modeling of health policy and decision making
- Modeling of behavioral aspects of infectious disease spread
- Intervention design and modeling for behavioral health

Other applications of SBP
- Economic applications of SBP
- Reasoning about development aid through SBP
- Reasoning about global educational efforts through SBP

Basic research on sociocultural and behavioral processes using SBP
- Group interaction and collaboration
- Group formation and evolution
- Group representation and profiling
- Cultural patterns and representation
- Social conventions and social contexts
- Influence process and recognition
- Public opinion representation
- Viral marketing and information diffusion
- Psycho-cultural situation awareness

Methodological issues in SBP
- Verification and validation
- Sensitivity analysis
- Matching technique or method to research questions
- Metrics and evaluation
- Methodological innovation
- Model federation and integration
- Limitations of and barriers to SBP
- Research gaps and opportunities


*** Important Dates ***

Submission Open: October 1, 2011

Paper Registration Deadline: Friday, October 28, 2011

Paper/full text poster Due: Friday, November 4, 2011

Notification of acceptance: December 5, 2011

Camera-Ready: December 19, 2011


Format and Submission

SBP12 Conference Proceedings will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LCNS) by Springer. The papers must be in English and MUST be formatted according to the Springer-Verlag LNCS/LNAI guidelines. Sample LaTeX2e and WORD files are available at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0. Abstract and full text for both oral presentations and posters should be submitted electronically before the specified deadlines. The maximum length of papers is 8 pages and should be submitted in PDF following the instruction in http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012/callforpapers.html. For any questions and inquiries, please send to sbp-tpc@lists.hawaii.edu.


Pre-conference Tutorial Sessions

Four half-day sessions will be offered: two concurrent sessions in the morning and two concurrent sessions in the afternoon on the day before the full conference. Sessions will be designed to meet the needs of one of two distinct groups. One group will consist of attendees who have backgrounds in computational science; computer science, engineering, and other mathematically oriented disciplines. The purpose of tutorials aimed at this group is for attendees to become familiar with the behavioral and social science concepts including terminology, theories, and traditional approaches to problem solving.

Other tutorial sessions will be designed for behavioral and social scientists and others (e.g. those with medical backgrounds or training in public health) who may have limited formal education in the computational sciences. Attendees will gain an understanding of terminology, theories, and general approaches employed by computationally based fields, especially with respect to modeling approaches.

The purpose of these tutorial sessions is to give each group of related disciplines a basic working knowledge in the complementary set of disciplines in order to pave the way for better communication across disparate disciplines and to enhance the conference experience for all attendees. More details regarding the preconference tutorial sessions, including instructors, course content, and registration information will be posted to the conference website as soon as this information becomes available at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012/. Note that the plans for the tutorial sessions are in progress and are subject to change.


Cross-fertilization Roundtables

The SBP12 Cross-fertilization Roundtable session will be held in the afternoon of the first day of the technical portion of the conference. The purpose of the cross-fertilization roundtables is to help participants become better acquainted with people outside of their discipline and with whom they might consider partnering on a future SBP project. To accomplish this goal, this workshop will feature 3-4 sessions, each lasting up to 30 minutes. During each session, a number of roundtables will run concurrently. Each roundtable will focus on a different topic (although should demand warrant, there may be duplication of some topics across roundtables). Approximately 8-10 participants will sit at each table. Conference organizers will assign participants to roundtables based on their interests (to be indicated on the tutorial registration form) and will ensure that the composition of each roundtable offers opportunities for behavioral and social scientist to meet systems scientists and vice versa. Thus, by the end of the workshop period, each participant will have had an opportunity to converse with a variety people from complementary disciplines and may have a feel for selected people they might like to collaborate with. It is the intent of the conference organizers that this workshop will spawn the formation of numerous interdisciplinary investigative teams, and that those teams will collaborate on grant applications to sponsoring funding agencies. More details regarding the preconference tutorial sessions, including instructors, course content, and registration information will be posted to the conference website as soon as this information becomes available at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012/. Note that the plans for the post conference workshop are in progress and are subject to change.


Best Paper Awards

SBP 2012 will feature a Best Paper Award and a Best Student Paper Award. All papers are qualified for the Best Paper Award. Papers where the senior author says the principal author is a student will be considered for the Best Student Paper Award.


Hotel and Logistics

The Marriott Inn & Conference Center, University of Maryland University College. Their home page includes directions, maps, etc. http://www.marriott.com/wasum


Travel Scholarships

It is anticipated that a limited number travel scholarships will be available on a competitive basis. Additional information will be provided on the SBP Conference website as it becomes available at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012/.


SBP Conference Committees

Conference Co-Chairs:

V.S. Subrahmanian, University of Maryland, vs@cs.umd.edu
Nathan Bos, JHU APL, Nathan.Bos@jhuapl.edu

Program Co-Chairs:

Shanchieh (Jay) Yang, RIT, jay.yang@rit.edu
Ariel Greenberg, JHU APL, Ariel.Greenberg@jhuapl.edu
Mica Endsley, SA Technologies, mica@satechnologies.com

Steering Committee:

Huan Liu, Arizona State University, huan.liu@asu.edu
John Salerno, AFRL, john.salerno@rl.af.mil
Sun-Ki Chai, University of Hawaii, sunki@hawaii.edu
Dana Nau, University of Maryland, nau@cs.umd.edu
VS Subrahmanian, UMD, vs@cs.umd.edu

Advisory Committee:

Rebecca Goolsby, ONR, rebecca.goolsby@navy.mil
Joesph Lyons, AFOSR, Joseph.Lyons@wpafb.af.mil
Jeff Johnson, ARL/ARO, jeffrey.c.johnson4@us.army.mil
Fahmida N. Chowdhury, NSF, fchowdhu@nsf.gov

Poster Session Chair:

Lei Yu, Binghamton University, lyu@cs.binghamton.edu

Tutorial Chair:

Anna Nagurney, University of Massachusetts Amherst, nagurney@gbfin.umass.edu

Challenge Problem Chair:

Nitin Agarwal, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, nxagarwal@ualr.edu

Workshop Co-Chairs:

Fahmida N. Chowdhury, NSF, fchowdhu@nsf.gov
Bethany Deeds, NIH, Deedsb@NIDA.nih.gov

Sponsorship Committee Co-Chairs:

Huan Liu, ASU, huan.liu@asu.edu

Student Arrangement Chair:

Patrick Roos, UMD, patroos@gmail.com

Publicity Co-Chairs:

Donald Adjeroh, West Virginia University, Donald.Adjeroh@mail.wvu.edu
Gerardo Simari, Oxford University, gerardo.simari@cs.ox.ac.uk

Web Master: Damon Earp, UMD, dearp@umiacs.umd.edu


Additional information will be posted to the conference website
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2012 as it becomes available.