2010 International Conference on
Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, & Prediction (SBP10)

Conference Website: http://sbp.asu.edu

March 29 - April 1, 2010

Natcher Auditorium
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Main Campus
Bethesda, MD

* Pre-conference Tutorial Sessions (TBA) : March 29, 2010
* SBP10 Conference (Single Track) March 30 - 31, 2010
* Post-conference Cross-Disciplinary Workshop: (Tentative), morning, April 1, 2010

Sponsored by
An up to date list of sponsors will be listed on the conference website. Current and anticipated sponsors include:
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) - confirmed
Air Force Research Laboratories
Office of Naval Research
National Institutes of Health

ABOUT SBP
Due to the overwhelming success of its workshops in 2008 and 2009, Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling and Prediction (SBP) has become a high visibility, high-impact, international conference. Detailed information on SBP workshops (SBP08 and SBP09) including proceedings, presentations and invited speakers can be found at http://sbp.asu.edu

Social computing harnesses the power of computational methods to study social behavior and social context. Behavioral modeling refers to representing behavior in the abstract and is a convenient and powerful way to conduct virtual experiments and scenario planning. Both social computing and 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
SBP10 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 post-conference half day workshop

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), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and 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. Attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding of social and behavioral computing and evaluation as they 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 or posters are solicited on research issues, theories, and applications. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to,

* Military and security applications of SBP
o Group formation and evolution in the political context
o Technology and flash crowds
o Networks and political influence
o Information diffusion
o Group representation and profiling

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

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

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

Important Dates
Paper/full text poster Due: Friday, November 6, 2009
Notification of acceptance: November 27, 2009
Camera-Ready: December 11, 2009

Format and Submission
Papers (maximum 8 pages) should be submitted in PDF format. Full text of posters should also be submitted. Format instructions and a Word template from Springer can be found at the conference website http://sbp.asu.edu

SBP10 Conference Proceedings will be published by Springer
Papers should be submitted at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sbp10

Questions and inquiries are welcome. Please send them to sbpconf10@gmail.com

Pre-conference Tutorial Sessions

Two half-day sessions will be offered: one in the morning and one in the afternoon on the day before the full conference. One session will be designed for computational scientists, computer scientists, engineers, and others with strong mathematical backgrounds. The purpose of this session is for attendees to become familiar with the behavioral and social science concepts including terminology, theories, and traditional approaches to problem solving.

A second, concurrent session will be designed for behavioral and social scientists and others 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://sbp.asu.edu. Note that the plans for the tutorial sessions are in progress and are subject to change.

Post-conference Workshop: Cross-fertilization Roundtables
The post-conference SBP10 Workshop will be held in the morning following the final day of the full 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 4-5 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 6-10 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://sbp.asu.edu. Note that the plans for the post conference workshop are in progress and are subject to change.

Hotel and Logistics
A number of hotels are in the vicinity of the NIH campus. Conference rates are currently being negotiated with nearby hotels and will be posted to the conference website when available. The NIH campus is easily accessible via the Metro subway train (Red Line, Medical Center stop). Washington Reagan National Airport is located on the Metro (Blue/Yellow Line). East Coast travelers should consider taking the Amtrak train to Union Station. More details on Hotel and Logistics will be posted as they become available http://sbp.asu.edu

Travel Scholarships
It is anticipated that 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://sbp.asu.edu

SBP Conference Committees

SBP10 Conference Organizing Committee ? Conference Co-Chairs

Patricia L. Mabry, Ph.D.
Conference Chair
Senior Advisor
Program Lead, Systems Science Initiatives
Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research
National Institutes of Health
http://obssr.od.nih.gov/about_obssr/staff/patricia_mabry_bio.aspx

Ed Wegman, Ph.D.
Co-Chair
Professor of Information Technology and Applied Statistics
Chair, Data Sciences Program, School of Computational Sciences
Director of the Center for Computational Statistics
George Mason University
http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.html

Yasmin Said, Ph.D.
Co-Chair
Ruth L. Kirschstein National Fellow
Co-Director of the Center for Computational Data Sciences
George Mason University

SBP10 Program Committee Chairs
Sun-Ki Chai, Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sunki/

John Salerno, Ph.D.
AFRL/RIEA
Air Force Research Laboratory
Rome, NY

SBP Steering Committee
This committee selects conference chairs and assures consistency and quality of the conference across years.

Huan Liu, Ph.D.
Chair
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering
Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ
http://www.public.asu.edu/~huanliu/

John Salerno, Ph.D.
Chair
Principal Computer Engineer
Air Force Research Laboratory
Rome, NY

Sun-Ki Chai, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sunki/

SBP Advisory Committee

Rebecca Goolsby, Ph.D.
Office of Naval Research

Terrance Lyons, Ph.D.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Patricia L. Mabry, Ph.D.
Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research
National Institutes of Health

For Further Information about SBP10
Additional information will be posted to the conference website http://sbp.asu.edu as it becomes available.