SPIRE 2012 is the 19th edition of the International Symposium on String Processing and Information Retrieval, and will be organized by the Information Technologies Research Group of the Universidad Autónoma de Bucaramanga. The conference will be held in conjunction with the 8th Latin American Web Congress, LA-WEB 2012. SPIRE 2012 will also feature a full day of tutorials and a full day of workshops.

SPIRE 2012 will take place in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. Cartagena is considered the most important tourist destination of Colombia. In 1984, Cartagena’s colonial walled city and fortress were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city encapsulates all the charm of Spanish colonial architecture, the republic period and today, the attractions of intense night-life, cultural festivals, exotic scenery, superb beaches, delicious food and a wide offer of hotels and tourist infrastructure. Cartagena has an international airport with daily flights to and from different national and international destinations.

The scope of SPIRE includes not only fundamental algorithms in string processing and information retrieval, but also application areas such as computational biology, DNA sequencing, and Web mining. Given its interdisciplinary nature, SPIRE offers a unique opportunity for researchers from these different areas to meet and network. Because of this reason interdisciplinary papers are encouraged.

Typical topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Processing: Dictionary algorithms, Text searching, Pattern matching, Text and sequence compression, Succinct and compressed indexing, Automata-based string processing;

* Biological Sequence Processing: Analysis of DNA and RNA sequencing data, Molecular sequence processing, Recognition of genes and regulatory elements, Comparative genomics and population genetics;

* Information Retrieval: Models, Indexing, Ranking and filtering, Interface design for IR, Evaluation issues in IR, Text analysis, Text mining, Text classification and clustering, Information extraction, Language models and topic models for search related-tasks, Efficient implementation of IR systems, Algorithms and data structures for IR;

* Search-related tasks: Cross-lingual information retrieval, Multimedia / multi-modal IR, Recommendation and collaborative filtering, Semi-structured data retrieval, Blog retrieval.


SPIRE 2012 welcomes either long papers (12 pages) or short papers (6-pages). Additional pages might be included in an appendix for long proofs or additional results needed to support the paper, but the final outcome will not be based on it. Submissions must be anonymous and formatted using the Springer LNCS style. At least three reviewers will evaluate each paper in double-blind mode based on its originality, quality, methodological robustness, and significance of theoretical and/or practical contribution. Papers must be in English, must be unpublished, and must not be under submission to another conference or journal for the entire duration of the reviewing process. Accepted papers will appear in the Proceedings published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.


CONFERENCE CHAIRS:
* Liliana Calderón-Benavides (UNAB, Colombia)
* Cristina González-Caro (UNAB, Colombia)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE CO-CHAIRS:
* Edgar Chávez (Universidad Michoacana, Mexico)
* Nivio Ziviani (UFMG, Brazil)


IMPORTANT DATES:

Paper submission: May 7, 2012
Authors notification: June 30, 2012
Camera ready: July 30, 2012


For more information visit the conference Web site: http://spire2012.unab.edu.co/

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