CALL FOR PAPERS

Discovery Informatics Symposium:
The Role of AI Research in Innovating Scientific Processes

November 2-4, 2012, Arlington, VA (USA)
AAAI Fall Symposium Series

http://www.discoveryinformaticsinitiative.org/dis2012


Addressing the ambitious research agendas put forward by many scientific disciplines requires meeting a multitude of challenges in intelligent systems, information sciences, and human-computer interaction. There are many aspects of the scientific discovery process that our community could help automate, facilitate, or make more efficient through artificial intelligence techniques. For example, although considerable efforts have been directed toward data modeling and integration, these activities continue to demand large investments of scientists’ time and effort. The scientific literature continues to grow and is becoming more and more unmanageable for researchers operating in the most active disciplines. Better interfaces for collaboration, visualization, and understanding would significantly improve scientific practice. Scientific data, publications, and tools could be published in open formats with appropriate semantic descriptions and metadata annotations to improve sharing and dissemination. Opportunities for broader participation in well-defined scientific tasks enable human contributors to provide large amounts of data, annotations, or complex processing results that could not otherwise be obtained. These are just some examples of areas where there are opportunities for artificial intelligent techniques could make a difference. Improvements and innovations across the spectrum of scientific processes and activities will have a profound impact on the rate of scientific discoveries.

This symposium will provide a forum for researchers interested in understanding the role of AI techniques in improving or innovating scientific processes.

We seek submissions that: (1) report on success stories that illustrate the potential of future research in this field; (2) discuss lessons learned in the process of addressing challenging aspects of the scientific process; (3) analyze the impact of a particular technique in an area of science and reflect on its potential for broader applicability in other sciences; and (4) propose future concepts grounded in lessons learned and an understanding of the challenges in the scientific discovery process.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Ontologies and knowledge bases that model particular areas of scientific knowledge
• Semantic representations of metadata for all aspects of scientific processes
• Techniques for organizing scientific literature
• Workflow systems to manage complex data analysis processes
• Knowledge discovery techniques that are embedded in the context of scientific investigations
• Integrative approaches of machine learning and scientific model induction
• Automated systems for experiment design, data analysis, and hypothesis generation and refinement
• User-centered design of intelligent systems that partner with scientists to perform complex tasks
• Integrated approaches to visualizing data, models, and the connections between them to foster new insights
• Cognitive-centered design of scientist aids
• Social computing systems that let novice participants contribute to scientific tasks

Submissions can be up to 6 pages, using the AAAI style files. Submissions should be uploaded to the submission site no later than June 5 2012 before midnight on the timezone of your choice.


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Co-Chairs:

• Will Bridewell, Stanford University
• Yolanda Gil, University of Southern California
• Haym Hirsh, Rutgers University
• Kerstin Kleese van Dam, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• Karsten Steinhaeuser, University of Minnesota

Program Committee:

• Cecilia Aragon, University of Washington
• Phil Bourne, University of California San Diego
• Elizabeth Bradley, University of Colorado
• Paolo Ciccarese, Harvard University
• Susan Davidson, University of Pennsylvania
• Helena Deus, Digital Enterprise Research Institute
• Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University
• Yolanda Gil, University of Southern California
• Clark Glymour, Carnegie Mellon University
• Carla Gomes, Cornell University
• Alexander Gray, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Larry Hunter, University of Colorado Denver
• David Jensen, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Vipin Kumar, University of Minnesota
• Pat Langley, Arizona State University
• Hod Lipson, Cornell University
• Huan Liu, Arizona State University
• Yan Liu, University of Southern California
• Miriah Meyer, University of Utah
• Mark Musen, Stanford University
• Andrey Rzhetsky, University of Chicago
• Steve Sawyer, Syracuse University
• Alex Schliep, Rutgers University
• Christian Schunn, University of Pittsburgh
• Nigam Shah, Stanford University
• Alex Szalay, The Johns Hopkins University
• Loren Terveen, University of Minnesota
• Raul E. Valdes-Perez, Vivisimo Inc.
• Evelyne Viegas, Microsoft Research

IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission deadline: June 22, 2012
Notification to authors: June 30, 2012
Camera-ready due: September 7, 2012
Registration deadline: September 14, 2012
Symposium: November 2-4, 2012