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Call for Papers: Swarm Cognition Workshop
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The workshop is part of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2009 - http://cognitivesciencesociety.org/conference2009)

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Overview

Swarm Cognition" is the juxtaposition of two relatively unrelated concepts that evoke, on the one hand, the power of collective behaviours displayed by natural swarms, and on the other hand the complexity of cognitive processes in the vertebrate brain. With this premise, the Swarm Cognition Workshop aims at promoting synergies between diverse disciplines such as cognitive neurosciences, psychology, ethology and swarm intelligence. Research work in Swarm Cognition aims at identifying the operational principles of cognitive behaviour by calling upon the underlying mechanisms of self-organising systems, i.e., systems whose internal organisation changes without being guided by an outside source.

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Important Dates

Paper submission deadline: 1 June 2009
Notice of acceptance: 12 June 2009
Camera ready deadline: 3 July 2009
Workshop date: 29 July 2009

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Format

We expect and encourage submissions about either work in progress or final results. Additionally, already published work recast into the Swarm Cognition framework are also eligible for presentation at the workshop. In this case, contributions should necessarily provide: (i) an introductory section that explains how the presented research fits within the Swarm Cognition approach, (ii) a summary of the most significant results obtained and (iii) a conclusion section that outlooks future studies on Swarm Cognition.
Full papers have no page limits, meaning that we accept submissions from single to several pages. Nevertheless, all authors are encouraged to explain how their work fits within the Swarm Cognition framework and contributes to the progress on the important questions identified for the workshop.

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Submissions

All formatting guidelines (including word and latex style files) and submission instructions are available on the workshop submission page: http://laral.istc.cnr.it/swarm-cognition/Submissions/

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Topics and goals

The originality of this workshop is marked by the following: (i) addressing cutting edge Swarm Cognition research issues; (ii) involving a truly interdisciplinary cooperation; (iii) hosting world leading keynote speakers in the field. This workshop is envisioned as being a first meeting on Swarm Cognition. As such, the issues which the workshop will raise are of interest to a surprisingly diverse array of specialities. In no particular order, the following come to mind:
+ Cognitive science
+ Neurosciences
+ Situated agents
+ Bounded rationality
+ Neuroeconomics
+ Evolutionary game theory
+ Cognitive ethology
+ Neural computation and distributed representations
+ Distributed computation
+ Population biology
+ Swarm intelligence
+ Reinforcement learning
+ Adaptive control
+ Cultural evolution
+ Cognitive sociology

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Dissemination

The material presented at the workshop will be fully accessible through the workshop web site. Authors of paper accepted for the “Swam Cognition” workshop will be invited to submit in September/October 2009 an extended version for review for publication on a special issue on Swarm Cognition of the Swarm Intelligence Journal (Springer Verlag, see http://www.springer.com/11721).

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Workshop Chairs

Dr. Vito Trianni - Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology, CNR, Rome, Italy
Dr. Elio Tuci - Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology, CNR, Rome, Italy

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Program Committee

Andrea Cavagna (Centre for Statistical Mechanics and Complexity and Institute for Complex Systems, CNR-INFM, Rome, Italy)
Nikolaus Correll (Distributed Robotics Lab , MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA)
Iain D. Couzin (Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, NJ)
Marco Dorigo (IRIDIA, ULB, Brussels, Belgium)
Carlos Gershenson (VUB, Brussels, Belgium - New England Complex Systems Institute, Cambridge, MA)
Simon Garnier (Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, NJ)
Paul Graham (CCNR, Univesitiy of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
Laurent Keller (Department of Ecology and Evolution, UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland)
Stefano Nolfi (ISTC, CNR, Rome, Italy)
Frank Pasemann (Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, Germany)
Andrew Philippides (CCNR, Univesitiy of Sussex, Brighton, UK)
Steffen Wishmann (LIS, EPFL - Department of Ecology and Evolution, UNIL, Lausanne, Switzerland)