[agents] 2nd Announcement International Springschool on HCI: global program available

[A.Nijholt at ewi.utwente.nl]

2nd NIRICT-SIKS INTERNATIONAL SPRINGSCHOOL on HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

THEME: SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING, 22-26 March 2010

Organized by NIRICT (3TU Federation: University of Twente, Technical University Delft, Technical University Eindhoven) in cooperation with the Dutch SIKS Research School and the EU Network of Excellence SSPNet on Social Signal Processing.
Website: http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/lenteschool2010

Steering Committee
Anton Nijholt, University of Twente
Catholijn Jonker, Technical University of Delft Cees Midden, Technical University of Eindhoven

Course Directors
Dirk Heylen, University of Twente
Betsy van Dijk, University of Twente
Emile Hendriks, Technical University of Delft

SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING: INTRODUCTION In the week of March 22nd till 26th the three Dutch technical universities (Eindhoven, Twente and Delft) in cooperation with the Dutch SIKS PhD Research School organize a Springschool “Social Interaction Computing”. This school is organized for PhDs and Master students who study or work in the fields of  'Human Technology Interaction' and 'Human Media Interaction'. This is the second NIRICT-SIKS School on human-computer interaction. The first school presented a broad multidisciplinary view of how fundamental insights into human physical and cognitive capabilities can be used to design human-centred technologies that can collaborate symbiotically with humans to enhance human capabilities. The focus of this second School is on all aspects of social and affective interfaces.

SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING: PROGRAM
The program of this Springschool consists of lectures and hands-on-assignments on designing and evaluating intelligent user interfaces and a special PhD training program. The school offers courses in which different approaches and methods for interface design are put into practice.

Conversational interfaces (dialogue systems, conversational agents, or human-robot interaction) form a special type of interaction that will be considered in depth as one of the case studies during this one-week school, with a focus on social signal processing and affective computing. This involves overviews and in-depth lectures combined with hands-on practice in areas such as data-collection and observation; sensing, social-signal processing, and machine learning; interface and experience design; models of affect and personality; synthesis of verbal and nonverbal behaviours.

Using this and other case studies, students will learn more about crucial aspects of and methodologies for designing user interfaces such as user-profiling, ethnography and interviewing, lo-fi and hi-fi prototyping, usability testing and user experience evaluation.

For the PhD training and consultancy program, round tables will be organized where students can discuss issues relevant to their research and their career and can get advice from senior researchers. 

SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING: LECTURERS
Courses will be mainly given by professors of the three Dutch technical universities. The lecturers have extensive background in human-computer interaction and have been chosen because of their interest in advanced interaction technologies including multimodal interaction, user interface design, brain-computer interfacing, computer vision, gesture interfaces, computer vision, animation techniques and machine learning. In addition to these lectures there will be two or three invited talks by well-known HCI specialists who will present surveys of the research areas. The language spoken is English. 


SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING: VENUE
The school will be held in the Best Western Hotel Ehzerwold in Almen (near Zutphen), The Netherlands: http://www.ehzerwold.nl/hotel/ 


SOCIAL INTERACTION COMPUTING: COSTS & REGISTRATION The early registration fees (before March 1) are:
PhD Students: € 600 (however, see below for SIKS PhD students) Others € 800 Late registration fees are: early registration fees + € 100

Registration includes full boarding in Hotel Ehzerwold during the period of the Spring School. More detailed information about program and registration will be made available on the website of this Springschool: http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/lenteschool2010

INFORMATION FOR SIKS PhD STUDENTS
As a result of the cooperation between SIKS and NIRICT, a number of SIKS-PhD-students can participate in the NIRICT-SIKS Springschool without paying fee. Participating in this course is a part of the Advanced Components stage of SIKS' educational program. However, the number of places available is limited. SIKS has reserved a number of places, primarily intended for those PhD-students working in the field of Human Computer Interaction.
Other SIKS-PhD-students are not excluded, however if the number of applicants exceeds the number of  places available, the students working on HCI come first.

SIKS-Ph.D.-students interested in taking the course, should NOT contact the local organization, but register at office at siks.nl, inform Mrs. Corine Jolles that they want to participate and confirm in the mail that their supervisor supports the participation! Students will receive a notification whether they can participate as soon as possible.