[agents] OPTMAS 2012 at AAMAS Last Call for papers

Fri Feb 24 05:05:01 EST 2012

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multiple copies)

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*

Last CFP: Fifth International Workshop on

Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OPTMAS V)

To be held in conjunction with the *Eleventh International Conference on 
Autonomous and Multi-Agent Systems**
                                            (AAMAS 2012)*
*
                                            5 June 2012*
*                       cfp 
at:<http://www.iiia.csic.es/%7Ejar/optmas2010/>https://sites.google.com/site/optmas2012 
<https://sites.google.com/site/optmas2012/home>*
**

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******Special Issue in The Computer Journal*
--------------------------------------
Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit revised and 
expanded versions for inclusion in a special issue of *SCI-indexed journal*:
*The Computer Journal*  (JCR Impact factor: 1.327). Check out the call 
here: 
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/computer_journal/special.html .

Call
----**
This workshop invites works from different strands of the multi-agent 
systems community that pertain to the design of algorithms, models, and 
techniques to deal with multi-agent optimisation problems. In so doing, 
this workshop aims to provide a forum for researchers to discuss common 
issues that arise in solving optimisation problems in different areas 
and elaborate common benchmarks to test their solutions.

Invited Talk by Dr. Christian Blum
-----------------------------------

Christian Blum is an associate professor in computer science at the 
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). His research focuses on 
developing new swarm intelligence and hybrid metaheuristics techniques 
for solving optimization and control tasks that arise in many important 
applications areas such as telecommunications, bio-informatics, 
neuroscience and robotics. Concerning swarm intelligence, he has used 
algorithms such as ant colony optimization (ACO) and particle swarm 
optimization (PSO) for solving challenging combinatorial optimization 
problems and for problem solving in distributed environments such as 
adhoc and sensor networks. Concerning hybrids metaheuristics, he has 
mainly worked on two different types of hybridization: the hybridization 
of metaheuristics based on the construction of solutions with concepts 
from branch and bound and on the developing of efficient large 
neighborhood search algorithms. Concerning applications, apart from 
classical operations research applications, Christian has also applied 
these techniques to real-world applications in wireless sensor networks 
(self-organised duty-cycling in sensor networks) and in the bio-medical 
and neuroscience field (automated reconstruction of dentritic and axonal 
trees, DNA sequencing, training of neural networks for medical pattern 
classification, ...).

Additional information about Christian can be found on his webpage: 
http://www.lsi.upc.edu/~cblum/.

Background
----------------
The number of novel applications of multi-agent systems has followed an 
exponential trend over the last few years, ranging from online auction 
design, through in multi-sensor networks, to scheduling of tasks in 
multi-actor systems. Multi-agent systems designed for all these 
applications generally require some form of optimization in order to 
achieve their goal. Given this, a number of advancements have been made 
in the design of winner determination, coalition formation, and 
distributed constraints optimization algorithms among others. However, 
there are no general principles guiding the design of such algorithms 
that would enable researchers to either exploit algorithms designed in 
other areas or to ensure that their algorithms conform to some level of 
applicability to real problems.
This workshop aims to address the above issues by bringing together 
researchers from different parts of the Multi-Agent Systems research 
area to present their work and discuss acceptable solutions, benchmarks, 
and evaluation methods for generally researched optimization problems.
In particular, the main issues to be addressed by the workshop include 
(but are not limited to):

1. Techniques to model and solve optimisation problems in which the actors
are partly or completely distributed and can only communicate with their 
peers.
2. Algorithms to compute solutions to mechanisms that deal with 
different stakeholders who  may  be  self  interested  or  may  have 
  different computation/communication capabilities from their peers.
3. Techniques to manage and disseminate relevant information across 
different agents.
4. Dealing with privacy concerns: solving complex  optimization 
  problems while leaking as little private information as possible
5. Problems that require anytime algorithms.
6. Approximate algorithms that need to provide  guarantees  on  the 
  quality of the solution.
7. Mechanisms whose properties  can  be  significantly  affected  if 
  the solution computed is not the optimal one.
8. Techniques to deal with optimizations that have to  be  repeated 
  with possibly only slight changes in the input data.
9. Techniques to deal  with  situations  where  the  input  data  may 
  be uncertain or unreliable, requiring that the solution computed be 
robust to slight differences from the true values.
10. Techniques to deal with agents that are tied to physical devices. 
This involves computation and communication constraints that need to  be 
considered in the coordination techniques, as well as the possibility of 
failures of the devices and communication links.

Keywords
-------------
Topics include but are not limited to:

* Distributed Constraints Optimisation/Satisfaction
* Winner Determination Algorithms in Auctions
* Coalition Formation Algorithms
* Algorithms to compute Nash Equilibrium in games
* Optimisation under uncertainty
* Optimisation with incomplete or dynamic input data
* Algorithms for real-time applications

Workshop motivation
--------------------------
OPTMAS complements the objectives of the AAMAS conference by providing a 
forum for multi-agent algorithm designers. The workshop will be 
attractive to those working in the general areas of distributed 
optimization, auction design, coordination, learning, and uncertainty 
and will be a good place to present original work and discuss acceptable 
benchmarks and evaluation methods for generally researched optimization 
problems.
The aim of OPTMAS is to complement the theoretical angle taken by work 
presented in the main conference, and other workshops, by focusing on 
the implementation issues and the general trends in optimization 
problems that arise across a variety of multi-agent applications.

Important dates
---------------------
* 28th FEBRUARY, 2012 - Submission of contributions to workshops
* 27th MARCH, 2012 - Workshop paper acceptance notification
* 4th or 5th JUNE, 2012 - Workshop takes place in conjunction with AAMAS 
2012.

Submission
---------------
Submissions should conform to the ACM SIG style (follow the formatting 
instructions 
<http://aamas2012.webs.upv.es/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=19>available 
at the AAMAS-2012 website) and should not be more than *10* pages long 
(excluding appendices).

Authors can submit their papers through the OPTMAS 2012 Easychair 
submission site:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas2012

Reviewing process
-----------------
Papers will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Criteria for selection 
of papers will include: originality, readability, relevance to themes, 
soundness, and overall quality.

Organizing committee
--------------------
Dr. Jesus Cerquides Bueno, IIIA - CSIC, Spain
Dr. Alessandro Farinelli, University of Verona, Italy
Dr. Sarvapali D. Ramchurn University of Southampton, UK
Dr. Juan Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar,IIIA - CSIC, Spain
Dr. Meritxell Vinyals, University of Verona, Italy

Programme Committee
--------------------------------------
Mohsen Afsharchi         University of Zanjan
Ana L. C. Bazzan         Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Christian Blum           Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya
Archie Chapman           University of Sydney
Francesco M. Fave        University of Southampton
Katsutoshi Hirayama      Kobe University
Christopher Krenkintveld University of Texas
Sven Koenig              University of Southern California
Nikos Komodakis          University of Crete
Akshat Kumar             University of Massachusetts
Robert N. Lass           Drexel University
Victor Lesser            University of Massachusetts
Beatriz López            University of Girona
Pedro Meseguer           IIIA-CSIC
Maria Polukarov          University of Southampton
Marc Pujol               IIIA-CSIC
Talal Rahwan             University of Southampton
Norman Salazar           IIIA-CSIC
Onn Shehory              IBM Haifa Research Lab
Eric Shieh               University of Southern California
Sameer Singh             University of Massachusetts
Ruben Stranders          University of Southampton
Greet Vanden             Berghe KaHo Sint-Lieven
William Yeoh             Singapore Management University
Roie Zivan               Ben Gurion University of the Negev