[agents] CFP - MSDM 2014: AAMAS Workshop on Multiagent Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty

[Brenda Ng]

Please circulate widely and much apologies for duplicate postings.

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                      CALL FOR PAPERS
                       The 9th Workshop on
 Multiagent Sequential Decision Making Under Uncertainty (MSDM)
             (to be held at AAMAS 2014)
========================================================

May 5-6, 2014
Paris, France
http://masplan.org/msdm2014

In sequential decision making, an agent's objective is to choose actions
based on observations of its environment that will maximize the expected
performance over multiple steps. In worlds where actions are not
deterministic or observations incomplete, Markov Decision Processes (MDPs)
and Partially-Observable MDPs (POMDPs) serve as the basis for principled
approaches to single-agent sequential decision making. Extending these
models to systems of multiple agents has become the subject of an
increasingly active area of research. Over the past decade, a variety of
different multiagent models have emerged for cooperative agents (e.g.,
MMDP, MTDP and Dec-POMDP) and self-interested agents (e.g., I-POMDP and
POSG), and under an assortment of different assumptions about agents'
capabilities to communicate (e.g., Dec-MDP-Com, COM-MTDP), observe (e.g.,
Dec-MDP) and influence other agents (e.g., TI-Dec-MDP, ND-POMDP). The high
computational complexity has driven researchers to develop multiagent
planning and learning methods that exploit structure in agents'
interactions, methods geared toward efficient approximate solutions,
decentralized methods that distribute computation among the agents, and new
ways for agents to model and reason about their interactions with other
agents.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together current and future
researchers in the field of multiagent sequential decision making (MSDM) to
present and discuss promising new work, to identify recent trends in model
and algorithmic development, and to establish important directions and
goals for further research and collaboration. This workshop also strives to
develop consensus within the community on benchmarks and evaluation
methodology in order to compare and validate alternative approaches and
models. Further, we hope that these active discussions and collaborations
will help us to overcome the challenges of successfully applying MSDM
methods to real-world problems in security, sustainability, public safety
and health, and other challenging domains.

This year, the MSDM workshop will also include an extensive tutorial geared
towards introducing the fundamental concepts of multiagent sequential
decision making, acclimating researchers to the broad landscape of MSDM
models and methods, and informing potential practitioners of the state of
the art.

Topics
----------------------------------------
Multiagent sequential decision making comprises (1) problem representation,
(2) planning, (3) coordination, and (4) learning, in self-interested as
well as cooperative agent systems.  The MSDM workshop addresses this full
range of aspects. Topics of particular interest include:

- Fundamental modeling challenges, e.g.,
 ... model specification: how should models be derived?
 ... model granularity: how should one decide on an appropriate level of
abstraction to express decision-making models?
- Novel representations, algorithms and complexity results
- Comparisons of algorithms
- Relationships between models and their assumptions
- Decentralized vs. centralized planning approaches
- Online vs. offline planning
- Communication and coordination during execution
- Computational issues involving...
 ... large numbers of agents
 ... large numbers of discrete / continuous states, observations and actions
 ... long decision horizons
- (Reinforcement) learning in partially observable multiagent systems
- Cooperative, competitive, and self-interested agents
- Application domains
- Benchmarks and evaluation methodologies
- Standardization of software
- High-level principles in MSDM: past trends and future directions

Important Dates
----------------------------------------
January 17, 2014    - Abstract submission due
January 22, 2014    - Paper submission due
February 19, 2014   - Author notification
March 12, 2014       - Camera-ready submission due
May 6-7, 2014        - Workshop dates

Submission Instructions
----------------------------------------
Authors are encouraged to submit papers up to 8 pages in length, as per the
instructions posted on the workshop website:
https://masplan.org/msdm2014:instructions
Each submission will be reviewed by at least three Program Committee
members. The review process will be "single-blind"; thus authors do not
have to remove their names when submitting papers.

The proceedings of the MSDM workshop are not archival. In addition to novel
works, we will also consider works that are either under submission or
recently published elsewhere. However, authors should note this in their
paper submissions (by titlenote and reference if applicable).

Organizing Committee
----------------------------------------
Prashant Doshi, University of Georgia
Stefan J. Witwicki, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
Brenda M. Ng, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Jilles S. Dibangoye, INRIA
Eric Shieh, University of Southern California
Joao V. Messias, Instituto Superior Tecnico

Tutors
----------------------------------------
Chris Amato, MIT
Prashant Doshi, University of Georgia
Frans Oliehoek, Maastricht University
Zinovi Rabinovich, Mobileye
Matthijs Spaan, Delft University of Technology
Stefan J. Witwicki, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Advisory Committee
----------------------------------------
Chris Amato, MIT
Prashant Doshi, University of Georgia
Ed Durfee, University of Michigan
Abdel-Illah Mouaddib, University of Caen
Frans Oliehoek, Maastricht University
Zinovi Rabinovich, Mobileye
Matthijs Spaan, Delft University of Technology
Milind Tambe, University of Southern California
Pradeep Varakantham, Singapore Management University
Makoto Yokoo, Kyushu University
Shlomo Zilberstein, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Program Committee
----------------------------------------
Martin Allen, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Computer Science
Chris Amato, MIT
Bikramjit Banerjee, University of Southern Mississippi
Daniel Bernstein, Fiksu, Inc.
Aurelie Beynier, University of Pierre and Marie Curie
Matthew Brown, University of Southern California
Olivier Buffet, INRIA/LORIA
Brahim Chaib-Draa, Laval University
Francois Charpillet, INRIA/LORIA
Ed Durfee, University of Michigan
Alberto Finzi, University of Napoli “Federico II”
Akshat Kumar, IBM Research
Jun-Young Kwak, Spokeo
Francisco Melo, Instituto Superior Tecnico/INESC-ID
Hala Mostafa, BNN Technologies
Abdel-Illah Mouaddib, University of Caen
Enrique Munoz de Cote, INAOE
Frans Oliehoek, Maastricht University
Praveen Paruchuri, CMU
David Pynadath, University of Southern California
Zinovi Rabinovich, Mobileye
Anita Raja, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Ekhlas Sonu, University of Georgia
Matthijs Spaan, Delft University of Technology
Katia Sycara, CMU
Karl Tuyls, Maastricht University
Pradeep Varakantham, Singapore Management University
Makoto Yokoo, Kyushu University
Chongjie Zhang, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Shlomo Zilberstein, University of Massachusetts Amherst