[agents] OPTMAS 2016 - Deadline extened to February 8, 2016

[Archie Chapman]

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CFP: International Workshop on Optimisation in Multi-Agent Systems (OptMAS)

*Extended deadline: February 8, 2016*

To be held in conjunction with the Fifteenth International Conference on Autonomous and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2014)
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Workshop Website
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http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~wyeoh/OPTMAS2016/

Call
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*We are happy to announce an extension to the deadline for OptMAS 2016, to February 8, 2016.*

The OPTMAS 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 optimization problems.


Important dates
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* February 8, 2016 - Extended submission dedline

* March 7, 2016 - Workshop paper acceptance notification

* March 10, 2016 - Submission of camera-ready version

* May 10, 2016 - Workshop takes place in conjunction with AAMAS 2016


Background
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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 multi-sensor networks, to scheduling of tasks in multi-actor systems. Multi-agent systems designed for all these   applications generally involve some form of very hard optimization problems that are substantially different from problems traditionally dealt with in other areas (e.g. industrial processes or scheduling applications). More specifically, the technical issues that multi-agent algorithm designers have to deal with include:

*  Open systems: 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.

*  Distributed systems: algorithms that are across different system components, such as those that deal with agents that are tied to physical devices. This involves considerations of computation and communication constraints, and the possibility of failures of the components and/or communication links.

*  Privacy concerns: optimizing while minimizing the exchange of private information.

*  Solution quality bounds: problems requiring algorithms with quality bounds.

*  Robust optimization: techniques to deal with optimizations that are repeated with only slight changes in the input data and/or unreliable input data.

*  Highly parallel architectures: e.g., multi-core, GPGPU, which deal with large-scale problems.


Keywords
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Topics include but are not limited to:

*  Distributed constraint optimization/satisfaction
*  Winner determination algorithms in auctions
*  Coalition formation algorithms
*  Algorithms to compute Nash and other equilibria in games
*  Optimization under uncertainty
*  Optimization with incomplete or dynamic input data
*  Algorithms for real-time applications
*  GPU for general purpose computations (GPGPU)
*  Multi-core and many-core computing
*  Cloud, distributed and grid computing


Submission
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Participants should submit a paper (maximum *15* pages in LNCS Springer style), describing their work on one or more of the topics relevant to the workshop. Alternatively, participants may submit a shorter paper (maximum *5* pages in LNCS Springer style) presenting a research statement or perspective on topics relevant to the workshop.

All submissions are conducted via the OptMAS 2016 EasyChair website:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=optmas2016


Reviewing process
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Papers will be reviewed by at least 2 program committee members. Criteria for selection of papers will include: technical quality, novelty, significance, and clarity.


Publication
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Pre-proceedings containing all accepted papers are provided electronically on a USB stick as a part of the AAMAS workshop registration package. Best papers from OptMAS 2008 and OptMAS 2009 were selected for publication in the special issue on Optimisation in Multi-Agent System of the Journal of Autonomous and Multiagent Systems. Best papers from OptMAS 2011 and 2012 were invited to submit to a special issue on Optimisation in Multi-Agent System of the Computer Journal. We plan to continue this initiative for the current and next editions.


Best and Visionary papers
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Two papers that will be accepted to the workshop will be selected by the organizing committee as the "visionary" and "best" papers of the workshop.

The most “visionary paper” will be published by Springer in a book under the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) - Hot Topics series. The book will be a compilation of the most visionary papers of the AAMAS-2016 Workshops, where one paper will be selected from each AAMAS-2016 workshop.

Additionally, the “best paper” will be published by Springer in a book under the Communications in
Computer and Information Science (CCIS) series. The book will be a compilation of the best papers of the AAMAS-2016 Workshops, where one paper will be selected from each AAMAS-2016 workshop.
Authors of the selected most visionary paper and the best paper are expected to provide their latex files promptly upon request.


Organizing committee
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Dr. Archie Chapman, University of Sydney
Dr. Pradeep Varakantham, Singapore Management University
Dr. William Yeoh, New Mexico State University
Dr. Roie Zivan, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev


Programme Committee
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Juan Antonio Rodriguez Aguillar, IIIA-CSIC
Bo An, Nanyang Technological University
Ana Bazzan, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Filippo Bistaffa, University of Verona
Jesus Cerquides, IIIA-CSIC
Fei Fang, University of Southern California
Alessandro Farinelli, University of Verona
Ferdinando Fioretto, New Mexico State University
Tal Grinshpoun, Ariel University
Patricia Gutierrez, IIIA-CSIC
Cedric Herpson, University Pierre and Marie Curie
Katsutoshi Hirayama, Kobe University
Tom Holvoet, KU Leuven
Christopher Kiekintveld, University of Texas, El Paso
Sven Koenig, University of Southern California
Kate Larson, University of Waterloo
Amnon Meisels, Ben-Gurion University
Pedro Meseguer, IIIA-CSIC
Toni Penya-Alba, IIIA-CSIC
Gauthier Picard, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne
Valentin Robu, University of Southampton
Onn Shehory, IBM Haifa Research Lab
Marius Silaghi, Florida Institute of Technology
Matthew Taylor, Washington State University
Rinde van Lon, KU Leuven
Meritxell Vinyals, CEA-LIST
Mohamed Wahbi, University College Cork
Harel Yedidsion, Ben-Gurion University
Logan Yliniemi, Oregon State University
Makoto Yokoo, Kyushu University