<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)">The 2nd</span></b><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)"> Special Session on </span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)">Machine Learning for Natural</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)">Language Processing</span></b><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)"> (</span></b><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)">ML for NLP</span></b><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)">)</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span style="font-size:14pt;color:rgb(192,0,0)"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><a href="https://www.icmla-conference.org/icmla21/ICMLA%20SS_ML%20for%20NLP%202021%20cfp.pdf" target="_blank">https://www.icmla-conference.org/icmla21/ML-for-NLP</a><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:normal;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b>As part of <span lang="EN-IN">The 20^th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (IEEE ICMLA-2021)</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><a href="https://www.icmla-conference.org/icmla21/" target="_blank">https://www.icmla-conference.org/icmla21/</a><br></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:normal;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span style="color:rgb(5,99,193);text-decoration-line:underline"><span style="text-decoration-line:none"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0.4pt 0.0001pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:center;line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">December 13-16, 2021, Pasadena, California, USA</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-US">Context:</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Machine learning (ML) has become an essential tool for natural language processing, and has emerged in different NLP application scenarios, such as sentiment analysis, document classification, text summarization, speech recognition, etc.  Despite the success of ML algorithms, several existing methods are challenged by the input data, which are noisy, heterogeneous, sparse and high dimensional. From this point of view, recent ML techniques based on deep learning, reinforcement learning, few-shot learning, etc., have shown an improvement in recent years in solving challenging NLP problems.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><h1 style="text-indent:0cm;color:rgb(0,0,0);margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:17.12px;break-after:avoid;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Scope</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:normal;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">This session invites submissions with high-quality works that are related – but are not limited to – the topics below:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Deep learning for NLP</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Reinforcement Learning for NLP</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Unsupervised Learning for NLP</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Automatic machine translation</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Automatic document summarization</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Text classification</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Text detection and recognition from images</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Question Answering systems</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Transfer Learning for NLP</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Active Learning for NLP</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Speaker identification</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Speech recognition</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Speech to Text</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Text generation</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Sentiment analysis</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 54pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Noto Sans Symbols"">●      </span><span lang="EN-IN">Real-life and industrially relevant NLP applications</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="IT" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="IT">E-mail filtering</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="IT" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="IT">Chatbot</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="IT" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="IT">News generation</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="EN-IN">Meeting analysis</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="IT">Fact Checking</span><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 90pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:"Courier New"">o   </span><span lang="EN-IN">CVs analysis and classification</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:normal;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.7pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"></span><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><h1 style="color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;break-after:avoid;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Submission Guidelines and Instructions</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Papers submitted for reviewing should conform to IEEE specifications. Manuscript templates can be downloaded from <a href="http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)"><span style="color:rgb(0,102,204)">IEEE website</span></a><a href="http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)"><span style="color:black;text-decoration-line:none">.</span></a> <b>The maximum length of papers is 8 pages.</b> All the papers will go through double-blind peer review process. <b>Authors’ names and affiliations should not appear in the submitted paper</b>. Authors’ prior work should be cited in the third person. Authors should also avoid revealing their identities and/or institutions in the text, figures, links, etc.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Papers must be submitted via the <a href="https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/ICMLA2021/" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)">CTM System</a> by selecting the track “Special Session on Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing”. All accepted papers must be presented by one of the authors, who must register. Detailed instructions for submitting papers can be found at <a href="https://www.icmla-conference.org/icmla21/callforpapers.html" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)"><span style="color:rgb(0,102,204)">Submissions</span></a>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-IN">Paper Publication:</span></b><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Accepted papers will be published in the ICMLA 2021 conference proceedings (to be published by IEEE).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-IN">Important Dates:</span></b><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"><font color="#990000"><b>Submission Deadline: September 5, 2021 </b></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Notification of Acceptance: October 5, 2021</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Camera-ready papers & Pre-Registration: October 17, 2021 </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN"> </span></p><h1 style="color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:17.12px;break-after:avoid;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Special Session Organizers:</span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Rim Hantach, ENGIE, France</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Vasile Palade, Coventry University, UK</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="FR">Philippe Calvez, ENGIE, France</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.0001pt 0.5pt;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:18.4px;text-align:justify;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="FR"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><b><span lang="EN-IN">Program committee:</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="IT">Salha Alzahrani, Taif University, Saudi-Arabia</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Abdulrahman Alatahhan, Leeds Becket University, UK</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Daniel Neagu, University of Bradford, UK</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Sara Sarifzadeh, Coventry University, Uk</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="EN-IN">Xiaorui Jiang, Coventry University, UK<br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;line-height:16.48px"><span lang="EN-IN" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;font-size:12pt">Rafika Boutalbi, Stuttgart University, Germany</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="ES-TRAD">Lazhar Labiod, University of Paris Descartes, France</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0.2pt 0.7pt 0cm;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);text-align:justify;line-height:16.48px;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span lang="ES-TRAD">Stanislas Morbieu, Kernix, France</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="left" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;text-indent:0cm;font-size:12pt;color:rgb(0,0,0);line-height:normal;font-family:"Times New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