The ICONIP2008 Organizing Committee invites proposals for special sessions to be held at the 15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP2008), November 25-28, 2008, Auckland, NZ.

Special sessions provide organizers and participants with an opportunity to focus intensively on a specific topic in an area or closely related areas. Organizers can choose to concentrate on emerging research topics, but can also devote the session to application issues. For ICONIP2008, we are seeking proposals of specialized topics in areas including, but not limited to the following:

• Neural Network Theory and Models
• Neural Network Applications
• Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Science
• Hybrid Systems and Hardware

Organizers are encouraged to nominate reviewers of papers to the Program Committee on proposing special sessions.  Once a special session proposal is approved it will be immediately announced on the website and the organizers are expected to help promoting the special sessions by their own means.

All papers are submitted through the Web and subjected to reviewing by the ICONIP2008 Program Committee. Organizers can read the reviewers’ reports of the papers submitted to their special sessions, and make recommendations to the Program Committee on paper acceptance. On receiving the finalized list of accepted papers from the Program Committee, the organizers are responsible for liaising with the authors on the submission of final papers. A minimum of 5 papers is required for each session. If a session has too few papers, accepted papers will be allocated to regular sessions.

Organizers are also responsible for chairing their special sessions in ICONIP2008. Each special session will last for 2.5 - 3 hours and the schedule will be decided by the organizers of ICONIP 2008 as they will be held in parallel with regular sessions. All accepted papers will be included in the ICONIP2008 conference proceedings. No extra registration fee is required for joining the special sessions.

Proposal Detail

Special session proposals should contain the necessary information for the Special Session Chairs and reviewers from the Program Committee to judge the importance, quality and community interest in the proposed topic. Each special session should have one or more designated organizers.

Special session proposals should address the following issues: 

Basic information: Title of the proposed special session, the name, e-mail address, and webpage of the organizer(s).

Topic of interest: Provide a full description of the proposed special session. What will the special session be about? Why should we believe this is an interesting and significant topic? 

Organizers’ biography: Please indicate the background of the organizer(s).

Recommended Reviewers (Optional): Organizers are encouraged to nominate reviewers for papers submitted to their special sessions. The affiliations and contacts of the reviewers should be included.

Expected number of papers and publicity: Special sessions for ICONIP 2008 should consist of at least 5 papers and organizers should indicate in their proposal the expected number of papers for the session. Organizers are also expected to help promoting the special sessions by their own means and should describe how this will be done.

Submission

It is recommended to submit the special session proposals in PDF format via e-mail to spang@aut.ac.nz, sylee@kaist.ac.kr, richard@udc.es.

Important Dates