28th International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning

Website: http://qr15.sift.net/

We build qualitative models to predict and understand our world from incomplete, imprecise, or uncertain data. Our qualitative models span natural systems (physics, biology, ecology, geology), social systems (economics, cultural decision-making), cognitive systems (conceptual learning, spatial reasoning, intelligent tutors, robotics), and more.

The qualitative reasoning (QR) community includes researchers in Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Cognitive Science, and Natural Sciences, commonly seeking to understand, develop, and exploit the ability to reason qualitatively. This broadly includes:

• Developing new formalisms and algorithms for general qualitative reasoning.
• Building and evaluating predictive, prescriptive, diagnostic, or explanatory qualitative models in novel domains.
• Characterizing how humans learn and reason qualitatively about the world with incomplete knowledge.
• Developing novel, formal representations to describe central aspects of our world: time, space, change, uncertainty, causality, and continuity.

The International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning (http://qr15.sift.net/) provides a forum for researchers from multiple perspectives to share research progress toward these goals. The workshop will be held at the Minneapolis, MN campus of the University of St. Thomas and at SIFT, August 10-11, 2015, in cooperation with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

TOPICS

• Qualitative modeling in physical, biological and social sciences, and in engineering.
• Representations and techniques for qualitative reasoning.
• Methods of integrating qualitative reasoning with other forms of knowledge, including quantitative methods and other formalisms.
• The use of qualitative reasoning for diagnosis, design, and monitoring of physical systems.
• Applications of qualitative reasoning, including education, science, and engineering.
• Cognitive models of qualitative reasoning, including the use of existing QR formalisms for cognitive modeling and results from other areas of cognitive science for qualitative reasoning.
• Using qualitative reasoning in understanding language, sketches, images, and other kinds of signals and data sources.
• Formalization, axiomatization, and mathematical foundations of qualitative reasoning.

SUBMISSIONS

• Submission deadline: April 10, 2015 May 4, 2015
• Notifications: June 16, 2015
• Early registration deadline: TBD
• Late breaking papers: June 12, 2015 June 26, 2015
• Late breaking paper notifications: June 30, 2015
• Camera-ready copy deadline: July 16, 2015

All papers must be submitted via the conference submission web site by Friday, March 20th, 2015. All submissions must be in PDF format and not exceed 6000 words. Additional information will be available on the workshop website: http://qr15.sift.net/

All submissions will be selected according to their quality, significance, originality, and potential to generate discussion. Each contribution will be reviewed by at least two referees from the QR-15 Program Committee. Papers may be accepted for either oral or poster presentation.

The accepted papers will be published as a collection of Working papers. As QR-15 is a workshop, not a conference, submission of the same paper to conferences (e.g., AAAI-16) or journals is acceptable.

Papers should be formatted according to the AAAI guidelines, available from www.aaai.org, and must be in PDF format. The workshop is also open to people who would like to attend without submitting a paper.

Papers submitted at the late-breaking deadline will be reviewed by a moderator, and accepted papers will be presented together during a poster session. Late-breaking papers should be formatted as above and will not be included in the collection of working papers.

PROGRAM CHAIRS:

• Kate Lockwood, University of St. Thomas
• Scott Friedman, Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Núria Agell, ESADE - Ramon Llull University Mehul Bhatt, University of Bremen Gautam Biswas, Vanderbilt University Stefano Borgo, ISTC CNR Ivan Bratko, University of Ljubljana George Coghill, University of Aberdeen Johan de Kleer, PARC Ken Forbus, Northwestern University Christian Freksa, University of Bremen Tomoya Horiguchi, Kobe University Liliana Ironi, IMATI - CNR Matthew Klenk, PARC

Benjamin Kuipers, University of Michigan Andrew Lovett, Northwestern University Chris Price, Aberystwyth University Paulo Salles, University of Brasilia Mónica Sánchez, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Qiuang Shen, Aberystwyth University Peter Struss, Technical University Munchen Thora Tenbrink, Bangor University Stefania Tentoni, IMATI - CNR, Pavia Louise Travé-Massuyès, LAAS-CNRS Jure Zabkar, University of Ljubljana