PAutomaC 2012 - Probabilistic Automata learning Competition

PAutomaC Announcement
Probabilistic Automata learning Competition
http://www.coral-lab.org/icgi2012/ “Challenge” section

-- Please, accept our apologies for multiple receptions --
PAutomaC is a competition about learning probabilistic finite state models (PFA, HMM, WA, ...), where participants are to build algorithms that can learn rational distribution over strings.
On its web page (http://snowball.cs.umbc.edu/icgi2012/challenge/), PAutomaC will allow users to download data samples corresponding to several kind of targets : some are deterministic, some not, the size of the alphabet is varying, and so is the complexity of the model.
There will be two kind of data: artificial ones that are obtained from a randomly generated machine; real data from different fields.
Schedule:
- End of January: PAutomaC is open, anyone may register, develop and test their algorithms on training data sets
- May 20th: Competition data sets are available
- June 30th: Competition is over
- July 20th: Short papers are submitted
- September 12-15th: special session at ICGI'12 in Washington, DC, USA (http://www.coral-lab.org/icgi2012/ )
Prizes and publications:
We are quite confident to find a sponsor that will award a prize to the winner of PAutomaC.
Participants are encouraged to submit an extended abstract and to present their innovations at the PAutomaC special session that will be organised during ICGI.
A submission to a journal special issue is also being considered.
Scientific committee:
- Peter Adriaans, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Dana Angluin, Yale University, USA
- Pierre Dupont, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
- Ricard Gavalda, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
- Colin de la Higuera, University of Nantes, France
- Jean-Christophe Janodet, University of Evry, France
- Tim Oates, University of Maryland, USA
- Jose Oncina, University of Alicante, Spain
- Menno van Zaanen, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
A further call for participation will detail the running and the technical aspects of the competition.