ESCI 2017 - 13th International Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces (ESCI)

The eNTERFACE workshops aim at establishing a tradition of collaborative, localized research and development work by gathering, in a single place, a team of leading professionals in multimodal human-machine interfaces together with students (both graduate and undergraduate), to work on a prespecified list of challenges, for 4 complete weeks. In this respect, it is an innovative and intensive collaboration scheme, designed to allow researchers to integrate their software tools, deploy demonstrators, collect novel databases, and work side by side with a great number of experts. It brings together 80 researchers for a whole month, subsequently it is the largest workshop on multimodal interfaces.
The workshop is held on an anual basis and organized around several research projects dealing with multimodal human-machine interfaces design. It is thus radically different from traditional scientific workshops, in which only specialists meet for a few days to discuss state-of-the art problems, but do not really work together. The eNTERFACE was initiated by the FP6 Network of Excellence SIMILAR. After the completion of SIMILAR, the workshop continued to attract wide interest under the aegis of the OpenInterface Foundation.
It was organized by Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium) in 2005, University of Zagreb (Croatia) in 2006, Bogaziçi University (Turkey) in 2007, CNRS-LIMSI (France) in 2008, University of Genova (Italy) in 2009, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2010, University of West Bohemia (Czech Republic) in 2011, Metz Supélec (France) in 2012, New University of Lisbon (Portugal) in 2013, University of Basque Country (Spain) in 2014, Université de Mons (Belgium) in 2015, and University of Twentein (Netherlands) in 2016.
How does it work?
Experienced researchers are invited to propose research projects to be undertaken by a few people (5-10) during 4 weeks. The proposal should explain what to do, how many people are necessary, profile of these people, etc.
Once the projects have been supervised and approved by the technical committee, they are listed on this website.
Then there is a call for participation: students/researchers from all around the world send their CVs and choose the project they prefer according to their expertise or interest.
Teams are built by the project leaders in cooperation with the organizers according to the preferences of the students/researchers and their suitability for the project.
Finally, the team members come to Porto and spend four wonderful and productive weeks together. There is no registration fee for participants and accommodation will be relatively cheap.
Organizers
eNTERFACE'17 will take place at the Centre of Digital Creativity (CCD), Escola das Artes, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Foz Campus (GPS: +41° 9' 11.57", -8° 40' 17.98"), Rua Diogo Botelho, 1327 4169-005 Porto, Portugal.
Facing the big lodges of port wine to which it gave its name across the river Douro, Porto is one of the oldest cities in Europe. It was born and developed itself during the Middle Age years and it keeps an interesting Historical Centre which was classified by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Despite its ancient roots, which have been preserved with pride, the city is now a modern one with a lively commerce and some importance as an industrial center. With a population of about 300.000, Porto is the country's second most important city in terms of economic output and cultural influence. With a well-known gastronomy and hospitable population, its monuments and museums, Porto cultural agenda has been steadily improving. The Catholic University of Portugal in Porto began its activities in 1978 with the College of Law and comprises, at present, 13 degree programs, distributed among the two campi situated in the city of Porto: The Asprela and the Foz Campus.
The “Asprela Campus”, located in the eastern part of the city, comprises the “Faculty of Biotechnology” and the “Institute of Health Sciences”, which offers several programs concerning these fields of study.
Located by the “Foz Velha”, the “Foz Campus”, encompasses six Schools: the “Law School”; the “School of Economics and Management”, the “College of Theology”, the “School of Arts” and the “Faculty of Education and Psychology” as well as the Institute of Bioethics and offers numerous degree and post-degree programs.
The Catholic University of Portugal in Porto is a reference University, whose quality of education is nationally and internationally recognized. We develop our activities based on innovation practices and quality assurance, continually monitoring opportunities and changing needs. Porto living costs is fairly inexpensive when compared with other equal size European cities.