PRIMA 2011 - The 14th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA-2011)

The 14th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems (PRIMA-2011)
Wollongong, Australia
November 16th -18th, 2011
http://www.prima2011.org

Conference Theme: Agents for Sustainability

Agent computing is an exciting, transformational approach to developing computer systems that can rapidly and reliably solve real-world problems that usually demand human knowledge and expertise. The value, power and flexibility of agent and multi-agent systems has been demonstrated in application areas such as logistics, manufacturing, simulation, robotics, decision-support, entertainment, and especially in online market environments. As one of the largest and fastest growing research fields of computer science, agent research today includes a wealth of topics, as outlined below. PRIMA-2011 invites submissions of original, unpublished, theoretical or applied work on any such topic, and encourages reports on the development of prototype and deployed agent systems, and of experiments that demonstrate novel agent system capabilities.

About PRIMA. PRIMA is one of the oldest agent computing forums, beginning in 1998 as a regional agents workshop. PRIMA has grown into an international scientific conference on agents and multi-agent systems which attracts high quality, cutting edge research from all over the world. Throughout its history PRIMA has focused on showcasing the impact of agents on the real world, across the spectrum from early research and prototypes to mature, deployed systems. PRIMA aims to bring together researchers, developers, and industry leaders who are active at the forefront of agent computing, its practices and related areas. The 2011 conference builds upon the success of its thirteen predecessors, and offers an exceptional opportunity for the presentation of original research work, technological advances, and analyses of practical issues, problems and challenges in agent computing.

Theme. The conference theme for PRIMA-2011 of “Agents for Sustainability” seeks to especially encourage thought leadership in the agent community as to how agent computing can be applied to enhance sustainable practices in our world, from agriculture to personal resource usage to the design and operation of more sustainable cities. Papers addressing this theme, across the range from innovative early work to reports on systems in production, are welcomed, as also are papers that continue to explore the “Agents and Services” theme of PRIMA-2010, which addressed connections to service science and service-oriented computing.

Submission. PRIMA-2011 proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the LNAI series. Papers should be 12-15 pages in length in Springer LNCS format and submitted as a PDF file. PRIMA-2011’s reviewing process, overseen by a Senior Programme Committee (SPC), will allow authors to respond to reviewers’ comments prior to final paper selection, and will also provide a "shepherding" process for borderline papers that will see a PC or SPC member work with the authors to provide additional support during the paper revision process. Papers will be judged on originality, significance, presentation, and technical soundness. A broad range of agent topics are of interest, but all papers should clearly identify how their scientific or technical contributions advance the state-of-the-art of agent computing practice or have a strong potential so to do. A footnote should identify those papers whose first author is a student.

Topics
Agent-based system development
Agent programming and communication languages
Agent development environments
Agent-oriented software engineering
Case studies on implemented systems

Agent communication
Agent communication languages and protocols
Agent commitments
Network structures and analysis

Agent-based Simulation
Emergent behaviour
Simulation-specific issues
Single and Multi-agent Learning
Computational architectures for learning and adaptation

Agent Reasoning
Logics for Agents and Multi-Agents
Reasoning (single and multi-agent)
Planning (single and multi-agent)
Cognitive models
Ontological reasoning

Interface Agents
Practices of Interface Agents
Interface Multi-Agents
Virtual Agents
Collaborative Interface Agents
Autonomous Interface Agents

Agent societies and social networks
Artificial social systems
Trust and reputation
Social and organizational structure
Privacy, safety and security
Normative Multi-Agent Systems
Ethical and legal issues

Agent Theories, Models and Architectures
BDI, and other models of agency
Modelling the dynamics of MAS
Formal verification of MAS
Agent Technologies for Service Computing
Service composition with agent collaboration
Service brokering and agency
Personalized services with agent adaptation
SLA definition and monitoring as agent goals

Agent Cooperation and Negotiation
Cooperation, Coalition formation and Coordination
Distributed problem solving
Formal models for modelling other agents and self
Argumentation, Persuasion, Negotiation and Bargaining

Agent Systems
Software agents
Mobile agents
Agent-Based Assistants
Agent-Based Virtual Enterprise
Embodied Agents and their Applications
Socially Situated Planning Software and Pervasive Agents

Real-world Robotics
Coordination in multi-robot systems
Modelling and analysis of multi-robot systems
Tools that are relevant for multi-robot studies
Applications of multi-robots to real-world problems

WWW and Semantic Web Agents
Web-based agents
Ontology agents
Semantic Web agents
Human Agent Interaction

Other Related Areas
Collective intelligence
Service science
P2P, Grid computing
Financial markets and algorithmic trades
Ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence
Knowledge and Data Intensive Systems
Perceptive Animated Interfaces
Tools and Standards
Ubiquitous Software Services
Virtual Humans

Important Dates
Workshop/Tutorial proposals
May 6th, 2011

Workshop/Tutorial notifications
May 20th, 2011

Paper submission
June 3rd, 2011
Final author notification
July 28th, 2011

Camera-ready papers
August 31st, 2011

Early registration deadline
September 15th, 2011

Registration deadline
November 1st, 2011

Workshops and Tutorials
November 14th and 15th, 2011

Conference dates
November 16th - 18th, 2011

Organization
Honorary Chair:
R. Sadananda (UNSW, Australia)

General Chairs
Aditya Ghose (Univ. of Wollongong, Australia)
Guido Governatori (NICTA, Australia)

Program Chairs
Jane Hsu (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
David Kinny (Kyoto University, Japan)

Publicity Chairs:
Wayne Wobcke (UNSW, Australia)
Pascal Perez (Univ. of Wollongong, Australia)

Tutorial Chairs:
Abhaya Nayak (Macquarie Univ., Australia)
Serena Villata (Univ. of Turin, Italy)

Local Organizing Chairs:
Minjie Zhang (Univ. of Wollongong, Australia)
Hoa Dam (Univ. of Wollongong, Australia)

Senior Program Committee

Monique Calisti, Whitestein Technologies, Switzerland
Paolo Giorgini, University of Trento, Italy
Ryszard Kowalczyk, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Michael Luck, King's College London, UK
John-Jules Meyer, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Paul Scerri, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Carles Sierra, IIIA - CSIC, Spain
Sandip Sen, University of Tulsa, USA
Munindar Singh, NCSU, USA
Mary-Anne Williams, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Makoto Yokoo, Kyushu University, Japan

Wiebe van-der-Hoek, University of Liverpool, UK

Program Committee
Salem Benferhat
Frances Brazier
Longbing Cao
Brahim Chaib-draa
Nilanjan Chakraborty
Sanjay Chaudhary
Shih-Fen Cheng
Mohan Chhetri
Sung-Bae Cho
Amit Chopra
Khanh Hoa Dam
Mehdi Dastani
Frank Dignum
Patrick Doherty
Thomas Eiter
Edith Elkind
Marc Esteva
Rino Falcone
Yang Gao
Joseph Giampapa
Robin Glinton
Eduardo Gomes
Guido Governatori
Nathan Griffiths
Chung-Wei Hang
Hiromitsu Hattori
Christopher Hazard
Koen Hindriks
Michal Jakob
Yichuan Jiang
Wan-rong Jih
Zhi Jin
Benjamin Johnston
Kamalakar Karlapalem
Kee-Eung Kim
Yasuhiko Kitamura
Kazuhiro Kuwabara
Jérôme Lang
Habin Lee
Jaeho Lee
Ho-fung Leung
Minyi Li
Lin Liu
Wei Liu
Graham Low
Beatriz López
Xinjun Mao
Shigeo Matsubara
Felipe Meneguzzi
Simon Miles
Pavlos MORAITIS
Yohei Murakami
Hideyuki Nakanishi
Mariusz Nowostawski
Nir Oren
Juan Pavón
Henry Prakken
Martin Purvis
Maryam Purvis
Jan Richter
Michael Rovatsos
Ji Ruan
Yuko Sakurai
Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu
Tino Schlegel
Murat Sensoy
Kiam Tian Seow
Von-Wun Soo
Biplav Srivastava
Eugen Staab
Bas Steunebrink
Toshiharu Sugawara
John Thangarajah
Nicolas Troquard
Leon van der Torre
M. Birna van Riemsdijk
Pradeep Varakantham
Gerard Vreeswijk
Yonghong Wang
Glenn Wightwick
Brendon J. Woodford
Yang Xu
Yifeng Zeng

(Parts of this list subject to confirmation)