BIO-LOGICAL 2009

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======================================================== BIO-LOGICAL: LOGIC-BASED APPROACHES IN BIOINFORMATICS WORKSHOP 12 December 2009 - Reggio Emilia (Italy)

http://www.di.uniba.it/~bio-logical09/

Satellite workshop of the AI*IA 2009: International Conference  of the Italian  Association for Artificial Intelligence

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========================================================   * * * IMPORTANT DATE - Paper submission: October 4, 2009 * * *

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LOCATION AND DATE

The Bio-Logical: Logic-based  Approaches  in Bioinformatics  Workshop will take  place in  Reggio  Emilia  (Italy)  on December  12,  2009, following the AI*IA 2009 International Conference (9-11 December 2009)

The conference  and all  the  workshops will  be  hosted  in the  new building of  the Department  of  Social,  Cognitive and  Quantitative Sciences and of the Faculty of Communication and Economics, located in the centre of Reggio Emilia Address: via Allegri 9, I 42100 Reggio Emilia

CALL FOR PAPERS

Bioinformatics is a  truly  interdisciplinary field  at the  boundary between biology and computer science. It encompasses every aspect of computational biology, from DNA sequence analysis to protein structure analysis and prediction. The goal is to aid biologists  in gathering and processing genomic  data to  study protein  function  and protein interactions. Most of the tools routinely used in bioinformatics have been developed   by  scientists  with  a   background  in  biological sciences. Some  prominent   examples   are  tools   for   comparing sequences. However, the vast amount of biological  data available and the demand for increasingly  complex applications for  their analysis offer vast opportunities  for the  systematic application  of  a wide range of techniques from computer  science, including those  based on computational logics.

This workshop aims at collecting contributes, and at bringing together scientists and practitioners, whose research interests lie across the areas of Logics  (along various  possible  representation formalisms, inference strategies and approaches) and Bioinformatics. The former is a broad branch of  Artificial Intelligence  in general,  and includes many sub-areas of interest. The latter is a discipline that is gaining more and more interest nowadays and that can take great advantage from the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques, because of the high domain  complexity  and  the scarce  explicit  domain  knowledge available. The  mixture  of  both  turns  out   to  be  particularly interesting, because of the peculiarity of Logic approaches to be able to express and  manipulate relations  among objects. Indeed, such a characteristic   might  play   a  crucial   role  in   the  biological domain. Hence, the  twofold  attempt of  the  workshop:  stimulating application of Logic approaches in Bioinformatics,  and searching for new challenges  posed  by  Bioinformatics that  can  be  successfully tackled by Logic-based approaches. Contributes are welcome concerning any aspect  involved in  such  disciplines: problems,  methodologies, techniques, systems and applications.

The workshop should be of interest, in addition to researchers working in the Logic-oriented branch of  Artificial Intelligence in  order to propose  their  solutions, also  for  those  who  are interested  more specifically in the biological  domain, that can  take the  chance to discover a  branch of Artificial  Intelligence less known to  the wide audience but that can turn  out to be  important for the  solution of their problems. Moreover, the meeting could also be a chance to bring together researchers  that  work  in the  Bioinformatics  application domain using approaches that fall into different  areas of Artificial Intelligence, with the aim of identifying possibilities of cooperation and synergies between the respective areas of interest.

TOPICS

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - logic programming - multi-strategic  inference:  induction,   abduction,  abstraction, deduction - representation and reasoning - constraint logic programming - fuzzy logic - description logics - (probabilistic) logic based learning

Applications include, but are not limited to: - genome annotation - protein sequence annotation - protein structure comparison - reconstruction and analysis biochemical pathways - structural analysis and protein structure prediction - drug design - information extraction from biological literature - integration of biological information sources - inferring cell regulation - determining protein function and metabolic pathways

PAPER SUBMISSION FORMAT

Papers not exceeding 10 pages, written in English  and complying with the             LNCS              Springer-Verlag              format (http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0)   should be submitted electronically. Submissions are due in PDF format and can be performed at the Workshop Web site: www.di.uniba.it/bio-logical09

Accepted papers will  be  published  on the  official  CD-Rom of  the AI*IA2009 International conference with regular ISBN number.

IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper submission: October 4, 2009 * Camera-ready of accepted papers: November 11, 2009 * Workshop day: December 12, 2009

WORKSHOP AND CONFERENCE FEE

Attendance to the  conference  and  to the  workshops  IS limited  to members of AI*IA. Participants are kindly requested to register before the conference, although on-site registration will also be offered.

Attendance to the workshops only (including participation  in all the workshops,  coffee-breaks and  a CD-ROM  with the  Proceedings  of all Workshops; it does not include membership to AI*IA):

Advance registration: 100 Euro, On-site registration: 200 Euro

Regular conference fee (including participation in the conference and all the  workshops, a copy  of the proceedings volume,  the conference CD-Rom, coffee breaks  for all 4 days; it  does not include membership to AI*IA):

Early registration, before August 31, 2009: 350 Euro. Late registration, since September 1, 2009: 400 Euro. On-site registration: 500 Euro

Student fee (including  proceedings volume  and participation  to the workshops, not including conference dinner): 130 Euro ** NOT AVAILABLE ON-SITE **

CHAIRS

Stefano Ferilli (University of Bari) Donato Malerba (University of Bari)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Nicola Di Mauro (University of Bari) Marenglen Biba (University of Bari) Corrado Loglisci (University of Bari) Eliana Salvemini (University of Bari)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE (provisional)

Giuliano Armani (University of Cagliari) Marco Botta (University of Torino) Alessandro Dal Palù (University of Parma) Paolo Frasconi (University of Firenze) Francesco Masulli (University of Genova) Giancarlo Mauri (University of Milano-Bicocca) Luigi Palopoli (University of Calabria) Andrea Passerini (University of Trento) Alberto Policriti (University of Udine)

This CfP was obtained from WikiCFP