Support for Student Participation in the Conference International Conference on Multimodal-Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (ICMI-MLMI) 2010

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to support participation by about 10 graduate students in a Doctoral Consortium (workshop) to be held in conjunction with the 12th International Conference on Multimodal Interfaces and 7th Workshop on Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction (ICMI-MLMI 2010), which will be held November 8-12, in Beijing, China, and which is organized by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) with co-sponsorship from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The conference will bring together researchers from North America, Europe, and Asia to present and discuss the latest multidisciplinary work on multimodal interfaces, systems, and applications. Now in its second year, the combined ICMI-MLMI is the foremost international event representing the growing interest in next-generation perceptive, adaptive and multimodal user interfaces. Such interfaces represent an emerging interdisciplinary research direction, involving spoken and natural language understanding, image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition, experimental psychology, etc. They aim to promote efficient and natural interaction and communication between computers and human users, and represent a radical departure from previous computing that should ultimately enable users to interact with computers using everyday skills. The main goals of ICMI-MLMI 20010 are to further scientific research within the broad field of multimodal interaction and systems, to focus on major trends and challenges, and to help identify a roadmap for future research and commercial success. Topics of interest this year include: multimodal and multimedia processing; multimodal input and output interfaces; multimodal applications; human interaction analysis and modeling; and multimodal data, evaluation, and standards. The three days of invited talks, panels, and single-track oral and poster presentations will facilitate interaction and discussion among researchers; the conference promises to be an international venue for brainstorming and coming up with creative directions for future research in multimodal interfaces. Participants in the Doctoral Consortium will get to showcase their ongoing thesis work, either orally or in a special "doctoral spotlight" poster session during which they will receive feedback from an invited committee composed of senior personnel, and including the Advisory Committee chair and the General and Program chairs. As a further incentive for high-quality student participation, ICMI-MLMI will be awarding outstanding paper awards, with a special category just for student papers. More information about ICMI-MLMI is available online at http://www.acm.org/icmi/2010. Broader Impacts: The Doctoral Consortium will give student participants exposure to their new research community, both by presenting their own work and by observing and interacting with established professionals in the field. It will encourage students at this critical time in their careers to begin building a social support network of peers and mentors. With the goal of increasing the breadth of participation at ICMIMLMI, selection of grantees will be done by the PI with oversight from the Advisory Committee Chair and the Conference General Chair; the organizers will make special efforts to encourage participation by a significant number of student researchers from less-well funded institutions, as well as by minority students, female students, and students from geographically under-represented states. Students funded under this award will all be enrolled at U.S. institutions of higher education.