*To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ************************************************************************* 2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NATURAL COMPUTING TPNC 2013 Cáceres, Spain December 3-5, 2013 Organized by: Computer Architecture and Logic Design Group (ARCO) University of Extremadura Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2013/ ********************************************************************* AIMS: TPNC is a conference series intending to cover the wide spectrum of computational principles, models and techniques inspired by information processing in nature. TPNC 2013 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It aims at attracting contributions to nature-inspired models of computation, synthesizing nature by means of computation, nature-inspired materials, and information processing in nature. VENUE: TPNC 2013 will take place in Cáceres, in Western Spain, 300 kms. to the southwest of Madrid and 100 kms. to the Portuguese border. The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. SCOPE: Topics of either theoretical, experimental, or applied interest include, but are not limited to: * Nature-inspired models of computation: - amorphous computing - cellular automata - chaos and dynamical systems based computing - evolutionary computing - membrane computing - neural computing - optical computing - swarm intelligence * Synthesizing nature by means of computation: - artificial chemistry - artificial immune systems - artificial life * Nature-inspired materials: - computing with DNA - nanocomputing - physarum computing - quantum computing and quantum information - reaction-diffusion computing * Information processing in nature: - developmental systems - fractal geometry - gene assembly in unicellular organisms - rough/fuzzy computing in nature - synthetic biology - systems biology * Applications of natural computing to: algorithms, bioinformatics, control, cryptography, design, economics, graphics, hardware, learning, logistics, optimization, pattern recognition, programming, robotics, telecommunications etc. A flexible "theory to/from practice" approach would be the perfect focus for the expected contributions. STRUCTURE: TPNC 2013 will consist of: ‐ invited talks ‐ invited tutorials ‐ peer-reviewed contributions INVITED SPEAKERS: Risto Miikkulainen (Austin), Evolving Neural Networks (tutorial) Yew-Soon Ong (Singapore), Advances in Memetic Computation Xin Yao (Birmingham), Evolutionary Algorithm Portfolios for Numerical Optimisation PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Selim G. Akl (Kingston, CA) Thomas Bäck (Leiden, NL) Peter J. Bentley (London, UK) Hans-Georg Beyer (Dornbirn, AT) Mauro Birattari (Brussels, BE) Jinde Cao (Nanjing, CN) Vladimir Cherkassky (Minneapolis, US) Sung-Bae Cho (Seoul, KR) John A. Clark (York, UK) Carlos A. Coello Coello (Mexico DF, MX) David W. Corne (Edinburgh, UK) Peter Dayan (London, UK) Bernard De Baets (Ghent, BE) Andries P. Engelbrecht (Pretoria, ZA) Enrique Herrera-Viedma (Granada, ES) Yaochu Jin (Guildford, UK) Nikola Kasabov (Auckland, NZ) Vladik Kreinovich (El Paso, US) Kwong-Sak Leung (Hong Kong, CN) Xiaohui Liu (London, UK) Manuel Lozano (Granada, ES) Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, ES, chair) Julian F. Miller (York, UK) Frank Neumann (Adelaide, AU) Leandro Nunes de Castro (São Paulo, BR) Nikhil R. Pal (Kolkata, IN) Günther Palm (Ulm, DE) José Carlos Príncipe (Gainesville, US) Helge Ritter (Bielefeld, DE) Conor Ryan (Limerick, IE) Hava Siegelmann (Amherst, US) Moshe Sipper (Beer-Sheva, IL) Thomas Stützle (Brussels, BE) Ponnuthurai N. Suganthan (Singapore, SG) Johan Suykens (Leuven, BE) Kay Chen Tan (Singapore, SG) Dacheng Tao (Sydney, AU) Jon Timmis (York, UK) Marco Tomassini (Lausanne, CH) Michael D. Vose (Knoxville, US) Michael N. Vrahatis (Patras, GR) Harald Weinfurter (Munich, DE) Rolf Würtz (Bochum, DE) Jun Zhang (Guangzhou, CN) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Carlos Martín-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair) Bianca Truthe (Magdeburg) Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez (Cáceres, co-chair) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) LOCAL COMMITTEE: Víctor Berrocal-Plaza José M. Chaves-González Juan A. Gómez-Pulido David L. González-Álvarez José M. Granado-Criado Alejandro Hidalgo-Paniagua José M. Lanza-Gutiérrez Álvaro Rubio-Largo Sergio Santander-Jiménez Miguel A. Vega-Rodríguez (chair) SUBMISSIONS: Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (including eventual appendices) and should be formatted according to the standards of the Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). Submissions have to be uploaded to: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpnc2013 PUBLICATIONS: A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference. A special issue of the journal Soft Computing (Springer, 2011 impact factor: 1.880) will be later published containing peer-reviewed extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation. REGISTRATION: The period for registration is open from April 17 to December 3, 2013. The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2013/Registration DEADLINES: Paper submission: July 16, 2013 (23:59h, CET) Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: August 27, 2013 Final version of the paper for the LNCS proceedings: September 3, 2013 Early registration: September 10, 2013 Late registration: November 19, 2013 Starting of the conference: December 3, 2013 End of the conference: December 5, 2013 Submission to the post-conference special issue: March 5, 2014 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu@urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: TPNC 2013 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34-977-559543 Fax: +34-977-558386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Departament d’Economia i Coneixement, Generalitat de Catalunya Universidad de Extremadura Universitat Rovira i Virgili