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NIPS*2001 Neural Information Processing Systems: Natural and Synthetic Monday, Dec. 3 -- Saturday, Dec. 8, 2001 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
 
This is the fifteenth meeting of an interdisciplinary conference
which brings together cognitive scientists, computer scientists,
engineers, neuroscientists, physicists, statisticians, and
mathematicians interested in all aspects of neural processing and
computation. The conference will include invited talks as well as
oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. The conference is
single track and is highly selective. Preceding the main session,
there will be one day of tutorial presentations (Dec. 3), and following
it there will be two days of focused workshops on topical issues at Whistler,
a nearby ski area (Dec. 7-8).
All NIPS papers are
available online. |
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Click to download the
NIPS brochure [pdf], which contains all the official information for NIPS,
including the registration form.
Check out the cool new
NIPS poster [pdf].
Online registration
is now closed (as of 11/28 5pm PST). Registration must now
be done at the conference.
NOTE: For the first time, NIPS will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. |
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Overview
Click to see the full NIPS*2001 program. | ||||||||||||
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Tutorials Tutorials this year will be:
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Invited Speakers Invited speakers this year will be:
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Workshops Workshops following the main NIPS conference provide multi-track intensive sessions on topics ranging from computational learning theory to experimental neuroscience. The venue and schedule facilitate interaction, informality, and depth. (List subject to change. Titles abbreviated. Not all co-organizers listed. Workshops will have home pages maintained by their organizers, to which links continue to be provided.) The workshop sessions will end with a banquet on Saturday evening, December 8, 2001. CANCELLED: Quantum Neural Computing, Preference Elicitation, Artificial Neural Networks in Safety-Related Areas, Knowledge Representation in Meta-Learning 2-Day Workshops (Friday, Dec 7th and Saturday, Dec 8th):
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Dates, Locations, and Hotels
Please note that all hotel rates are listed in Canadian dollars. The approximate rate in US dollars is indicated in parentheses. The conversion rate at the time of the preparation of this brochure: 1.55707. Local taxes of 17% will be added to all quoted hotel rates. When making your hotel reservations, be sure to mention that you are a NIPS*2001 participant to receive the special group rate. Attendees are strongly encouraged to make their hotel reservations before the specified cutoff date for each hotel, as rooms are in high demand during this period and likely to be sold out afterwards, particularly for the workshops at Whistler.
Discount lift tickets, ski rentals and lessons at Whistler: Lift tickets for the NIPS*2001 Workshops will be sold at a special group rate of $44 (~$28 US) (plus 7% GST per adult day ticket). Rentals, retail items, sightseeing tickets, and lessons will also be available at discounts ranging from 5-10%. The special discount rates are available for NIPS*2001 group members (including guests and family) and are only available when purchasing tickets at the Conference registration desk at the Delta Whistler Resort, during the opening night reception on Thursday, December 6 and during Friday morning registration hours. | ||||||||||||
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Local Transportation Options
Vancouver International Airport is 13 miles from downtown Vancouver and the trip takes approximately 30 minutes, depending on traffic. It is possible to find a variety of means of transportation to downtown Vancouver just outside of both the domestic and international terminals. There is an AIRPORTER bus that leaves from these locations every 15 minutes. The cost for bus service is $12 Canadian (~$8 US) each way. You may phone for information or advance reservations at 1-604-273-8436. You may also take a taxi or limo for approximately $20-$25 Canadian (~$13-16 US). Rental cars and vans are available from car rental agencies that have offices at the airport. Note: Since most means of transportation will accept either US or Canadian dollars or credit cards, participants should be prepared to offer one of these methods of payment for local transportation. Driving instructions:
Return Transportation from Whistler: Each participant must make individual arrangements for the return from Whistler to the Vancouver International Airport. Perimeter's Whistler Express picks up at the Whistler Resort every 90 minutes beginning at 5:00 am and ending at 6:00 pm. The rate for NIPS*2001 participants is $46 (~$29 US). Reservations are required for this return service. Remember to identify yourself as a participant in the NIPS*2001 Conference to receive the special group rate. Make reservations no later than 48 hours prior to departure time to reserve your space. Phones: 1-877-317-7788 from US and Canada (Toll Free), 604-905-0041 from Whistler, 604-266-5386 from Vancouver. Reservations: res@perimeterbus.com | ||||||||||||
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Meeting Registration
Registration for the Main Conference includes a Monday evening welcoming banquet, continental breakfasts on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning, as well as a CD-ROM containing the NIPS*2001 Conference Proceedings. Workshop registration includes opening night reception, Saturday evening banquet, and two full breakfasts. Registration for tutorials and workshops is optional and requires payment of a separate fee. A continental breakfast will be provided for tutorial participants. How to register for the conference: Before 11/28 you could register online. (Note: To protect credit card information, 128-bit encryption is being used. Internet Explorer users who don't have 128-bit encryption installed can download it from Windows Update or directly from here.) Registration may also be done by printing and completing the registration form, which appears on page 9 of the NIPS brochure [pdf]. Mail the completed form with full payment, to: NIPS*2001, NIPS Foundation Office, c/o The Salk Institute - CNL, 10010 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037 USA. You may also FAX the registration form to 1-858-587-0417. Email: info@nips.cc. Payment: Payments will be accepted in the form of check or money order made payable to the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference or by credit card (VISA or Mastercard). Payments must be in US dollars. When registering on-line, credit card payments may be made via a secure link. Registration will not be accepted without payment. Students will be asked to provide valid student identification at the NIPS*2001 registration desk. |
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Cancellation Policy: Cancellations must be received in writing. Cancellations received by November 2 will receive a full refund. Cancellations between November 3 and November 26 (inclusive), will be subject to a $75 (US) cancellation fee. No refund will be given for cancellations after November 26.
Very limited funding will be available to support the travel of young investigators, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to attend NIPS*2001. Awards will be based on merit, and heavily weighted by need. Travel awards will be in the amount of $400 (US) for travel from the US and within Canada and $600 (US) for participants arriving from elsewhere. Conference registration is not covered by travel awards.
Applications: Applications for travel grants must be submitted by clicking here. Deadline for submission is midnight, Friday, October 12, 2001. Late applications will not be accepted. Award recipients will be notified by email in late October. Travel award checks in US dollars will be available at the NIPS*2001 Conference registration desk. A copy of your airline ticket will be required to receive your travel award.
Volunteers: Graduate students interested in doing volunteer work at the meeting in exchange for a registration fee waiver should send email to Sid Fels ssfels@ece.ubc.ca. Only a limited number of openings are available.
The NIPS*2001 Conference Proceedings, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 14, edited by Thomas G. Dietterich, Sue Becker, and Zoubin Ghahramani, will be available to Conference attendees in three different formats. First, the complete Proceedings will be available on-line through the NIPS web site. Second, a CD-ROM version of the Proceedings will be mailed to each conference attendee in late Spring, 2002. Third, at their OPTION, attendees may purchase the Proceedings in a two-volume soft-cover format for the special Conference rate of $30 (US) by checking the appropriate box on the registration form. This special reduced rate is available only if the purchase is made before or during the Conference. After the Conference, copies of the hardcopy Proceedings may be obtained through: MIT Press, Five Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142-1493; mitpress-orders@mit.edu; MIT Press orderline at 1-800-356-0343.
| Information for Authors and Presenters |
Every paper will be allotted up to eight pages in the Proceedings. Camera-ready copy will be due to the Publications Chair, Zoubin Ghahramani, in early January 2002. Authors of accepted papers will be informed of the precise due date at the Conference. Instructions for the final drafts are now available here.
Posters will be on view from 7:30 to 10:30 pm on Tuesday, December 4, and Wednesday, December 5, 2001. You should set up your poster during the period from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on the day of your poster presentation. Posters will be assigned numbers (e.g. AA34). These numbers will be attached to the individual display boards in the Poster Presentation Room. You should find the display board corresponding to your number and attach your poster there. Poster pins will be provided.
Format: Each poster presentation will occupy a 4 foot x 8 foot surface area. Plan your poster to fit this space. Identify your poster near the top of the panel with title and name(s) of investigator(s). All typefaces and graphics on the poster should be large enough to be read comfortably from distances of four to five feet. A well-designed poster clearly states the main problem and contribution and guides the viewer through the presentation. Hardcopies of viewgraphs do not make a good poster. A matte finish on your poster materials will give better visibility under the glare from lights. You may want to have copies of your paper or poster, along with other material to give to viewers. Tuesday night posters must be removed by 9:00 am on Wednesday morning. Wednesday night posters must be removed by 9:00 am on Thursday morning.
| Calls for Things |
The submission deadline has passed. This was the call for papers.
The submission deadline has passed. This was the call for workshop proposals.
| Other Information |
The NIPS*2001 Organizing Committee:
- General Chair: Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University tgd@cs.orst.edu
- Program Chair: Sue Becker, McMaster University becker@mcmaster.ca
- Publications Chair: Zoubin Ghahramani, University College London zoubin@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk
- Tutorials Chair: Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal bengioy@IRO.UMontreal.CA
- Workshops Co-Chairs: Virginia de Sa, UC San Francisco desa@phy.ucsf.edu, Barak Pearlmutter, University of New Mexico bap@cs.unm.edu
- Publicity Chair: Richard Zemel, University of Toronto zemel@cs.toronto.edu
- Treasurer: Bartlett Mel, University of Southern California mel@lnc.usc.edu
- Volunteers Director: Sidney Fels, University of British Columbia ssfels@ece.ubc.ca
- Co-Webmasters: Alexander Gray, Carnegie Mellon University agray+nips@cs.cmu.edu, Xin Wang, Oregon State University wangxi@cs.orst.edu
- Government Liaison: Gary Blasdel, Harvard Medical School
- Contracts: Steve Hanson, Rutgers University, Scott Kirkpatrick, IBM, Gerry Tesauro, IBM
Sue Becker, McMaster University (chair); Gert Cauwenberghs, Johns Hopkins University; Bill Freeman, Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab; Thomas Hofmann, Brown University; Dan Lee, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies; Sridhar Mahadevan, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Marina Meila, University of Washington; Klaus Mueller, GMD First, Berlin; Klaus Obermeyer, TU Berlin; Sam Roweis, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL; John Shawe-Taylor, Royal Holloway, University of London; Josh Tenenbaum, Stanford University; Volker Tresp, Siemens, Munich; Richard Zemel, University of TorontoClick for information on the NIPS Foundation.
Awards:
Evan Greensmith, Peter L. Bartlett and Jonathan Baxter
Variance Reduction Techniques for Gradient Estimates in Reinforcement Learning
Honorable Mention:
Odelia Schwartz, E.J. Chichilnisky, and Eero P. Simoncelli
Characterizing Neural Gain Control Using Spike-triggered Covariance
Honorable Mention:
Martin Wainwright, T. Jaakkola, and A. Willsky
Tree-based Reparameterization for Approximate Estimation in Loopy Graphs
Click for abstracts, papers, websites, and BibTeX from previous conferences.
Send changes of address and questions about earlier proceedings volumes to kinnis@mit.edu.
Send general queries or requests for registration material to info@nips.cc or fax to (858) 587-0417.
Potential exhibitors should send email to info@nips.cc.