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NIPS 2015 Call for Symposia 

Following the regular program of the Neural Information Processing Systems 2015 Conference in Montréal, Canada, as an experiment, up to three symposia will be held in parallel Thursday, December 10, 2015 at the Convention Centre. The symposia will start at 3PM after the poster session and run into the evening with a break for dinner from 6-7PM. Symposia space will hold around 1,200 participants. We invite researchers interested in chairing a symposium to submit proposals at the URL below.

The goal of the symposia is to present topical material on a single broad theme, well suited to the main conference audience. The theme should be on an established topic of wider interest to the NIPS community than a single workshop would be. A typical format for a symposium would be a brief introduction to the topic followed by talks giving presentation of state of the art results in the area and current directions of research.

Symposia

Format:

The symposia will run in parallel during the afternoon of Thursday, December 10, after the end of the main conference from 3 pm to 9 pm. There will be a light dinner between 6 pm and 7 pm. Organisers can allocate the time as they wish, although we suggest a short coffee break between 4pm and 5pm. We recommend programmes of invited speakers, with time reserved for a brief introduction to the topic and for questions. 

Submission instructions:

Interested parties must submit a proposal for a symposium using the link at the bottom of the page by:

Wed Jul 01, 2015 23:59 PM UTC.  Date not found: SymposiumApplicationDeadline

Proposals should include a title and description of what the symposium is to address, motivate why the topic is of interest and why it should be discussed, and specify the targeted group of participants. 

Submissions should include the name, address, email address and phone numbers for all organizers. If there is more than one organizer, please designate one organizer as the primary contact. It should also include a brief CV of all organizers with a list of publications to establish scholarship in the field.

Format and programme:

For symposia, the majority of the proposed speakers must have confirmed their attendance. If the proposal is accepted, changes to the program would need to be approved by the general chairs.

We encourage symposia that build on a theme of workshops from previous years. Please mention any such connections.

Responsibilities: 

Symposium organizers have several responsibilities, including:
  • Arranging and coordinating the symposium programme.
  • Providing any introductory or tutorial material needed to make the topic accessible to all NIPS attendees
  • Moderating the discussion.
  • Writing a brief summary and/or coordinating submitted material for post-conference electronic dissemination.

Funding:

NIPS does not provide travel funding for symposium speakers. In the past, some workshops have sought and received funding from external sources to bring in outside speakers. The organizers of each accepted symposium can name two individuals to receive complimentary registration to either the main conference or workshop program.

Applications should be submitted at NIPS Symposium Application.

Questions should be emailed to general-chairs@nips.cc 

Corinna Cortes (Google)
Neil Lawrence (University of Sheffield)
NIPS*2015 General Chairs