News: Event News

Date: July 19-25, 2012
Place: Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa
url: http://lxmls.it.pt/Home.html
Sponsors: Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto de Telecomunicações, INESC ID, Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program, Google, Sapo.pt, Priberam, Flashgroup

LxMLS 2012 will take place on July 19-25 at Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, a leading Engineering and Science school in Portugal. It is organized jointly by IST, the Instituto de Telecomunicações and the Spoken Language Systems Lab – L2F of INESC-ID. In our second year, the topic of the school is Taming the Social Web . The school covers a range of Machine Learning (ML) Topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving natural language processing (NLP) problems that arise in the analysis and use of Web data.

Our target audience is:
•Researchers and graduate students in the fields of NLP and Computational Linguistics;
•Computer scientists who have interests in statistics and machine learning;
•Industry practitioners who desire a more in depth understanding of these subjects.

Features of LxMLS:
•No deep previous knowledge of ML or NLP is assumed;
•Recommended reading is provided in advance;
•Includes a strong practical component;
•A day zero is scheduled to review basic concepts and introduce the necessary tools for implementation exercises;
•Days will be divided into tutorials and practical sessions (view schedule);
•Both basic and advanced topics are covered;
•Instructors are leading researchers in machine learning.
Speakers
Lecturers
Luis Pedro Coelho, Institute for Molecular Medicine | Portugal
Mário Figueiredo, Instituto de Telecomunicações and Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa | Portugal
Koby Crammer, Technion, Israel Institute of Technogly | Israel
Slav Petrov, Google Inc. | USA
Noah Smith, Carnegie Mellon University | USA
Xavier Carreras, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya | Spain
Maarten de Ruke, University of Amsterdam | Netherlands
Jacob Eisenstein, Georgia Tech | USA
Partha Talukdar, Carnegie Mellon University | USA
André Martins, Carnegie Mellon University | USA and Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa | Portugal
Paul Ogilvie, Linkedin | USA

Lab Instructors:
Luis Pedro Coelho, Institute for Molecular Medicine | Portugal
João Graça, FlashGroup | Portugal and Inesc-Id – L2F | Portugal
Luis Sarmento, SAPO | Portugal
André Martins, Carnegie Mellon University | USA and Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa | Portugal

1 st Ph.D. Students Conference in Electrical and Computer Engineering (StudECE)
Date: June 28 and 29, 2012
Place: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP)
Agenda: http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~StudECE2012/
Registration: http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~StudECE2012/
The Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program is one of the sponsors

The 1 st Ph.D. Students Conference in Electrical and Computer Engineering (StudECE), is a forum for the presentation of technological advances, research results, work-in-progress research and state-of-the-art in the fields of theoretical, experimental, and applied Electrical and Computer Engineering. The scientific program will include invited speakers and fully refereed contributions that will be published in the conference proceedings.

Invited Speakers:
– José Carlos Príncipe, from the University of Flórida, USA
– Eduardo F. Camacho, from the Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
– José Manuel Mendonça, INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
– Aurélio Blanquet, EDP Distribuição

More information available at http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~StudECE2012/.

Workshop: “Startup funding: Streamlining venture capitalists and business angels”
Dates: May 21 st and 22 nd , 2012
Venue: Seminar Room of the Rectory of the Universidade do Algarve (Faro)
Registration: http://utenportugal.org/events/startup-funding-2012/registration/

“Startup funding: Streamlining venture capitalists and business angels” is the theme for the 2 nd UTEN Workshop 2012 that will run in collaboration with the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program. This two-day workshop targeted at Technology Transfer Officers (TTO’s) and Start-Up Companies aims to increase the awareness and knowledge about the key aspects to successfully get venture funding in the US.

A renowned expert from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Robert Unetich, will present his views on how to approach Venture Capital (VC). Robert M. Unetich is an active member of several Pittsburgh based venture capital firms, including Pittsburgh Equity Partners, and he is an active angel investor.

“Strategic Investor vs. Venture capitalist/Business Angel”; “Venture capitalism in the U.S”; “Ways to approach a venture capitalist”; “What are the expectations of companies interested in coming to U.S. from a foreign country”; “Risk vs. Return” are some of the questions up for discussion.

Robert Unetich
Robert M. Unetich is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1982, he co-founded Information Transmission Systems Corporation (ITS) and, as President, grew it until its acquisition in 1996 by ADC Telecommunications, Inc. Robert retired in 1997 and became an Adjunct Professor at CMU in that year, teaching Entrepreneurship and Engineering Economics. In 1999 he co-founded Applied Electro-Optics with two CMU professors. In the 1980s Robert Unetich was the winner of the regional SBA Entrepreneur of the Year Award and in the 1990s he won the Ernst &Young regional Entrepreneur of the Year award. He has been directly involved as a founder or lead investor in eleven startup companies. Moreover, Robert holds two US patents and has several patents pending. Presently, Robert Unetich owns and operates a consulting firm known as GigaHertz LLC (www.gigahertzllc.com) and continues to perform lecturing assignments with engineering students at CMU and the University of Pittsburgh on business, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Provisional Agenda May 21st – Monday Morning (OPEN SESSION):
09:30 – 10:00 am – Registration

10:00 – 10:10 am – Welcome – João Guerreiro (Rector of the University of Algarve)

10:10 – 11:40 am – Keynote speaker Robert M. Unetich ‐ “Venture Capital in the U.S., Getting Started”:

• Strategic Investor vs. Venture capitalist/Business Angel

• Venture capitalism in the U.S.

• Ways to approach a venture capitalist

• What are the expectations of companies interested in coming to U.S. from a foreign country

• Risk vs. Return

11:40 – 12:00 pm – Coffee Break

12:00 – 12:30 pm – Keynote speaker Epifânio da Franca – “Venture Capital in Portugal: future perspectives” (to be confirmed)

12:30 – 1:15 pm – Debate:

“The long road to investment: Portuguese companies experience”

João Martins (MuchBETA)
Luke Murray and Sofia Pessanha (Actualsun)
Diamantino Lopes (Metablue)

1:15 – 1:30 pm – Questions and wrap-up

1:30 – 2:30 pm – Lunch
May, 21st – Monday Afternoon (CLOSED SESSION):
3:00 – 5:30 pm – “Roadmap” to Assist TTO’s and Start‐up Companies in Raising Funds from Venture Capitalist/Business Angels

1. Approach – How do you get noticed?
2. Pitch – Role playing
3. Types of funding available

5:30 – 6:00 pm – Wrap‐up
May, 22nd – Tuesday
10:00 – 1:30 pm – Independent Meetings with Companies representative and Robert M. Unetich

André Martins Ph.D. Defense

Date: Friday, May 11 th , 2012 Hour: 9 a.m. at CMU // 2 p.m. at IST/UTL (videoconference room) Place: CMU – room GHC 6501 // IST/UTL – CMU Portugal Videoconference room at V0.15Student: André Filipe Torres Martins, dual degree Ph.D. Student in Language Technology Advisors: Mário Figueiredo (IST/UTL), Noah Smith (CMU), Pedro Aguiar (IST/UTL), Eric Xing (CMU) Schools: Instituto Superior Técnico of the Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (IST/UTL) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)

Title: Advances in Structured Prediction for Natural Language Processing

Abstract:
This thesis proposes new models and algorithms for structured output prediction, with an emphasis on natural language processing applications. We advance in two fronts: in the inference problem, whose aim is to make a prediction given a model, and in the learning problem, where the model is trained from data.

For inference, we make a paradigm shift, by considering rich models with global features and constraints, representable as constrained graphical models. We introduce a new approximate decoder that ignores global effects caused by the cycles of the graph. This methodology is then applied to syntactic analysis of text, yielding a new framework which we call “turbo parsing,” with state-of-the-art results.

For learning, we consider a family of loss functions encompassing conditional random fields, support vector machines and the structured perceptron, for which we provide new online algorithms that dispense with learning rate hyperparameters. We then focus on the regularizer, which we use for promoting structured sparsity and for learning structured predictors with multiple kernels. We introduce online proximal-gradient algorithms that can explore large feature spaces efficiently, with minimal memory consumption. The result is a new framework for feature template selection yielding compact and accurate models.

Advances in Structured Prediction for Natural Language ProcessingThis thesis proposes new models and algorithms for structured output prediction, with an emphasis on natural language processing applications. We advance in two fronts: in the inference problem, whose aim is to make a prediction given a model, and in the learning problem, where the model is trained from data.For inference, we make a paradigm shift, by considering rich models with global features and constraints, representable as constrained graphical models. We introduce a new approximate decoder that ignores global effects caused by the cycles of the graph. This methodology is then applied to syntactic analysis of text, yielding a new framework which we call “turbo parsing,” with state-of-the-art results.For learning, we consider a family of loss functions encompassing conditional random fields, support vector machines and the structured perceptron, for which we provide new online algorithms that dispense with learning rate hyperparameters. We then focus on the regularizer, which we use for promoting structured sparsity and for learning structured predictors with multiple kernels. We introduce online proximal-gradient algorithms that can explore large feature spaces efficiently, with minimal memory consumption. The result is a new framework for feature template selection yielding compact and accurate models.

More information at CMU: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~afm/Home_files/thesis.pdf

Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminar about Structured Sparsity for Structured Prediction
Speaker: André Martins (IST/UTL and CMU)
Venue: IST Alameda, Sala PA2 (Edifício de Pós-Graduação)
Date: Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
Time: 13:00
Lunch will be provided

Abstract:
Linear models have enjoyed great success in structured prediction in NLP. While a lot of progress has been made on efficient training with several loss functions, the problem of endowing learners with a mechanism for feature selection is still unsolved. Common approaches employ ad hocfiltering or L1-regularization; both ignore the structure of the feature space, preventing practicioners from encoding structural prior knowledge. We fill this gap by adopting regularizers that promote structured sparsity, along with efficient algorithms to handle them.
Experiments on three tasks (chunking, entity recognition, and dependency parsing) show gains in performance, compactness, and model interpretability.
This is joint work with Mario Figueiredo, Pedro Aguiar, Noah Smith and Eric Xing.

Bio:
André Martins is a dual degree Ph.D. student in Language Technologies, at Instituto Superior Técnico and Carnegie Mellon University, in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program. His main research interests are machine learning, natural language processing, and optimization.

External Review Committee Meeting
Date: January 9 – 10, 2012
Venue: Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau (CCCM)
[Rua da Junqueira Nº 30, Lisboa – http://www.cccm.mctes.pt/]

Agenda

ERC Members:
Sir John O’Reilly, Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University United Kingdom, Chairperson
Luigia Aiello, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy
Tariq Durrani, University of Strathclyde Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

Dual Degree Master Students Present their Work at the Madeira-ITI Week
Date: December 13, 16 and 18, 2011
Place: Universidade da Madeira and Parque Temático da Madeira

During three days, the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute will held a series of presentations of student work conducted in the Masters Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) and the Masters of Entertainment Technology (MET). The events will include presentations, live demonstrations and shows. The two degrees are taught in collaboration between the Universidade da Madeira and Carnegie Mellon University, in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal program.
December 13th, 2011
15:00-15:15 Official Opening (at the Room Cassiopeia IV @ Madeira)
– Nuno Nunes, president of the Madeira-ITI and Vice-president of the Board of the Madeira Tecnopolo
– José Castanheira da Costa, Rector of the Universidade da Madeira*
– Jaime Freitas, regional secretary of State for Education and Human Resources

15:15-15:40 “Five-Minute Madness”, MHCI and MET students (at the Room Cassiopeia IV @ Madeira)

15:40-16:00 Break

16:00-17:30 MHCI capstone projects presentation(at the Room Cassiopeia IV @ Madeira)

17:30-18:00 Madeira D`Honra with live music by Marco Vieira (at the Bar dos docentes @ UMa, Ground Floor)

18:00-20:00 Game Design course play test (at the Bar dos docentes @ UMa, Ground Floor)
December 16, 2011
09:00-21:00 Interactive installation (at the Floor -1, 0 and 1 @ UMa)

16:00-16:20 MET project presentation(at the ʻSala do Senadoʼ @ UMa, Floor -2)

16:20-18:00 Play test (at the Room 31 @ UMa, Floor 2)
December 18, 2011 (at the Parque Temático da Madeira)
10:00-19:00 Animation and Interactive Music Experience

15:00-16:00 Reception and show for the official entities

16:00-17:00 Closing Cocktail

*to be confirmed

ECE Back to Basics Colloquium by Susana Sargento on “Self-Organizing Networks: a path to intelligent networks”
Date: December 7, 2011 (This talk will start at 13:00 in I-105, FEUP. Lunch will start at 12:30)
Place: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto
Register for the Colloquium at http://www.fe.up.pt/ecebacktobasics if you haven’t yet.

Abstract:
One of the main features of Next Generation Networks is the panoply of wired and wireless access technologies, transport protocols, network devices, applications and users’ requirements. Thus, in order to fulfill the demand for constant connectivity and the provision of a ubiquitous service, it is necessary to overcome the heterogeneity of future networking environments. In this sense, the future of telecommunications points to intelligent networks able to capitalize information about users and the network itself, in order to offer personalized services while, simultaneously, optimizing rich-media content distribution. This new paradigm on self-organization is of particular interest of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), since defining new types of services that take advantage of heterogeneity is an added value regarding customer attraction and satisfaction. This talk will introduce the concept of self-organizing networks, current relevant issues, and specific examples spanning from virtualized networks to vehicular ad-hoc networks, currently being addressed in the Network Architectures and Protocols group (NAP, http://nap.av.it.pt/).

Bio: Susana Sargento (http://www.av.it.pt/ssargento) received her Ph.D. in 2003 in Electrical Engineering. She joined the Department of Computer Science of the University of Porto in September 2002, and is in the Universidade de Aveiro and the Instituto de Telecomunicações since February 2004. She was also a Guest Faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, USA, in 2008/2009, in the scope of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program.

She has been involved in several national and European projects, taking leaderships of several activities in the projects, such as the QoS and ad-hoc networks integration activity in the FP6 IST-Daidalos Project. She has been recently involved in several FP7 projects (4WARD, Euro-NF, C-Cast, WIP, Daidalos, C-Mobile), national projects, and Carnegie Mellon Portugal research projects (DRIVE-IN with the Carnegie Melon University). She has been TPC-Chair and organizing several conferences, such as MONAMI’11, NGI’09, IEEE ISCC’07, and will be organizing NTMS’12 and IEEE FEDNET (with IEEE NOMS’12). Her main research interests are in the areas of Next Generation and Future Networks, more specifically QoS, mobility, self- and cognitive networks.

VideoJogos 2011: 4 th Annual Conference in Science and Art of Video Games
Date: December 2 nd to 4 th , 2011
Place: Department of Computer Science of the Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto
Organizers: Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto (FCUP), Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP) and the Portuguese Society of Computer Games (SPC)
[The Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program is one of the sponsors of this event]
url: http://www.dcc.fc.up.pt/~videojogos2011/en.php

The SPC conferences take place annually and are a gathering point to promote investigation as well as the industry of computer games in Portugal. The conference hosts investigators and professionals of the field for promoting work and exchanging experience between the academic community and the industry. All this in portuguese grounds. It is confirmed the presence of Don Marinelli, from the Entertainment Tecnology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University, and of Monchu Chen, coordinator of the dual degree Professional Master in Entertainment Technology taught by the Universidade da Madeira and Carnegie Mellon University.
Themes

• Methodology in the conception of digital games
• Interface, interaction, ergonomy e usability
• Narrative, history and characters
• Art, aesthetics e design of digital games
• Experience of gaming and entertainment
• Game evaluation
• Serious gaming
• Game studying
• Social, cultural e community studying
• Gamer studies and models
• Video games and transmedia (cinema, comics, visual arts, music, literature, publicity)
• Business models and video game exploration
• Computation (graphics, affective, artificial intelligence, mobile, etc.)
• Game prototypes and development
• Virtual and augmented reality