AFIRM 2020: ACM SIGIR/SIGKDD Africa School on Machine Learning for Data Mining and Search University of Cape Town Cape Town, South Africa, January 27-31, 2020 |
Conference website | http://sigir.org/afirm2020 |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=afirm2020 |
Submission deadline | August 2, 2019 |
AFIRM’20: ACM SIGIR/SIGKDD Africa School on Machine Learning for Data Mining and Search
January 27 - 31, 2020, Cape Town, South Africa
Call for Lecture Proposals
Important Dates:
Deadline for proposals: August 2, 2019
Notification of acceptance: August 30, 2019
Event dates: January 27 - 31, 2020
Overview:
ACM SIGIR and SIGKDD are co-sponsoring the second annual African School on Machine Learning for Data Mining and Search. The event will take place at the University of Cape Town in January of 2020, after its inaugural success in 2019 (See website at: http://sigir.org/afirm2019/). The mission of the school is to enable students to learn about modern research challenges and methods in data mining and search, with a focus on applications of machine learning techniques; to stimulate scientific research and collaboration in these fields; and to grow a community of researchers, students, and industry professionals working on data mining and search across Africa with collaborations all around the world.
The target audience is junior faculty, research professionals, and advanced graduate students from institutions across Africa, with the vision that attendees take their new insights back to their home institutions to grow a vibrant research community in data mining and search.
The school will offer a week of lectures and labs for an audience of up to 50 participants. Each day will center around a broad theme in data mining, information retrieval, and machine learning and consist of an invited keynote talk related to the theme, lectures on aspects of that theme, and hands-on lab time. The program will also include poster sessions and social events.
We invite proposals for lectures and labs on fundamental and cutting-edge topics in data mining and information retrieval. A proposal should consist of the following:
- Names, brief biographies including teaching experience, and contact information for presenters (please limit presenter team size to three or less);
- Relevance of the course to the school’s objectives;
- Overview of material for a schedule consisting of:
- Two thematically-related lectures of 75 minutes each;
- Hands-on activities for lab sessions (plan for several hours of activities related to the lecture topics);
- Expected prerequisite knowledge;
- Relevant references.
Please be prepared to work with the Chairs to refine material to fit with the broader program.
The workshop will cover travel and accommodation expenses for one lecturer per course.
Submission instructions:
Please submit a PDF by August 2, 2019, on the EasyChair site at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=afirm2020
Proposals should be 2-4 pages long consisting of all information listed above.
Proposals will be evaluated by the organizing committee according to the goals of the workshop, the fit of the topic, and the presenters’ experience and qualifications.
Proposers will be notified of the committee’s decision no later than August 16, 2019.
About the venue:
The University of Cape Town is the oldest and most well-known university in South Africa. It was founded in 1829 and currently has its main campus located on the slopes of Devil’s Peak, adjacent to Table Mountain. It is a research-intensive university, with approximately 29,000 students, of which a third are post-graduates. It is by many international metrics considered to be the leading institution in Africa. The School of IT, comprising Computer Science and Information Systems, has a wide reputation in South Africa, on the continent, and globally. The Centre in ICT for Development is one of the key foci of the School, investigating the application of all disciplines in computing, including the topics of this summer school/workshop, to socio-economic and human development in poor countries.
For more details, see: http://www.uct.ac.za/
Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa, located at the southernmost point of the Cape Peninsula at the tip of the African continent. As the seat of the Parliament of South Africa, Cape Town is the legislative capital of South Africa. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks, such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. As of 2014, it is the 10th most populous city in Africa and home to 64% of the Western Cape Provinces's population. It is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, reflecting its role as a major destination for immigrants and expatriates to South Africa. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place in the world to visit by both The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph.
Adapted from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town
Organizers:
General Chairs:
Tamer Elsayed (Qatar University)
Hussein Suleman (University of Cape Town)
PC chairs:
Tanya Berger-Wolf (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Maria Keet (University of Cape Town)
Fabrizio Sebastiani (CNR-ISTI)
Local chair:
Hussein Suleman (University of Cape Town)
Steering Committee:
Ben Carterette, Chair (Spotify)
Diane Kelly, SIGIR representative (University of Tennessee Knoxville)
Jian Pei, SIGKDD representative (Simon Fraser University)
Abdigani Diriye (IBM Kenya)
Ricardo Baeza-Yates (NTENT / Northeastern University)
Lighton Phiri (University of Zambia)
Reuben Dlamini (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Doug Oard (University of Maryland)