ESAW'00

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                                 CALL FOR PAPERS

                                     ESAW'00
   First International Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agents' World
                     http://lia.deis.unibo.it/confs/ESAW00/

                       August 21, 2000 - Berlin (Germany)

                       held in conjunction with ECAI 2000
          14th Biennial European Conference on Artificial Intelligence
                        http://www.ecai2000.hu-berlin.de/

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Technical Description
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DAI researchers and technology makers are paving the way towards new worlds
to build, where a multitude of independent entities interact within
artificial societies pursuing goals on our behalf, both as individuals and
as groups.  Applications and systems built as societies of autonomous and
intelligent agents promise to provide computer scientists and engineers
with the expressive and computational power to tackle levels of complexity
never reached before.

Going far beyond the boundaries of DAI, multi-agent systems (MAS) are
rapidly evolving into an independent research field, which gathers
contributions from many different areas such as Distributed Systems, Social
& Cognitive Sciences, Mobile Computing, and so on.  In particular, MAS
engineering may actually represent the next frontier for the design and
development of complex software systems, by providing agents and societies
as powerful abstractions for decomposing tasks, modelling complex domains,
and embedding intelligence into real-world applications.

In this context, there is an urgent need not only for theoretical
foundations making MAS conceptual setting clear, but also for specific
methodologies driving MAS design, for specific technologies and processes
driving MAS development, and for powerful and manageable infrastructures
making MAS a viable approach to embed intelligence into applications.

The workshop is devoted to discuss technologies, methodologies and models
for the engineering of complex applications based on MAS, and aims at
bringing together researchers and contributions from both within and
outside the DAI field - from Software Engineering, Distributed Systems,
Social Sciences, and so on -, so as to promote cross-fertilisation among
different research areas.  By focussing on the social aspects of MAS,
ESAW'00 concentrates on the space of agent interaction, rather than on
intra-agent issues, and on the technology and methodology issues rather
than on the pure theoretical aspects. 

Topics
------
    -  coordination models and technologies for engineering agent societies
    -  analysis, design, development and verification of agent societies
    -  engineering social intelligence and emergent behaviours in MAS
    -  application experiences in building agent societies
    -  centralised vs. decentralised social control
    -  interaction/coordination patterns in agent societies
    -  security and mobility issues in agent societies
    -  enabling infrastructures for agent societies
    -  methodologies, tools and artifacts for engineering agent societies
    -  design vs. self-organisation

Workshop Organisation
---------------------
ESAW'00 will take place August 21, at the Humboldt University, Berlin, in
conjunction with ECAI 2000, the 14th Biennial European Conference on
Artificial Intelligence.  The organisers welcome and encourage submission
of original papers, promoting and soliciting the discussion on the
key-topics among workshop attendants.  To further encourage and promote the
discussion, early and final versions of the accepted papers will be
available to authors, speakers, PC members and workshop attendants on the
ESAW'00 web site as soon as they are available, before the workshop takes
place.  

Submission Information & Proceedings
------------------------------------

A volume with the proceedings will be available at the workshop for the
attendants.  Authors of papers presented at the workshop will be asked to
extend their contribution, possibly incorporating the results of the
workshop discussion, to be included in the workshop post-proceedings. 
Post-proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag as a volume of the
Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence series
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/index.html).  Contributions (up to 12
pages) should be formatted according to the LNAI style guide
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) and sent as a PDF or
Postscript file via e-mail to the address esaw00@deis.unibo.it.

Program Committee
-----------------
Cristiano Castelfranchi                    (Italy)
Paolo Ciancarini                           (Italy)
Helder Coelho                           (Portugal)
Rino Falcone                               (Italy)
Rune Gustavsson                           (Sweden)
Chihab Hanachi                            (France)
Nick Jennings                                 (UK)
Matthias Klusch                          (Germany)
Paolo Petta                              (Austria)
Agostino Poggi                             (Italy)
Antony Rowstron                               (UK)
Christophe Sibertin-Blanc                 (France)
Paul Tarau                                   (USA)
Francesca Toni                                (UK)

Organisers & Chairmen
---------------------
Andrea Omicini                             (Italy)
Robert Tolksdorf                         (Germany)
Franco Zambonelli                          (Italy)

Contact
-------
Andrea Omicini
LIA - DEIS (Universita' di Bologna)
Viale Risorgimento, 2
40136, Bologna (Italy)
phone: +39 051 209 3023
fax: +39 051 209 3073
mailto:aomicini@deis.unibo.it
http://lia.deis.unibo.it/~ao/

Important Dates
---------------
Submission due:                      April 7, 2000
Notification sent:                    May 10, 2000    
Final paper due:                     June 12, 2000      
Workshop:                          August 21, 2000 
LNAI paper due:                 September 20, 2000 


Workshop Web Site
-----------------
The latest information on ESAW'00 can be found at: 

      http://lia.deis.unibo.it/confs/ESAW00/

Electronic Submission
---------------------
Send your submission as a PDF or PS file to:

              esaw00@deis.unibo.it

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