COLT 2010 – Preliminary Call for Papers

The 23rd Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT 2010) will take place in Haifa, Israel, on June 27-29, 2010 and will be co-located with ICML 2010. We invite submissions of papers addressing theoretical aspects of machine learning and empirical inference. We strongly support a broad definition of learning theory, including:

* Analysis of learning algorithms and their generalization ability
* Computational complexity of learning
* Bayesian analysis
* Statistical mechanics of learning systems
* Optimization procedures for learning
* Kernel methods
* Inductive inference
* Boolean function learning
* Unsupervised and semi-supervised learning and clustering
* On-line learning and relative loss bounds
* Learning in planning and control, including reinforcement learning
* Learning in games, multi-agent learning
* Mathematical analysis of learning in related fields, e.g., game theory, natural language processing, neuroscience, bioinformatics, privacy and security, machine vision, data mining, information retrieval

We are also interested in papers that include viewpoints that are new to the COLT community. We welcome experimental and algorithmic papers provided they are relevant to the focus of the conference by elucidating theoretical results in learning. Also, while the primary focus of the conference is theoretical, papers can be strengthened by the inclusion of relevant experimental results.

Papers that have previously appeared in journals or at other conferences, or that are being submitted to other conferences, are not appropriate for COLT. Papers that include work that has already been submitted for journal publication may be submitted to COLT, as long as the papers have not been accepted for publication by the COLT submission deadline (conditionally or otherwise) and that the paper is not expected to be published before the COLT conference (June 2010).
Feedback on Review Quality

There will be no rebuttal phase this year. However, authors will be given the opportunity to assess the quality of reviews and provide feedback to the reviewers, after the decisions have been made. These assessments will be used in particular to determine the Best Reviewer award (see below).
Paper and Reviewer Awards

This year, COLT will award both best paper and best student paper awards. Best student papers must be authored or coauthored by a student. Authors must indicate at submission time if they wish their paper to be eligible for a student award. This does not preclude the paper to be eligible for the best paper award.

To further emphasize the importance of the reviewing quality, this year, COLT will also award a best reviewer award to the reviewer who has provided the most insightful and useful comments.
Open Problems Session

We also invite submission of open problems (see separate call). These should be constrained to two pages. There is a shorter reviewing period for the open problems. Accepted contributions will be allocated short presentation slots in a special open problems session and will be allowed two pages each in the proceedings.
Paper Format and Electronic Submission Instructions

Formatting and submission instructions will be available in early December at the conference website.

Important Dates

Preliminary call for papers issued
October 15, 2009

Electronic submission of papers (due by 5:59pm PST)
February 19, 2010

Electronic submission of open problems
March 13, 2010

Notice of acceptance or rejection
May 07, 2010

Submission of final version
May 21, 2010

Feedback on reviews due
May 28, 2010

Joint ICML/COLT workshop day
June 25, 2010

2010 COLT conference
June 27-29, 2010

Organization

Program Co-chairs:

* Adam Tauman Kalai (Microsoft Research)
* Mehryar Mohri (Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Google Research)

Program Committee:

Shivani Agarwal
Mikhail Belkin
Shai Ben-David
Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi
Ofer Dekel
Steve Hanneke
Jeff Jackson
Sham Kakade
Vladimir Koltchinskii
Katrina Ligett
Phil Long
Gabor Lugosi
Ulrike von Luxburg
Yishay Mansour
Ryan O’Donnell
Massimiliano Pontil
Robert Schapire
Rocco Servedio
John Shawe-Taylor
Shai Shalev-Shwartz
Gilles Stoltz
Ambuj Tewari
Jenn Wortman Vaughan
Santosh Vempala
Manfred Warmuth
Robert Williamson
Thomas Zeugmann
Tong Zhang

Local Arrangements Chair:

* Shai Fine (IBM Research Haifa)

Invited speakers

* Prof. Noga Alon – School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University
* Prof. Noam Nisan – School of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hebrew University Jerusalem