The PASCAL Probabilistic Inference Challenge (PIC11) – Call for Submissions

Probabilistic inference in graphical models is a key task in many applications, from machine vision to computational biology. Since the
problem is generally computationally intractable many approximations have been suggested over the years.

The goal of this challenge is to evaluate inference algorithms on difficult large scale problems.
Some of challenge highlights are:
– Algorithms for MAP, marginals, and partition function approximation will be evaluated.
– Solvers will be evaluated on different time scales (20 seconds, 20 minutes, 1 hour).
– An online leaderboard will show the relative rankings of the algorithms.
– Modest cash prizes will be available on all categories.
– After the challenge the evaluation site will remain active as a service to the community.

Timeline:
July 15th, 2011: Site open to registration and submission of solvers.
October 1st, 2011: Challenge Begins. No new models added after this date.
December 31st, 2011: Site closed to submissions.
January 15th, 2012: Winners announced.

Organizers: Gal Elidan and Amir Globerson (Hebrew University).
Web master: Uri Heinemann (Hebrew University)

Web Page: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/project/PASCAL/