[Ltg] Call for Abstracts: HCSNet BioSearch 08

[Ilya Anisimoff]

                   BioSearch08
      HCSNet Next-Generation Search Workshop on
          Search in Biomedical Information

   http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/workshops/bio-search08


Date:     30 November 2008
Location: Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane

Contact:  Diego Molla, diego at ics.mq.edu.au;
         Robert Dale, Robert.Dale at mq.edu.au


CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

There are many aspects of research and practice in medical
environments that require searching for medical information in large
information repositories of published research papers (such as
PubMed), and large ontologies and other structured resources (such as
UMLS). The availability of these resources and the need to find
information in them has prompted intensive research on the treatment
of medical text, images and videos for information extraction and
retrieval.

All of these tasks require the development of techniques that go
beyond the localisation of generic search and information extraction
techniques, given the high level of complexity in terminology, and the
need for achieving high performance.

The aim of HCSNet's Priority Research Area in Next Generation Search
is to bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to
address issues related to search and information extraction. This
specialised workshop will focus on the medical and biological domains
and will take place just before GIW 2008, in Brisbane.


AUDIENCE

We welcome anyone from academia and industry with an interest in any
area related to search and information extraction from biomedical
information, including but not limited to the following:

   * Text search
   * Text mining
   * Named entity recognition
   * Information extraction
   * Linguistic analysis
   * Parsing
   * Text pre-processing
   * Text summarisation
   * Video retrieval
   * Image retrieval
   * Question answering
   * Ontologies
   * Human-computer interaction


WORKSHOP FORMAT

We aim to facilitate an environment that helps to further develop
grounds for collaboration across the research and development
communities. Accordingly, the workshop will consist of a number of
presentations of different types with this focus in mind:

   * 10 minute speed presentations that describe a new project or
     specific idea to be shared with the community, with the aim of
     encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration;

   * 10 minute student project presentations, with the aim of
     informing the community of new ideas being developed, and to get
     feedback from an interdisciplinary audience; and

   * 3 minute poster presentations for those presenting a poster
     only.


SUBMISSIONS

We want to involve as many as possible in discussion, so the effort
required for attendance is deliberately small.

Those interested in making a speed presentation, student presentation
or poster should submit a brief abstract of 100-150 words in length.

In addition, we ask all those interested in attending to submit a
100-150 word statement indicating their research interests pertinent
to the workshop theme. These will be made available as part of the
workshop materials.

Please send all submissions by using the submission form at
http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/workshops/bio-search08.


FUNDING

HCSNet will fund travel and accommodation to a maximum of $500 for a
number of participants from outside the Brisbane area. The provision
of a submission as described above is a prerequisite for funding. If
not all participants can be covered, funding grants may be allocated
based on the relevance of your abstract to the workshop theme; also,
early career researchers (in HCSNet terms, those who have received
their PhDs in the last fifteen years) will have priority.

In addition, 10 student travel awards will be available for
postgraduate students outside the Brisbane area. To apply for this
funding stream, include a short CV in plain text in the submission
form.

Note that, although attendance at the workshop is free, membership of
HCSNet (join via the website) and prior registration for this workshop
are required.


IMPORTANT DATES

   * Submission of Abstracts: 19 October 2008
   * Notification of Awards:  24 October 2008
   * Workshop:                30 November 2008


CONTACT

Diego Molla-Aliod diego at ics.mq.edu.au
Robert Dale Robert.Dale at mq.edu.au