Call for Papers: Learning and Automata (LearnAut) -- FLoC 2018 Workshop
July 13, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Website: https://learnaut2018.wordpress.com/

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: *** 31st March 2018 ***

Learning models defining recursive computations, like automata and formal grammars, is the core of the field called Grammatical Inference (GI). The expressive power of these models and the complexity of the associated computational problems are major research topics within the mathematical logic and computer science communities, spanning the international conferences that the Federated Logic Conference (FLoC) brings together. Historically, there has been little interaction between the GI and FLoC communities, though recently some important results started to bridge the gap between both worlds, including applications of learning to formal verification and model checking, and (co-)algebraic formulations of automata and grammar learning algorithms.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together experts on logic who could benefit from grammatical inference tools, and researchers in grammatical inference who could find in logic and verification new fruitful applications for their methods.

We invite submissions of recent work, including preliminary research, related to the theme of the workshop. Similarly to how main machine learning conferences and workshops are organized, all accepted abstracts will be part of a poster session held during the workshop. Additionally, the Program Committee will select a subset of the abstracts for oral presentation. At least one author of each accepted abstract is expected to represent it at the workshop.

Learnaut18 is also coordinating with the International Conference on Grammatical Inference (ICGI, http://icgi2018.pwr.edu.pl/) which publishes its proceedings in the Proceedings of Machine Learning Research (PMLR: http://proceedings.mlr.press/). Selected LearnAut papers will be offered the possibility to have an extended version published in the proceedings of ICGI. Authors of such papers will be expected to submit the extended version by the ICGI deadline, which will then undergo an additional (light) review process by the ICGI program committee.


Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

- Computational complexity of learning problems involving automata and formal languages.
- Algorithms and frameworks for learning models representing language classes inside and outside the Chomsky hierarchy, including tree and graph grammars.
- Learning problems involving models with additional structure, including numeric weights, inputs/outputs such as transducers, register automata, timed automata, Markov reward and decision processes, and semi-hidden Markov models.
- Logical and relational aspects of learning and grammatical inference.
- Theoretical studies of learnable classes of languages/representations.
- Relations between automata and recurrent neural networks.
- Active learning of finite state machines and formal languages.
- Methods for estimating probability distributions over strings, trees, graphs, or any data used as input for symbolic models.
- Applications of learning to formal verification and (statistical) model checking.
- Metrics and other error measures between automata or formal languages.


** Invited speakers **

Alexander Clark (King's College London)
Kousha Etessami (University of Edinburgh)
Doina Precup (McGill University & DeepMind)


** Submission instructions **

Submissions in the form of extended abstracts must be at most 8 single-column pages
long (plus at most four for bibliography and possible appendixes) and
must be submitted in the JMLR/PMLR format. The LaTeX style file
is available from here: https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/jmlr

We do accept submissions of work recently published or currently under
review; however such submissions do not qualify for publication in the ICGI
Proceedings.

- Submission url: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=learnaut2018
- Submission deadline: 24 March 2018
- Notification of acceptance: 1 May 2018
- Submission deadline for ICGI proceedings: 15 May 2018
- Registration: http://www.floc2018.org/register/

** Program Committee **

Dana Angluin (Yale University)
Borja Balle (Amazon Research Cambridge)
Leonor Becerra-Bonache (Université de Saint-Etienne)
Jorge Castro (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)
François Denis (Aix-Marseille Université)
Colin de la Higuera (Nantes University)
Falk Howar (TU Clausthal)
Kim Larsen (Aalborg University)
Ariadna Quattoni (Naver Labs Europe)
Bernhard Steffen (TU Dortmund)
Alexandra Silva (University College of London)
James Worrell (University of Oxford)

** Organizers **

Remi Eyraud (Aix-Marseille Université)
Jeffrey Heinz (Stony Brook University)
Guillaume Rabusseau (McGill University)
Matteo Sammartino (University College London)