Special Session on Applied AI Ethics in the biomedical field
IEEE CIBCB 2023 - 20th IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

29-31 August 2023 – Eindhoven, The Netherlands


CALL FOR PAPERS
Aim
In the biomedical field, a large number of sensitive personal data is constantly being processed and the decisions made by AI systems have a substantial impact on patients’ lives. It is important to explore the implications of research in the field of Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and their use in real-life cases. AI systems may, in fact, have a significant impact on multiple stakeholders: researchers, producers, healthcare professionals, patients, and society as a whole, from an ethical, legal, and sociological point of view.
Recent research suggests that multiple individuals, especially marginalized groups, are negatively affected by biases and incorrect use of those systems. Furthermore, in the context of the legislative novelties aiming at regulating AI systems worldwide, the whole AI life cycle generates the need for regulatory and ethical compliance to remove biases and address potential risks. AI Auditing, Value Sensitive Design, and Applied Ethics are becoming a necessity rather than a choice.
However, the research in these fields has not reached an agreement on how to perform a comprehensive ethical assessment of the whole AI life-cycle, from the data collection to the post-marketing phases. Different fairness metrics, debiasing techniques, and auditing frameworks have been presented over the years.

This Special Session aims to gather scholars investigating new directions and ideas in the field of Applied AI Ethics, particularly in the biomedical field.
Scope
This Special Session welcomes papers regarding any ethical issue (including interpretability, fairness, and accountability) arising from AI systems; in particular, we are interested in techniques applied in the context of the biological or medical domain. Together with the discussion about ethical and legal issues, authors are strongly suggested to include a computational part in their paper.

Examples include but are not limited to:
Explainable/Interpretable AI systems for medical decision support
Right of explanation and Trustworthy AI in the biomedical field
Biases in AI systems and debiasing techniques
Fair methods for data preprocessing
Fairness metrics in the context of biomedicine
Unbiased data augmentation and privacy-preserving generative models
Anonymization and pseudonymization of biobanks
How personalized medicine through AI systems can contribute to mitigating discrimination and inequalities in healthcare
The use of synthetic data to protect personal data
Legal and ethical issues of data collection, data cleaning, feature/variable selection, and other phases of the development
Ethical framework for medical AI systems
Ownership of patients’ data and conditions for reuse
Social consequences of a biased AI model
AI regulation proposal and AI models in biomedical research
Legal and ethical issues concerning the use of smart robots for surgery
Ethical issues of open-source medical AI systems
Comparative perspectives on the above issues in different areas (papers exploring the legal system of under-represented countries are very welcome)
Program Committee members
The PC members are established scholars in the fields of Computer Science, Law, Ethics, and Medicine:

Caro Fuchs (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Simone Spolaor (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Marco S. Nobile (Ca’ Foscari University, Italy)
Gregor Christandl (University of Graz, Austria)
Karni Chagal Feferkorn (CLB - Academic Center for Law and Business, Israel)
Kshitiz Verma (Lakshmipat University, India)
Amalia Lupi (University of Padua, Italy)
Susan Hommerson (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Stefania Costantini (University of L’Aquila, Italy)
Viviana Mascardi (University of Genova, Italy)
Marta Infantino (University of Trieste, Italy)
Andrea Pin (University of Padua, Italy)
Francesca Alessandra Lisi (University of Bari, Italy)
Guido Noto La Diega (University of Stirling, UK)
Igor Vuletic (University of Osijek, Croatia)
Teresa Scantamburlo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy)
Emanuela Foglia (Carlo Cattaneo University, Italy)
Alessio Reali (Carlo Cattaneo University, Italy)
Dominika Harasimiuk (Łazarski University, Poland)
Ivan Letteri (University of L’Aquila, Italy)
Carlos Zednik (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Luis Moniz Pereira, (Nova University of Lisbon, Potugal)
Fabio Aurelio D'Asaro (University of Verona, Italy)
Tomasz Braun (Łazarski University, Poland)
Juan Carlos Nieves Sanchez (Umea University, Sweden)
Teresa Magno ( (European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation)
E. Prema (VIT School of Law, India)
TBA
Important Dates
Submission deadline: March 31, 2023
Notification of acceptance: June 2, 2023
Final paper submission: June 30, 2023
Format
Regular papers
Prospective authors are invited to submit papers of no more than eight (8) pages in IEEE conference format including results, figures, and references. Papers must be in pdf form and written in English. Detailed instructions and templates for preparing your manuscripts can be found on the IEEE website. Each paper will be peer-reviewed. Submission implies the willingness of at least one author to register and present the paper at the conference. Each registration can cover a maximum of two papers. Extra papers submitted by one registered author beyond the maximum of two papers per registration will incur a charge of €150 per paper. Papers that are more than 8 pages in length will incur an extra length page charge of €100/page. No papers greater than 10 pages in length will be accepted.
Short papers (will be included on the conference website but not IEEExplore)
Short papers may present preliminary findings from work in progress, and industry perspectives on issues relevant to CIBCB 2023. Short papers should present and discuss a clear and focused central idea, incorporate discussion of relevant research or context, and provide references, as necessary. Short papers must adhere to the IEEE conference template and have a length of no more than two (2) pages. Papers must be in PDF and written in English. Short papers will be desk reviewed by the CIBCB 2023 organizational committee. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper at the conference. Short papers will be presented as a poster, or as part of a workshop or competition session
Download the sample short paper.
Submission guidelines
Special session papers should be uploaded online through the paper submission website of IEEE CIBCB 2023. Please select the corresponding special session name (“Special Session on legal and ethical aspects of AI systems in the biomedical field”) as the “main research topic” in the submission. All papers will be peer-reviewed by experts in the fields of the call and ranked based on the criteria of originality, significance, quality, and clarity, and special attention will be paid to case studies. Please note that submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper at the conference. The conference fees are listed on the conference website.
Organizers
Chiara Gallese (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands)
Chiara Gallese is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands), at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Trieste (Italy), and at the School of Engineering at Carlo Cattaneo University - LIUC (Italy). Her research focuses on Privacy, AI & Law, and AI Ethics.

Elena Falletti (Carlo Cattaneo University LIUC, Italy)
Elena Falletti is an Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering at Carlo Cattaneo University - LIUC (Italy). She obtained her doctorate at the University of Turin and is a former Marie Curie and DAAD fellow. She has been visiting scholar at the Max-Planck-Institute in Hamburg and Munich (Germany). Her research focuses on comparative law, antidiscrimination law, and AI & privacy.

Luca Manzoni (University of Trieste, Italy)
Luca Manzoni is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Geosciences at the University of Trieste. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Milano-Bicocca in 2013. In 2012 he obtained a JSPS postdoctoral fellowship and in 2017 he obtained an award as the best young postdoc in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Milano-Bicocca. He has published more than 80 papers in international journals, conferences, and workshops. His interests are in the areas of natural computing models, like P systems, reactions systems, and cellular automata, and in the area of evolutionary computation, and genetic programming in particular.

Elisaveta Gromova (South Ural State University, Russia)
Elisaveta Gromova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Law of South Ural State University (Russia). She is Editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Law in Changing World, and Deputy Editor-in-chief of the Digital Technologies and Law Journal. As a researcher of the International Interdisciplinary Research Project “LegalTech: Legal Regulation of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Digitization of Law and Smart Law for Smart Industry” she is researching how digital transformation influences law.

Abeer Dyoub (University of L’Aquila, Italy)
Abeer Dyoub is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics (DISIM), University of L'Aquila. Her research interest focuses on Artificial Intelligence, with a special focus on Computational Logic including Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Interpretable Machine Learning, and Machine Ethics.