Call for Papers: ALT 2008
The 19th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory
Hotel Budapest, Budapest, Hungary, October 13 - 16, 2008

The 19th International Conference on Algorithmic
Learning Theory (ALT 2008) will be held in Budapest,Hungary, during 13–16 October 2008. The conferenceis on the theoretical foundations of machine learning.
ALT 2008 will be co-located with the 11th International Conference on Discovery Science (DS 2008).
Topics of Interest: We invite submissions making
contributions to the theory of learning including thefollowing:• Comparison of the strength of learning models andthe design and evaluation of novel algorithms for learning problems in established learning-theoretic settings
such as inductive inference, statistical learning theory,
on-line learning, query models, unsupervised, semisupervised and active learning.
• Analysis of the theoretical properties of existing algorithms, where families of algorithms could include:
boosting, kernel-based methods, SVM, Bayesian networks, methods for reinforcement learning or learning in repeated games, graph- and/or manifoldbased methods, methods for latent-variable estimation
and/or clustering, methods based on Dirichlet processes, MDL, decision tree methods, information-basedmethods. Analyses could include generalization, convergence or computational efficiency.
• Definition and analysis of new learning models. Models might identify and formalize classes of learning
problems inadequately addressed by existing theory orcapture salient properties of important applications.
Invited Talks. There will be several invited talks byprominent researchers.
Submissions. Papers should be submitted electronically. Details are given at the ALT 2008 web-page.
Important Dates.
Submission deadline: May 18, 2008
Notification of acceptance: June 22, 2008
Camera ready due: July 20, 2008
Format. Submissions should be no longer than 15
pages in the standard format for Springer’s Lecture
Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. The 15 page limit
includes title, abstract, acknowledgments, references,illustrations and any other parts of the paper. Appendices bypassing the page limit are not allowed.
Policy. Each submitted paper will be reviewed by themembers of the program committee and be judged on
clarity, significance, and originality. Joint submissions
to other conferences with published proceedings are notallowed. Papers that have appeared in journals or otherconferences are not appropriate for ALT 2007.
Proceedings will be published as a volume in the Lecture Notes Series in Artificial Intelligence, Springer,
and will be available at the conference.
Selected papers of ALT 2008 will be invited to a special
issue of the journal Theoretical Computer Science.
E.M. Gold Award. One scholarship of 555€ will
be awarded to a student author (please mark student
submissions on the title page) of an excellent paper.
Conference Chair:László Györfi
Budapest Univ. of Technology and Economics
gyorfi@szit.bme.hu
Program Committee Chairs:
Yoav Freund (University of California, San Diego)György Turán (University of Illinois at Chicago
and University of Szeged)
Program Committee:
Naoki Abe (IBM Watson Research Center)
Marta Arias (Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya)
Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (Univ. degli Studi di Milano)
Koby Crammer (U. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Eyal Even-Dar (U. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Ricard Gavaldà (Univ. Politècnica de Catalunya)
Mark Herbster (University College London)
Kouichi Hirata (Kyushu Inst. of Tech., Iizuka)
Marcus Hutter (Australian National U., Canberra)
Efim Kinber (Sacred Heart Univ., Fairfield)
Gábor Lugosi (Pompeu Fabra Univ., Barcelona)
Ulrike von Luxburg (MPI for Biol. Cyb., Tübingen)
Partha Niyogi (Univ. of Chicago)
Csaba Szepesvári (Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton)
Nicolas Vayatis (E. Normale Supérieure de Cachan)
Vladimir Vovk (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London)
Manfred K. Warmuth (U. of California, Santa Cruz)
Akihiro Yamamoto (Kyoto University)
Sandra Zilles (Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton)
Local Arrangement Chair:János Csirik
University of Szeged and RGAI Szeged
csirik@inf.u-szeged.hu
Conference Homepage:
http://www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/∼thomas/ALT08/alt08.jhtml