Call for Papers: ALT 2006
The 17th International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory
Barcelona, Spain, October 7 - 10, 2006

The 17th International Conference on Algorithmic
Learning Theory (ALT 2006) will be held in Barcelona,during 7–10 October 2006. The conference is on thetheoretical foundations of machine learning. The conference will be co-located with the 9th International
Conference on Discovery Science (DS 2006).
Topics of Interest: We invite submissions that makea wide variety of contributions to the theory of learning
including the following: Comparison of the strengthof learning models and the design and evaluation ofnovel algorithms for learning problems in establishedlearning-theoretic settings such as inductive inference,
the PAC model, on-line learning, query models.
Analysis of the theoretical properties of existing algorithms, where families of algorithms could include:
boosting, kernel-based methods, Bayesian networks,
methods for reinforcement learning or learning in repeated games, graph- and/or manifold-based methods,
methods for latent-variable estimation and/or clustering, methods based on Dirichlet processes, MDL, decision tree methods, information-based methods. Analyses could include generalization, convergence or computational efficiency.
Elucidation of new theoretical principles to guidethe design of learning algorithms, possibly including
new measures of algorithm quality, general algorithmdesign techniques, hypothesis classes, inductive biases.
Definition and analysis of new learning models. Models
might identify and formalize classes of learning problems inadequately addressed by existing theory or capture salient properties of important concrete applications. The use of theory to improve the efficiency withwhich existing principles, such as Bayesian ideas, canbe exploited.
Invited Talks. There will be several invited talks byprominent researchers in the field.
Submissions. Papers should be submitted electronically. Details are given at the ALT 2006 web-page.
Important Dates.
Submission deadline: May 25, 2006
Notification of acceptance: June 29, 2006
Camera ready due: July 27, 2006
Format. The submitted paper should be no longer
than 15 pages in the standard format for Springer’s
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. The 15page limit includes title, abstract, acknowledgements,references, illustrations and any other parts of the pa-per; appendixes 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 2006.
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 2006 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:
Jose L. Balcázar
UPC Barcelona
alt06@lsi.upc.edu
Program Committee Chairs:
Phil Long (Google)
Frank Stephan (National University of Singapore)
Program Committee:
Shai Ben-David (University of Waterloo)
Olivier Bousquet (Pertinence)
Nader Bshouty (Technion)
Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
Henning Fernau (University of Hertfordshire)
William Gasarch (University of Maryland)
Sally Goldman (Washington University in St. Louis)
Kouichi Hirata (Kyushu Institute of Technology)
Marcus Hutter (IDSIA)
Efim Kinber (Sacred Heart University)
Shie Mannor (McGill University)
Eric Martin (The University of New South Wales)
Partha Niyogi (University of Chicago)
Steffen Lange (Fachhochschule Darmstadt)
Hans-Ulrich Simon (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
Etsuji Tomita (The Univ. of Electro-Communication)
Sandra Zilles (DFKI)
Local Arrangement Chair:
Ricard Gavaldà
UPC Barcelona
alt06@lsi.upc.edu
Conference Homepage:
http://www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/∼thomas/ALT06/alt06.jhtml