CALL FOR PAPERS

Summer School ENGAGE (Immersive and Engaging Interaction with VH on Internet)
September 13 – September 15, 2010 Hotel Alex, Zermatt, Switzerland
Organized by MIRALab, University of Geneva and VRLab- EPFL, Switzerland

Supported by CUSO, 3DLife project, and CyberEmotions project
http://www.cuso.ch/3e-cycle/informatique/
http://www.3dlife-noe.eu/  http://www.cyberemotions.eu/

Aims and Scope

Internet is evolving in a way that the concept of personalized intelligent media is coming to the forefront. Immersive virtual environments inhabited by socially intelligent and believable virtual characters and avatars will soon be part of the future media internet for engaging social and sensory interaction experiences. These characters should sense the user’s current state (including their environment, physical and mental state) and should engage users in a believable interaction by understanding their intentions and reacting in a way that satisfies their specific needs. What is more, these virtual characters should be believable in terms of their appearance and expressiveness.

The summer school aims to bring together researchers working on different aspects of believable interaction with virtual humans for future Media Internet, from analysis of media for human-computer interaction, to the construction and animation of virtual humans and believable interaction with them in immersive virtual environments. The goal of the summer school is to share recent advances and explore future research directions and opportunities in the field. We encourage a spectrum of submissions from design and modeling issues to working applications and evaluations.

Topics

Suggested topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

• Sensing humans for human-computer interaction
• Construction and animation of 3D virtual characters and avatars
• Social and emotional interaction with intelligent entities
• Design and evaluation of autonomous embodied conversational characters
• Intuitive multi-modal interaction
• Social awareness and presence
• Applications of intelligent human-computer interaction in virtual worlds, serious games, augmented/mixed reality and robotics
• Computer-based perception
• Networking models for Virtual Environments

Conference Location

Hotel Alex, Zermatt, Switzerland
http://www.hotelalexzermatt.com/fr.html

Important Dates

Paper submission:  June 30, 2010 (23:59 GMT+1)
Authors’ notification:  August 20, 2010
Camera-ready papers:  September 7, 2010
Conference:  September 13- September 15, 2010

Publication Information

Selected and invited papers will be published as Springer LNCS State-of-the-Art Survey book after the summer school. The focus of the contributions shouldn’t be only on the presentation of novel research results; instead also some background context and motivation should be given, stimulating researchers not yet working on these topics to consider doing research in this area.

Submissions must not substantially duplicate work that any of the authors has published elsewhere or has submitted in parallel for consideration of any other journal and conference/workshop with proceedings. Authors of the accepted papers must guarantee that at least one of the authors will attend the conference and present their paper. Papers will be reviewed according to a peer-review and single-blind process. Submissions should have at most 15 pages including the bibliography and appendices and must be formatted according to the LNCS guidelines. For more details, please refer to the summer school website (http://engage.miralab.ch/).

Summer School Chair

• Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (MIRALab-University of Geneva, Switzerland)

Program Co-chairs

• Tamy Boubekeur (Télécom ParisTech, France)
• Janusz Holyst (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
• Nadia- Magnenat-Thalmann (MIRALab/University of Geneva, Switzerland)
• Daniel Thalmann (EPFL, VRlab, Switzerland)

Local Committee Chairs

• Stéphane Gobron (EPFL, VRlab, Switzerland)
• Zerrin Kasap (MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
• Mustafa Kasap (MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
• Maher Ben Moussa (MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland)
• David Monaghan (Dublin City University, Ireland)

International Program Committee (to be confirmed)

• Ana Paiva (Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal)
• Arvid Kappas (Jacobs University, Germany)
• Anton Nijholt (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
• Arjan Egges (Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands)
• Caroline Larboulette (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
• Catherine Pelachaud (CNRS, Télécom ParisTech, France)
• Cynthia Breazeal (MIT, USA)
• Daniel Thalmann (EPFL, Switzerland)
• Elisabeth André (University of Augsburg, Germany)
• Janusz Holyst (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
• Jodi Forlizzi (Carnegie Mellon, USA)
• Karan Singh (University of Toronto, Canada)
• Lale Akarun (Bogazici University, Turkey)
• Maja Pantic (Imperial College, UK and University of Twente, The Netherlands)
• Marcin Skowron (Oesterreichische Studiengesellschaft Fuer Kybernetik, Austria)
• Micheal Arijan Thelwall (University of Wolverhampton, UK)
• Michael Kipp (German Research Center for AI (DFKI), Germany)
• Norman Badler (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
• Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (University of Geneva, Switzerland and IMI Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
• Olga Sourina (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)
• Rick Parent (Ohio State University, USA)
• Robert Trappl (Oesterreichische Studiengesellschaft Fuer Kybernetik, Austria)
• Ruth Aylett   (Herriott Watt University, UK)
• Selim Balcisoy   (Sabanci University, Turkey)
• Shuzhi Sam Ge (National University of Singapore, Singapore)
• Stacy Marsella (University of Southern California, USA)
• Stefan Kopp (Universitat Bielefeld, Germany)
• Tamy Boubekeur (Télécom ParisTech, France)
• Timothy Bickmore (Northeastern University, USA)
• Tolga Capin (Bilkent University, Turkey)

Contact Information

For more information, please visit http://engage.miralab.ch/; contact: [email protected]

Web Site

Sylvain Chagué (MIRALab-University of Geneva, Switzerland)

This summer school is supported by the Conférence Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale (CUSO) and EU Projects 3DLife – Bringing the Media Internet to Life and CyberEmotions – Collective Emotions in Cyberspace

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