From: Mamdouh Ibrahim
Subject: CFP-IJCAI '95 Workshop On Reflection and Metalevel Architecture and their Applications in AI
Date: 
Message-ID: <3iveif$13t@rcsuna.gmr.com>
                   IJCAI '95 Workshop

         On Reflection and Meta-Level Architecture and 
                 their Applications in AI
	            Montreal, Canada
		  Monday August 21, 1995


Background
-----------
Humans can think not only about the world around them but also 
about their own actions, ideas and experiences. They have the 
ability to step back from a principle activity and consider the 
state of that activity and how it is being conducted. The process 
by which people think about the thinking process itself is called 
reflection or meta-level reasoning.

Serious efforts to implement computational reflection began in the 
field of artificial intelligence, e.g., meta-rules, meta-scripts, etc. 
Brian Smith was the first to introduce the concept of reflection 
in programming languages.  He developed 3-Lisp to prove the 
feasibility of the concept. Meta-level reasoning has also
been researched in other fields such as theorem proving, 
knowledge representation logic programming, and object-oriented 
programming.

Given that the field of AI is still striving for new representational 
and software engineering advances that can help developing its 
complex systems and applications, it is natural to look for 
reflection and meta-level architecture to provide the needed 
mechanisms for structuring and programming complex, 
adaptive systems. 


Workshop focus and goals
------------------------

A one day workshop " On Reflection and Metalevel Architecture and
Their Applications in AI" will be held in conjunction with IJCAI '95, 
Montreal, Canada, in which researchers from a broad range of 
disciplines within AI can address related issues and share their 
intuitions about the workshop topics.  Also, with various sub-fields 
of AI exploring the same topic (e.g., Logic programming, object-oriented 
programming, theorem proving, etc.) it is our hope that holding this 
workshop in conjunction with a broad conference like IJCAI could 
span these different groups and bring together research that 
would benefit from diverse perspectives.

Some of potential topics related to the workshop theme are 
(but not limited to):

1) Theoretical foundation of Reflection
2) The Meta concept and its applicability for AI applications
3) Reflective AI languages and programming systems
4) Using reflection to integrate AI programming paradigms
5) Development of learning and adaptive systems based on 
     reflection
6) Reflective environments for distributed AI
7) Reflection and multi-agent systems
8) Reflection and knowledge level models
9) Multi-level reasoning
10)Meta-level theorem proving

The focus of the workshop will be on discussions and exchange of 
ideas rather than presentations or mini conference forum. 
Conclusions of the workshop should identify the techniques,
benefits, and drawbacks of using reflection and meta-level 
architecture for developing AI applications.  They should also 
identify both desired and undesired aspects of these techniques that 
are most relevant to AI.

Workshop recommendations will be based on the conclusions 
reached and will suggest directions for shaping future research to 
further advance the state-of-the-art of AI using the concepts and 
techniques of reflection and meta-level architecture.


Submission and acceptance criteria
-----------------------------------

Interested participants must submit 5 copies of a full
position paper (not to exceed 10 single spaced pages) that 
describes their work and addresses one or more of the issues 
discussed above. The papers will be reviewed by the workshop 
committee and acceptance will be based on the relevance of the 
work to the workshop theme. 

Attendance will be by invitation only based on the accepted 
papers.  For papers with multiple authors, invitation will be 
issued only to the first two authors.  We expect to issue no 
more than 30 invitations. Accepted papers will be copied and 
bound as IJCAI workshop proceedings and distributed to all 
workshop attendees.

According to IJCAI rules, all workshop attendees must register for 
the IJCAI '95 conference.  In addition, there is a separate 
workshop registration assessed at $50.00.  Since it is 
recommended to include the workshop registration with the 
general IJCAI registration, we will make sure that the deadline for 
notification of acceptance and/or rejection provides ample time for 
pre-registration.  

Submit position papers to:

Mamdouh H. Ibrahim	
Electronic Data Systems
Object-Oriented and AI Services
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-7129
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail:  ···@gmr.com

Important dates
---------------

Deadline for position paper submissions		March 20, 1995
Notification of acceptance or rejection 	April 10, 1995
Deadline for receiving camera ready copies	May 1st, 1995
Workshop scheduled date     			August 21, 1995

Organizing committee
---------------------

Pierre Cointe
Ecole des Mines de Nantes
4 rue Alfred Kastelr
La chantrerie
44070 Nantes Cedex 03
France
E-mail: ······@emn.fr

Fred Cummins
EDS/OOAIS
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-2016
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail: ·······@ae.eds.com

Fausto Giunchiglia
IRST and University of Trento
38050 Povo - Trento
Italy
Tel: +39 - 461 - 314517 / 314592
Fax: +39 - 461 - 314591 / 302040
E-mail: ······@irst.it

Mamdouh H. Ibrahim	(Chair)
Electronic Data Systems
Object-Oriented and AI Services
5555 New King Street
Troy, MI 48098
USA
Tel: (810) 696-7129
Fax: (810) 696-2325
E-mail:  ···@gmr.com

Jacques Malenfant
Departement d'informatique et de recherche operationnelle
Universite de Montreal
C.P. 6128, Succursale centre-ville
Montreal, Quebec
Canada    H3C 3J7
Tel: (514) 343-7479
Fax: (514) 343-5834
E-mail: ········@iro.umontreal.ca