[Corpora-List] Call for Summer 1993 NRRC Workshop Proposals

From: David Day (day@mitre.org)
Date: Wed Oct 09 2002 - 09:57:54 MET DST

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          Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA)
             Northeast Regional Research Center (NRRC)

                Call for 2003 Workshop Proposals

    The Northeast Regional Research Center (http://nrrc.mitre.org) of the
    Advanced Research and Development Activity (http://www.ic-arda.org)
    requests workshop proposals for the Summer 2003 Workshop Series. ARDA
    is an intelligence community organization whose mission is to sponsor
    high-risk, high-payoff research designed to leverage leading edge
    technology in the solution of some of the most critical problems
    facing the Intelligence Community (IC). ARDA established the NRRC to
    create partnerships between government and industry/academic experts
    to identify and engage in focused, 6-8 week long workshops to actively
    solve complex IC problems. The NRRC encourages novel approaches,
    non-traditional government contractors, and new cross-organizational
    teams.

    2003 Challenge Focus

    The 2003 Workshops will focus on ARDA’s Information Exploitation
    (Info-X) area, with an emphasis on the Video Analysis and Content
    Extraction (VACE) and Advanced Question Answering for Intelligence
    (AQUAINT) programs (see http://www.ic-arda.org/InfoExploit/index.html
    for details on these programs). The NRRC will also consider
    compelling proposals that fall outside these two areas. Proposals
    that define evaluation methodologies and engage intelligence analysts
    will be preferred. We encourage both long (e.g., 6-8 week, contiguous
    times or spread out over several months) workshops as well as short
    (e.g., several days to a week) workshops. The NRRC is also open to
    alternative workshop models that would most successfully achieve
    results and IC impact.

    VACE. With respect to ARDA’s VACE program, the NRRC is particularly
    interested in, but not limited to, proposals that address the
    following challenge areas which would most likely be long workshops:

    1. Video event ontology and knowledge representation in language and
       vision.

    2. Cross-cutting video understanding areas (e.g., recognizing people,
       demographics detection such as gender, age, and ethnicity), new
       algorithms for rapid object detection and recognition in real-time,
       streaming processing contexts).

    3. Non-traditional approaches to video acquisition such as:

       - New technologies for robust, far-field human detection
         (stereovision, fused IR/visible spectrum, omni-directional
         cameras, etc.);

       - Adaptive signal collection management (e.g., mobile or wearable
         cameras, variable scope or resolution).

    4. Video/multimedia data mining; content association and knowledge
       discovery; using prior knowledge to direct data mining.

    5. Architectures and future environments for video understanding
       including:

       - Video intelligence analyst environment of the future,
         incorporating novel visualization and interaction modalities for
         efficient review and discovery;

       - Rich integration of video processing, analysis and data/meta-data
         representation capabilities, enabling foundation for new video
         analysis experiments.

    We are also interested in short term workshops on topics such as:

       - Creating a technology roadmap for video content extraction and
         content analysis (e.g., human video analysis processing to guide
         machine processing);

       - Creating methods, measures, and metrics for more effective
         evaluation (e.g., identifying a task and obtaining
         government/community buy-in).

    AQUAINT. With respect to ARDA’s AQUAINT program, the NRRC is
    particularly interested in, but not limited to, proposals that address
    the following challenge areas which will most likely be long
    workshops:

    1. Temporal processing for Q&A: Build on the success of the previous
       NRRC workshop dedicated to Temporal and Event representation and
       processing models (http://time2002.org/) by pursuing significant
       extensions, such as multi-document summarization via temporal
       coherence of events, integrating TimeML with Q&A, multilingual
       issues, etc.

    2. Handling geo-spatial, structural or even social relationships
       within the context of Q&A.

    3. Multiple perspectives: Build on the successful NRRC ’02 Workshop on
       Multiple Perspectives.

    4. Explore issues in Information Retrieval performance and Q&A
       relating to performance variability as a function of topic,
       collection, queries and other contextual aspects.

    5. User models and task-specific context in support of Q&A;
       scenario-based Q&A.

    6. The use of Q&A technology to address problems in knowledge
       discovery from large, unstructured data collections.

    7. Knowledge representation models, inference and/or integration
       issues for Q&A.

    8. Answer generation and presentation (incorporating multiple sources,
       graphical/interactive displays, etc.).

    9. Data chasm/challenges: missing data, reliability, contradictory
       information sources, heterogeneity in original sources (media,
       language, genre, perspective, etc.).

    The NRRC is also interested in short term or alternative format
    workshops in a variety of areas (e.g., the creation of a question
    answering roadmap that identifies needed resources, impediments to
    progress, and likely future outcomes). There are specific AQUAINT
    resources that may be made available to benefit workshop participants,
    such as non- proliferation data from the Center for Nonproliferation
    Studies (CNS) and/or "glass box" data from analysts performing
    open source exploitation.

    Other. The NRRC is also interested in short and long term workshop
    proposals that address ARDA’s overall Information Exploitation program
    in areas not covered by the above, such as data filtering and
    selection, content data markup, content data transformation,
    information discovery, information understanding, synthesis and
    fusion, information retrieval, analytic knowledge, presentation and
    visualization, assessment and interpretation, information analysis.

    Workshop Proposal Content and Format

    The workshop proposal shall not exceed 10 pages and must succinctly
    address each of the following key elements:

    Problem: Succinct definition of problem to be addressed.

    Approach: Method for solving the problem, e.g., collection of data,
    creation of algorithms, evaluation, integration and test of existing
    heterogeneous capabilities, study of human processes to inspire new
    approach.

    Workshop Duration and Format: Long term workshop (approximately 6-8
    weeks), short term workshop (approximately 1-5 days) or alternative
    structure.

    Domain and data sets: Size, required annotation,
    availability/intellectual property.

    Evaluation: Measures and methods, qualitative/quantitative.

    Proposed team and roles Lists names of individuals and their
    institutions, as well as their primary role, e.g., lead, annotator,
    developer, statistician, etc.

    Plan: Key tasks/milestones, dates, including pre-workshop preparation,
    training, lectures/seminars and potential post-workshop activities.

    Impact: Product (e.g., software, algorithms, data, report),
    performance, process, or other outcomes.

    Resources: Required staff, data, tools, and infrastructure.

    Issues: Membership, resources, intellectual property, other

    Proposal Cover Sheet

    Each proposal shall have a one-page cover sheet that includes the
    following information:

    (1) Program addressed (e.g., AQUAINT, VACE, Other)

    (2) Challenge focus (e.g., from the above list or other)

    (3) Proposal title

    (4) Technical point of contact including: name, telephone number,
        electronic mail address, fax (if available) and mailing address

    (5) Administrative point of contact including: name, telephone number,
        electronic mail address, fax (if available) and mailing address

    (6) Summary of the resources of the proposed research, including total
        level of effort and any resource/cost sharing if relevant. This
        need not be a detailed cost estimate but rather provide a high
        level summary of the resources needed.

    (7) Contractor's type of business, selected from among the following
        categories: academic, industrial, non-profit, government, national
        laboratory.

    Workshop Selection Criteria

    Workshops will be selected based on fundamental issues such as

      - Is the problem being addressed important to the Intelligence
        Community?

      - Is workshop environment the best to address the problem?

      - Does the proposal have the right team?

      - Is challenge sufficiently provocative to attract the best talent
        and provide impact on government needs.

    Workshops which contain novel approaches, non-traditional government
    contractors, and new cross-organizational teams will be favored.

    Specifically, the following criteria will be applied to select among
    competing workshop proposals (relative weighting of criteria is
    indicated parenthetically after each criterion):
     
      - Team (the quality, experience, composition, e.g., good mix of
        industry, academia, government; skill of the workshop lead(s); and
        identified government champion) (30% of overall score);

      - Technical approach. feasibility (including achievable in given
        time frame), innovation, evaluability (30% of overall score);

      - Expected impact (20% of overall score);

      - Commitment (e.g., agreement to personally attend the entire
        workshop, additional contributed resources by participants) (10%
        of overall score);

      - Cost in terms of resources required (e.g., financial, human, data,
        time) (10% of overall score).

    Graduate Students

    Following workshop selection, the NRRC will run a competition to
    identify extraordinary graduate students to participate in the
    workshops.

    Awards

    In 2002, the NRRC funded two large workshops and one small workshop.
    We expect to support approximately the same number of workshops in
    2003. Large workshops can be funded up to $500,000 and small
    workshops at approximately $50,000.

    NRRC

    ARDA focuses on revolutionary not evolutionary advances in information
    technology for intelligence community grand challenge problems. It
    aims to achieve well-defined goals with measurable results based on
    sound scientific methodology. The NRRC is an essential element of
    ARDA’s Resource Enhancement Program. The NRRC focuses on the
    reinforcement of ARDA thrusts by targeting scientific results that
    have a positive impact on Intelligence Community (IC) problems,
    engaging regional experts from commercial, academic, government and
    non-profit organizations, infusing technology into government
    workforce, and transfering technology to and from industry. The NRRC
    is sponsored by ARDA, a US Government entity which sponsors and
    promotes research of import to the IC which includes but is not
    limited to the CIA, DIA, NSA, NIMA and NRO.

    The MITRE Corporation

    As specified in workshop proposals, MITRE will provide facilities,
    technical assistance, as well as contractual assistance to the
    workshop participants. Video teleconferencing facilities are also
    available in MITRE facilities.

    Schedule

    The schedule for the NRRC 2003 Workshop Series is as follows.

      October 7, 2002: Call for workshop proposals

      November 4, 2002: Intent to submit a workshop submitted
                            to NRRC
      November 12, 2002: 5 page workshop proposals due

      November 25, 2002: Executive Committee (EC) elects
                            proposals for presentation to EC
      December 3-5, 2002: Oral proposals presented (in person or
                            teleconference) to EC
      December 9th, 2002: Notification of selected workshops

      January 13th, 2003: Final proposals including final membership
                            and costing

      February, 2003: First workshop pre-planning meetings (e.g.,
                            establishing data, computing, and facility
                            requirements) at the NRRC, Bedford, MA
                            June-July 2003: Workshops

    NOTE: Submission forms, examples of previous workshop proposal
    briefings, and other related submission materials will soon be made
    available on the NRRC web site. See: http://nrrc.mitre.org/ and
    follow the "Workshops" link.

    NRRC POCs:

    Dr. Mark Maybury
    Executive Director, NRRC
    The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730
    Email: maybury@mitre.org
    Tel: (781) 271-7230

    Ms. Penny Chase
    Program Manager, NRRC
    The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730
    Email: pc@mitre.org
    Tel: (781) 271-2113

    Dr. David Day
    Deputy Program Manager, NRRC
    The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA 01730
    Email: day@mitre.org
    Tel: (781) 271-2854




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