PASCAL2 (FP7-IST-NoE)Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modeling and Computational Learning

Launch at Bled Symposium:Operational overview and historical background, scientific programme

John Shawe-Taylor, Steve Gunn

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PASCAL2 Launch

Overview

Part I – PASCAL Retrospective

Part II – PASCAL2 Prospective

PASCAL2 Launch

Mission statement

The objective is to build a Europe-wide Distributed Institute, which will pioneer principled methods of pattern analysis, statistical modeling, and computational learning as core enabling technologies for multimodal interfaces that are capable of natural and seamless interaction with and among individual human users.

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL - Some Statistics

56 Contractors + associate members 4 year project Funding was €6M (inc. Swiss contribution) Dual-band funding model

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL - Some highlights

Establishment of a PASCAL web portal, compute cluster, virtual meeting, and Source Forge collaborative facilities

Repository of technical reports with ~3000 entries ~15 Pump-priming research projects ~25 challenges Establishment of a brokerage of expertise web portal ~120 Workshops and summer schools on different project

topics focussed around thematic programmes ~ 1000 Recorded lectures from many PASCAL workshops,

tutorials, summer schools (http://videolectures.net/pascal) Draft curriculum developed for machine learning, Summer

Schools and “Boot Camp” for new researchers (see yesterday’s discussion)

PASCAL2 Launch

Site grants are grassroots funding to allow teams to participate actively and achieve network goals An aid to collaboration, integration... Not a “payment” for excellence / general

purpose funding... Allows distributed management and reduces

the number of small requests to programme coordinators

Site Funding

PASCAL2 Launch

Fair division between large & small sites and between young & established researchers A unified evaluation for all researchers Site funding is simply sum of researcher

fundings Encourage less active researchers to

participate in Network, but don't grant them funding up front to prevent head-counting abuses Researcher funding → 0 when activity → 0

Site Funding - Principles I

PASCAL2 Launch

Reward a broad spectrum of activities Evaluate many activity classes Avoid narrow focus, extreme scores, arbitrary

thresholds or cut-offs

Automate the evaluation as much as possible, but allow reviewers some discretion at site level E.g. to correct for forseen changes in site

activities: funding is for future activities, not a reward for past ones.

Site Funding - Principles II

PASCAL2 Launch

Summary

PASCAL has shown a life of its own: new ideas of workshops, challenges, thematic programmes have emerged

Continuing production of technical reports with good inter-subject linking and inter-site authorships

Challenges forming a vital part of the outreach activity to other projects and users (this a.m.)

Major initiative in promoting PASCAL research in final year through Brokerage mini projects (see Tuesday)

Pump-priming projects starting to give real value added benefit to the consortium (see Tuesday)

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL2 - Some Statistics

Initially 40 members 5 year project Funding: €6M Dual-band funding model

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL2 Network

Continue to develop the institute with new orientation towards Cognitive Systems: “While retaining some of the structuring elements and

mechanisms of its predecessor NoE, PASCAL2 refocuses the institute towards the emerging challenges created by the ever expanding applications of adaptive systems technology and their central role in the development of artificial cognitive systems of different scales”.

Major new initiatives – see later: Harvest Programme Industrial Club

Organisational structure under FP7 Raising profile of Thematic Scientific Programmes

PASCAL2 Launch

Core Challenges

Complexity in prior knowledge: language, stochastic differential equation models, etc

Learning in multi-component systems: agent learning, cognitive systems, etc

Partial or delayed feedback: semi-supervised learning, reinforcement learning, exploration vs. exploitation, etc.

Representation and architecture: multimodal processing, symbolic vs subsymbolic, probabilistic inference

Scalability and roll-out of adaptive systems technology: plug and play solutions scaling to very large data processing tasks, embedded software development

PASCAL2 Launch

General methodology

Develop principled methods of adaptive systems design and implementation Bayesian learning Frequentist analysis Statistical analysis Statistical physics Game Theory Issues of algorithmic complexity and scalability Development of new frameworks within which

to analyse new tasks Engage with industrial partners to ensure

relevance and prototyping of approaches

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL2 Membership

Beneficiary Members 17 partners (cf PASCAL core sites) Sign full contract and Consortium Agreement

Non-beneficiary Members Initially 23 members (submitted site

description) Institution signs a version of Consortium

Agreement Industrial Club Members

Sign lighter version of Consortium Agreement Key interaction through the Harvest

Programme (see later)

PASCAL2 Launch

B ListBeneficiary Number Beneficiary name Beneficiary short name

1 (Coordinator) University of Southampton Soton-ECS

2 University College London UCL

3 University of Edinburgh UEDIN

4 Centre National de Recherche Scientifique CNRS

5 XEROX SAS XEROX SAS

6 Jozef Stefan Institute JSI

7 Università degli Studi di Milano UNIMI

8 University of Bristol UoB

9 University of Manchester UniMan

10 Helsingin yliopisto UH

11 Fondation de l'Institut Dalle Molle d'Intelligence Artificielle Perceptive IDIAP

12 Stichting Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica CWI

13 Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Fraunhofer

14 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften MPG

15 Helsinki University of Technology TKK

16 Bar-Ilan University BIU

17 Universite Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6 UPMC

PASCAL2 Launch

PASCAL2 Non-B Members

Will be allocated site funding Can apply to all programmes Site must sign version of CA No distinction on public web site view But

Will not receive money as a site Refunding through UCL of all expenses against allocated

budget No overheads!

Nonetheless If awarded funding for activity that requires employment

(eg Pump Priming), route exists to transfer to Beneficiary Member

Procedure to be agreed for including new members

PASCAL2 Launch

Initial set of non-B members

Kings College London (UK) Politècnica de Catalunya (ES) NICTA (National Centre for

Information and Communication Technologies) (Australia)

University of Glasgow (UK) University of Leoben (AT) Fondazione Bruno Kessler (IT) Pompeu Fabra University (ES) Graz University of Technology

(AT) Royal Holloway (UK) University of Sheffield (UK) University of Insubria (Varese) (IT) Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan

(SE) Technical University of Denmark

(DK)

Tel Aviv University (IL) University of Antwerp (BE) Technion – Israel Institute of

Technology (IL) Lublijana University – Institute of

Mathematics, Physics and Mechanics (SI)

Imperial College (UK) Universitaet Stuttgart, Institut

fuer Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung (DE)

Alicante University (ES) Leiden University (NL) Oxford University (UK) London School of Economics (UK) The Hebrew University of

Jerusalem (IL)

PASCAL2 Launch

Management Structure

Strategic Advisory Council – Sue Becker, Mike Mozer, Helge Ritter, Satinder Singh and Sebastian Thrun

Steering Committee – executive body meeting twice yearly – coordinators, programme managers, gender issues rep, finance and executive officers (~20 people).

Executive Committee – Executive Officer (UCL), Finance Officer (Soton), Coordinators, Web Manager (Soton)

Individual Programme Committees/Managers Assembly – one representative from each site

PASCAL2 Launch

Work Packages

WP Organisational Programme Programme Tasks

WP1 Operational & Knowledge ManagementOperational Management Knowledge Management

WP2 Scientific Integration & Co-ordination

Scientific ManagementBalance & Integration Site Activity monitoringTheme Management

WP3 Joint Research

Pump-PrimingHarvestChallengesConference & Workshop Organisation

WP4 MobilityInternal Visiting Conference & Workshop Attendance External Visitor

WP5 Outreach

Curriculum Development Liaison Brokerage of Expertise & Public Outreach Industrial Club, IPR & Exploitation

PASCAL2 Launch

Programme Managers

Programme Manager Co-Manager

Knowledge Management Steve Gunn, Soton-ECS

John Shawe-Taylor, UCL

Scientific Management John Shawe-Taylor, UCLSteve Gunn, Soton-ECS

Operational ManagementSteve Gunn, Soton-ECS

John Shawe-Taylor, UCL

Balance & Integration Dunja Mladenic, JSI

Bill Triggs, CNRS

Site ActivityBill Triggs,CNRS

Chris Williams,UEDIN

Infrastructure/pump-priming Neil Lawrence, UniMan

Gilles BlanchardFraunhofer

Harvest Nicola Cancedda, XRCEMichele Sebag,CNRS

Challenges Michele Sebag, CNRS

Ido Dagan,BIU

Conference & Workshop Organisation Sami Kaski, HUT

Peter Grunwald, CWI

PASCAL2 Launch

Programme Managers

Programme Manager Co-Manager

Internal Visiting Claudio Gentile, UniInsubria

?

Conference & Workshop Attendance Petri Myllymaki, UH

Koji Tsuda,MPG

External Visitor Nicolo Cesa-Bianchi, UMIlTiberio Caetano,NICTA

Curriculum Development Colin de la Higuera,CNRS

Jose Balcazar, UPC

Liaison Stephane Canu, CNRS

Marko Grobelnik, JSI

Brokerage of Expertise & Public Outreach Nello Cristianini, UoB

John Shawe-Taylor, UCL

Industrial Club, IPR and Exploitation Marko Grobelnik, JSI

Nicola Cancedda,XEROX SAS

PASCAL2 Launch

Thematic Programmes

First four programmes (3 to be described after coffee): Leveraging Complex Prior Knowledge for Learning (Neil

Lawrence) Multi-component Learning (Nello Cristianini) Partial or Delayed Feedback (Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi) Cognitive Architecture and Representation (Nick Chater)

Feedback through recording of 6 month summary of activities with the possibility of extending programmes also to SIGs

Call for future programmes in year 2 (e.g. in Robotics, etc)

PASCAL2 Launch

Deliverables

Del. no.

Deliverable name WP no. Lead bene-ficiary

Delivery date

D1 Leveraging complex prior knowledge for learning

WP3,4 UniMan 7

D2 Structures consolidation WP1 Soton-ECS 9

D3 Procedures definition WP2 UCL 9

D4 Multi-component learning WP3,4 UoB 13

D5 First Year Summary WP2 UCL 13

D6 Partial or delayed feedback WP3,4 UNIMI 19

D7 Cognitive Architecture and Representation

WP3,4 UCL 25

D8 Second Year Summary WP2 UCL 25

PASCAL2 Launch

First funding/activities

33% of funding for site allocation, remainder for programme activities

First year site allocation to be decided by PASCAL year 4 activity – normal procedure for later years

Cloning of the PASCAL website adapted for new programme structures, managers, etc. Improvement of workshop and challenge hosting Updating EPrints system Data repository Enhancement of dissemination activities through web

portal GForge software development and repository

Establish new funding implementation for non-B members

PASCAL2 Launch

Breakdown of Programme budget

WP Programme Budget (%)

WP1Knowledge Management 6.0

Operational Management 9.5

WP2

Scientific Management 4.5

Balance & Integration 0.5

Site Activity 0.5

Theme Management 0.5

WP3

Infrastructure/pump-priming 12.0

Harvest 5.0

Challenges 6.0

Conference & Workshop Organisation 11.0

WP4

Internal Visiting 4.0

Conference & Workshop Attendance 2.0

External Visitor 1.0

WP5

Curriculum Development 0.5

Liaison Programme 0.5

Brokerage of Expertise & Public Outreach 1.0

Industrial Club, IPR & Exploitation 0.5

Site Activity Funding 33.0

Reserve 2.0

Total 100.0

PASCAL2 Launch

Summary

PASCAL2 has some changes in organisational structure mainly as a result of new constraints of FP7

BUT aims to keep the same feel in terms of member participation and bottom-up creativity

It represents a reorientation of the scientific focus – and this launch gives an opportunity to enthuse you with the new directions (after coffee)

It is aiming at more active dissemination and promotion of its results, particularly through the Brokerage, Competitions, Industrial Club and Harvest Programmes