The MENHIR project is organizing the conference: Inaugural International Digital Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference that will be held in Belfast (Northern Ireland) from 22 to 23 June 2023.

Location/venue

Ulster University, Belfast campus, York Street, Northern Ireland, UK.

Chairs

• Prof. Raymond Bond
• Dr Edel Ennis
• Prof. Maurice Mulvenna

Conference Summary

Special Session on Social and Biometric data for Applications in human machine interactions: Models and algorithms (SOBIOAPPS)
In Conjunction with the 7th IEEE Cyber Science and Technology Congress (CyberSciTech 2022) – http://cyber-science.org/2022/cyberscitech/
September 12-15, 2022
Sponsored by IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society; EMPATHIC: http://www.empathic-project.eu/; MENHIR: https://menhir-project.eu/; SIROBOTICS: https://www.exprivia.it/en/show-info-event-full.php?id_event=7907; ANDROIDS: https://www.psicologia.unicampania.it/android-project

The aim of this SPECIAL SESSION is to provide an overview of ideas and methods for developing autonomous systems capable to act as socially and emotionally believable assistive interfaces. To this aim, data gathered from behavioural and social experiments, biometrics measurements, and models of social and individual behaviours are considered as signals to be processed and interpreted through new proposed algorithms and theoretical frameworks. These interdisciplinary facets found relevant applications in ICT interfaces for monitoring the health and affective states of their users, gather their psychological feelings and behavioural patterns, and support them through suitably designed interventions.
The call is open to contributors of diverse disciplinary backgrounds such as psychologists, health scientists, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, philosophers, and more.
TOPICS: Topics include but are not limited to:
– Analysis and identification of affective wellbeing and emotional states
– Case studies for detection of health status and personal health informatics
– Supervised and unsupervised algorithms for psychological and health status identification
– Application Oriented Redefinition of “Emotions”
– Computational models of emotions and Electronic health records (EHR) data mining
– Emotional speech algorithms and Facial affect detection
– Physiological monitoring systems
– Computational Architectures for Affective Systems
– Personalized Decision Support Systems for healthcare and wellbeing
– AI for Precision Medicine and Examples of precision medicine in human disease treatment and prevention
– Human and/or machine encoding and decoding of behavioral patterns
– Unimodal and Multi-modal analysis of behaviors (speech, facial expressions, gesture)
–  ….
IMPORTANT DATES
Paper Submission Dues: June 1, 2022
Notification of acceptance: July 1, 2022
Camera-ready submission: July 15, 2022
Conference Dates: Sept 12-15, 2022

The themes of this special session are multidisciplinary in nature, and closely connected in their final aims to identifying features from realistic dynamics of signal exchanges. Such dynamics characterize, formal and informal social signals, communication modes, hearing and vision processes, and brain functionalities. Of particular interest are analyses of visual, written and auditory information and corresponding computational efforts to automatically detect and interpret their semantic and pragmatic contents. Related applications of these interdisciplinary facets are ICT interfaces able to detect health and affective states of their users, interpret their psychological and behavioral patterns and support them through positively designed interventions aiming at improving their quality of life.

II. TOPICS

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

• Empathic conversational systems and agent
• Applications for mental health and wellbeing
• Signals for detecting affective wellbeing and emotional states
• Detection of health and psychological states from multimodal signals
• Social networks for information spread and share
• Empathic ICT interfaces
• Computational Architectures for Affective Systems
• Supervised and Unsupervised Learning Algorithms in Affective Systems
• Human and/or machine encoding and decoding of behavioral patterns
• Human daily cognitive activities
• …

III. PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS:

Anna Esposito is with the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Department of Psychology and the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS), Italy. Email: iiass.annaesp@tin.it

Zoraida Callejas is with University of Granada, Departamento de Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Granada, Spain. Email: zoraida@ugr.es

Marialucia Cuciniello is with the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Department of Psychology, and the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS), Italy. Email: marialucia.cuciniello@unicampania.it

Antonietta M. Esposito is with the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione di Napoli Osservatorio Vesuviano, Napoli, Italy. Email: antonietta.esposito@ingv.it

Gennaro Cordasco is with the Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Department of Psychology and the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS), Italy. Email: gennaro.cordasco@unicampania.it

Nelson Mauro Maldonato is with the Università di Napoli “Federico II”, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze and Reproductive Odontostomatological Sciences, Italy. Email: nelsonmauro.maldonato@unina.it

Francesco Carlo Morabito is with the Università degli Studi “Mediterranea” di Reggio Calabria, Italy. Email: morabito@unirc.it

IV. IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper Submission Deadline: Jun 30, 2022 (only an extended abstract uploaded to Easy Chair)
• Notification of acceptance: Jul 30, 2022
• Camera-ready copy: Sept 1, 2022 (final paper submission max. 8-10 pages)
• Conference Dates: Sept 7-9, 2022

The Internacional Doctoral Summer School in Conversational Systems for Health Applications that will take place in the beutiful Carmen de la Victoria (Granada, Spain) from 31st August to 3rd September 2022. It provides a platform for getting to know and discuss current approaches and research streams in the field of conversational systems with a focus on applications in the health domain. The aim is to bring together early-stage and senior researchers in computer science, psychology, and engineering as well as domain experts in the health sector in an international, multidisciplinary learning experience to help young researchers to improve their academic foundation and expand their skill set. The format of the summer school comprises keynote contributions given by experienced researchers (check the programme here) followed by engaging discussions in small breakout groups. Topics of these discussions will emerge from the PhD-thesis topics of the participants.

More information: https://menhir-project.eu/index.php/2022-menhir-doctoral-school/

MENHIR member María Inés Torres is part of the Steering Committee of the CUI2022 conference, that will take place in Glasgow from 26th to 28th July 2020.

CUI 2022 aims to further develop a collaborative community around human-computer interaction issues in speech and language technology, with a specific interest in theory-based and applied scientific issues in the field of speech and text-based conversational user interfaces.

More information: https://www.conversationaluserinterfaces.org/2022/

Submission deadline: 23rd February 2022

MENHIR members Maurice Mulvenna and Jane Zheng from Ulster University are co-organizing the First International Workshop on Trustworthy AI for the Future of Risk Management (TAI-RM 2022) in Belfast on 14th June.

Topics

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel theoretical achievements for TAI methodology.
• Novel developments for existing TAI techniques.
• Practical deployment of TAI within different domains: best practices and lessons learned.
• Reviews highlighting important challenges and open problems within TAI.
• Case studies of use response to TAI techniques and AI model outputs.
• Novel datasets for use within the TAI in application community.
• Discussion on industry areas where how best to leverage TAI moving forward.
• TAI related regulation description and enforcement.

Sessión at NVIDIA GTC 2

Summary: Conversational AI applications are comprised of a hierarchy of deep learning natural language processing (NLP) models and speech technologies. Making these many different components work together to realize robust real-world applications a complex, both in terms of model interaction and computing resource orchestration. Deploying NLP models for processing speech requires end-to-end speech recognition, appropriate segmentation, and robust NLP model training processes that can cope with speech recognition transcription errors. In addition, effective conversational AI applications rely on numerous preprocessing models such as punctuation restoration, true casing, question classification, negation, and many others to ensure robust operation and reduction of false positives. We’ll present real-world contact center and medical consultation decision support cases to illustrate how such complex conversational AI ecosystems should be constructed.

Presenter: Nigel Cannings, CTO, Intelligent Voice, Ltd.

Join for free here: https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/session-catalog/?search=S41145&search=S41145%2C%20S41145&tab.scheduledorondemand=1583520458947001NJiE&utm_content=201705046&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-164683799#/session/1634832058529001pf9B

On February 23-24, the “Cancer Survivorship – AI for Well-being” (CS_AIW) Cluster will hold its 4th Meeting of Minds, the first to be open to the public, as patients and survivors will be part of the audience. In fact, the event will revolve around the question “How can new technologies better support patients?“.

More information: https://www.h2020-faith.eu/2022/01/new-technology-in-cancer-care-cs_aiw-cluster-mom-4/

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/251100707977

MENHIR coordinator Zoraida Callejas will participate in a roundtable about natural language processing in international projects organized by the DiverTLes community (Diversity in Language Technologies in Spain).

More info: https://gplsi.dlsi.ua.es/pln/node/550

In Spanish:

La comunidad DiverTLes: Diversidad en Tecnologías del Lenguaje en España, iniciativa dentro del marco de la red temática de excelencia PLNnet, se complace en presentar la Mesa redonda “PLN en proyectos internacionales” que se celebrará virtualmente el próximo 18 de enero a las 17.30 horas.

En esta ocasión contaremos con 3 ponentes (Zoraida Calleja, Elena González y Elena Lloret) que actualmente se encuentran implicadas en interesantes proyectos internacionales en los que las tecnologías del lenguaje juegan un papel importante. Las ponentes nos presentarán sus proyectos y podremos comentar diferentes aspectos. En esta ocasión la mesa será moderada por Encarna Segarra, profesora e investigadora en PLN de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Cada una de las ponentes expondrá su trabajo durante 5-7 minutos para posteriormente establecer un debate entre los asistentes que podrán plantear preguntas, dudas o apreciaciones. El tiempo estimado para todo el evento será de una hora en total.

Para asistir al evento gratuito hace falta inscripción a través de este formulario y recibiréis directamente los datos de conexión a la mesa redonda a través de Google Meet.

Following the successful ACM In-Cooperation CUI conferences in 2019 and 2020, CUI 2021 will be a hybrid conference with sessions online and in person in Bilbao, Spain. The conference will run from 27–29 July 2021.

Topics relevant to the conference include, but are not limited to:

• voice user experience
• speech interfaces
• speech interface theory development
• conversational interaction through technology
• text-based conversational interfaces
• chatbots
• speech synthesis
• speech recognition
• dialogue management
• conversational interface design insights
• conversational search
• methods for conversational user interface development and evaluation
• multimodal interaction involving speech, text or other language based interfaces

More information: https://www.conversationaluserinterfaces.org/2021/

Involvement of MENHIR participants:

• General co-chair: María Inés Torres
• Co-assistant to the general chairs: Raquel Justo
• Programme Committee: Zoraida Callejas, Anna Esposito, Raquel Justo, María Inés Torres

THE EUROPEAN CHATBOT & CONVERSATIONAL AI SUMMIT
IBEROAMERICAN EDITION

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MENHIR participants Michael McTear (Ulster University), David Griol (University of Granada) and Zoraida Callejas (University of Granada) will speak at the European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit- IberoAmerican Edition, a two days virtual conference and exhibition designed to host industry executives, and adopters of Conversational AI, Chatbots, speech or voice technology, UX design , NLP & Virtual Assistant . The summit will reflect the latest tendencies and recent application changes in the Conversational AI space in the Iberoamerican market.

#EUfunded #H2020 research projects @H2020_Faith, @MenhirH2020 and @OncoRelief come together in a virtual joint workshop to gather feedback on their #usercentric#healthcare solutions in support of people suffering from poor #MentalHealth. Follow us for updates

e-Coaches are promising intelligent systems that aims at supporting human everyday life, dispatching advices through different interfaces, such as apps, conversational interfaces and augmented reality interfaces. This workshop aims at exploring how e-coaches might benefit from spatially and time-multiplexed interfaces and from different communication modalities (e.g., text, visual, audio, etc.) according to the context of the interaction.

This workshop is co-organized by several EU consortia who are currently developing e-coaches in the context of the H2020 programme. Please check the Organizers page for the full list.

For further details on how to participate please read the Call for Papers. We invite researchers interested to share their ideas and findings in this field to submit a paper by August 31, 2020 on EasyChair. An extension is possible upon request by email.

The workshop is held in conjunction with the 22^nd ACM Conference on Multimodal Interaction scheduled for 25-29 October 2020 in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Due to COVID-19 the conference and this workshop might be held remotely.

More info: https://multimodal-ecoches.nestore-coach.eu/home

https://www.springer.com/journal/10044/updates/17569830

Recent advances in technology have boosted the development and release of active assistive living devices, based on wearable and/or non-obtrusive visual and multi-modal signals for e-health and welfare support. These solutions are seamlessly integrated in the environment, such as sensor-based systems installed in elderly people’s homes for ambient monitoring and intelligent visual warning.

In addition, research on ubiquitous computing has favored the implementation of more user-centered applications such as virtual tutoring, coaching agents, physical rehabilitation and psychological therapy systems. To allow these systems to provide features that satisfy the user’s requirements, expectations, and acceptance, the tendency is now shifting towards the conception of empathic solutions, tailored to personalized user needs. The new assistive systems must be able to understand user’s behaviors, mood and intentions, and react to them accordingly in real time, as well as detect timely changes in behaviors and health states. Furthermore, such systems are expected to infer the user’s traits, attitudes and psychological profile to deliver a more personalized user-machine interaction. These solutions require advanced computer vision and machine learning techniques, such as facial expression analysis, gaze and pose estimation, and gesture recognition, in addition to behavioral and psychological theories for modeling individual’s profiles. While these tasks are currently obtaining outstanding performances in controlled and prototypical environments (e.g., detection of facial expressions of emotion on static faces), the challenge falls on their integration and application in naturalistic scenarios, where extensive sources of variability (pose, age, behaviors, moods, illumination conditions, dynamic speaking emotional faces, among others) affect the processing of the detected signals.

The Computer Vision and Machine Learning for Healthcare Applications special issue aims to collect latest approaches and findings, as well as to discuss the current challenges of machine learning and computer vision based e-health and welfare applications. The focus is on the employment of single or multi-modal face, gesture and pose analysis. We expect this special issue to increase the visibility and importance of this area, and contribute, in the short term, in pushing the state of the art in the automatic analysis of human behaviors for health and wellbeing applications.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Multi-modal integration
• Psychological profiling from (audio)-visual and/or multi-modal data
• Approaches based on psychology behavioral models
• Mobile-based and human-computer interaction applications
• User-understanding in human-computer interaction
• Human behavior analysis for health and well-being support
• Assistive technologies for supporting vulnerable people
• Virtual avatars and coaching
• Physical and psychological therapy systems
• Assistive care
• User acceptance of empathic assistive systems
• Real-time applications
• Datasets

Important dates 

Paper submission deadline: extended to 14 September 2020 (final deadline)
Acceptance notification: 30th November 2020.
Tentative publication date: January 2021

Guest Editors
Sergio Escalera, Computer Vision Center (UAB) and Universitat de Barcelona, sergio@maia.ub.es
Cristina Palmero, Universitat de Barcelona and Computer Vision Center (UAB), crpalmec7@alumnes.ub.edu
Maria Inés Torres, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and SPIN RG, manes.torres@ehu.es
Anna Esposito, Behaving Cognitive System Lab, Department of Psychology, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” and International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS), Italy, iiass.annaesp@tin.it
Alexa Moseguí Saladié, Universitat de Barcelona and Computer Vision Center (UAB), amosegui@cvc.uab.es

Advisory Editors
Bjorn W. Schuller, http://www.schuller.one/, schuller@tum.de
Jeffrey Cohn, http://www.jeffcohn.net/, jeffcohn@pitt.edu

CUI 2020, organized by MENHIR’s partner UPV/EHU

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23, 24 July 2020, Bilbao (Spain)

Based on a successful inaugural ACM In Co-Operation conference in 2019, CUI 2020 aims to further develop a collaborative community around human-computer interaction issues in speech and language technology, with specific interest in theory based and applied scientific issues in the field of speech and text based conversational user interfaces. CUI 2020 looks to bring together relevant communities (e.g. ISCA, ACM SIGCHI, CogSci) to publish, disseminate and showcase high quality cutting edge research related to the field, promote insight and debate in this interesting and important discipline within language interfaces.

Topics relevant to the conference include, but are not limited to:

• voice user experience
• speech interfaces
• speech interface theory development
• conversational interaction through technology
• text-based conversational interfaces
• chatbots
• speech synthesis
• speech recognition
• dialogue management
• conversational interface design insights
• conversational search
• methods for conversational user interface development and evaluation
• multimodal interaction involving speech, text or other language based interfaces

MENHIR is involved in the organization of the special session: BEhavINg coGnitive Systems: Believable, Autonomous, Adaptive, Context Aware (BEINGS) Track at the 1st IEEE International Conference on Human-Machine Systems, which will be held in Rome from 6th to 8th April 2020.

Chairs:

Anna Esposito, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy.
Maria Inés Torres, Universidad País Vasco UPV/EHU, Spain
Zoraida Callejas Carrión, Universidad de Granada, Spain
Antonietta M. Esposito, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sez. di Napoli, Osservatorio Vesuviano, Italy.
Gennaro Cordasco, Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Italy
Sergio Escalera, Universitat de Barcelona and Computer Vision Center, Spain
Carl Vogel, Trinity College Dublin, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Ireland

Description:
The integration of cognitive theories, knowledge representation models and algorithms in a computational framework will enable rich models of human-machine interaction, and the development of novel machine learning techniques for the analysis of socially situated multimodal human communication streams. The successful analysis, modelling, and understanding of context effects on social interactions will be of high relevance for ICT applications where human-machine communication is particularly emphasized.
In order to enable the development of computational paradigms for implementing  socially believable, emotionally adaptive, and  context-aware systems (BEINGS) able to enhance quality of life in society, expertise in different yet complementary scientific fields must be accounted for. A holistic scientific approach, cross-cultural collaborations and exchanges are required. To this aim, this track is promoting contributions across a spectrum of disciplines reporting on  experimental data , theories, and mathematical models of dynamics of signal exchanges (in terms of shared meanings, emotional states, cultural differences, and cognitive processes of cooperation, and decision making). The ultimate goal is to equip machines with human level automaton intelligence.

Topics:
The topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cross-cultural processing of social signals
• Linguistic and social interactional exchanges
• Social Robotics: analysis and applications
• Human behaviour: Analysis and understanding
• Linguistic sentiment analysis
• Changes in sentiment expressions
• Cognitive Economy
• Group behaviour, group cognition and cultural specificity
• Influence of context on perception, memory and decision making
• Cognitive systems for multimodal signal analysis
• Nonlinear processing of audio-video social signals
• Multimodal social signal processing
• New datasets and forms of data that can push the research in the field
• Predictive bias analysis
• Adaptation and adaptive algorithms
• Emotions: analyses, detection, recognition
• Assistive technologies and user’s acceptance
• Age, gender, and personality traits’ effects

Important Dates