Call for Papers

Deadline: November 6 EXTENDED: November 15, 2010

Call for Papers in PDF

About SBP

This year’s SBP conference is the result of merging two successful international conferences on closely related subjects:
  1. the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Prediction (SBP)
  2. the International Conference on Computational Cultural Dynamics (ICCCD)
The combined conference retains the acronym SBP, with “Behavioral” replaced by “Behavioral-Cultural”. Social computing harnesses the power of computational methods to study social behavior and social context. Behavioral-cultural modeling refers to representing behavior and culture in the abstract, and is a convenient and powerful way to conduct virtual experiments and scenario planning. Both social computing and behavioral-cultural modeling are techniques designed to achieve a better understanding of complex behaviors, patterns, and associated outcomes of interest. Moreover, these approaches are inherently interdisciplinary; subsystems and system components exist at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., “cells to societies”) and cross disparate disciplines.

Conference Offerings and Opportunities

SBP11 is a highly interdisciplinary conference offering a rare and exciting opportunity for behavioral and social science researchers to come together with computational and computer scientists and other related disciplines in order to:

  1. Gain fundamental working knowledge in a discipline outside one's own through half-day pre-conference tutorials. (More information will be posted to the conference website as it becomes available)
  2. Showcase SBP research at paper and poster sessions.
  3. Meet people in complementary disciplines through deliberate exercises aimed at exploring potential research partnerships during the post-conference half day workshop.

Because this conference is being held in the Washington, D.C. area there will be a unique opportunity to meet with program staff across a variety of federal agencies including: Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Office of Naval Research (ONR), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

This conference is emphatically interdisciplinary and provides a platform for researchers, practitioners, program staff from federal agencies and graduate students in disciplines such as sociology, behavioral science, psychology, cultural study, health sciences, economics, computer science, engineering, information systems, and operations research to convene in one place. Attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding of social and behavioral computing and evaluation as they inform critical decision and policy making. The program will include invited speakers from government, industry, and academia, as well as research presentations and discussions.

Call for Papers and Posters

Papers or posters are solicited on research issues, theories, and applications. Topics of interests include, but are not limited to,

  1. Military and security applications of SBP
    1. Group formation and evolution in the political context
    2. Technology and flash crowds
    3. Networks and political influence
    4. Information diffusion
    5. Group representation and profiling
  2. Health applications of SBP
    1. Social network analysis to understand health behavior
    2. Modeling of health policy and decision making
    3. Modeling of behavioral aspects of infectious disease spread
    4. Intervention design and modeling for behavioral health
  3. Basic research on sociocultural and behavioral processes using SBP
    1. Group interaction and collaboration
    2. Group formation and evolution
    3. Group representation and profiling
    4. Cultural patterns and representation
    5. Social conventions and social contexts
    6. Influence process and recognition
    7. Public opinion representation
    8. Viral marketing and information diffusion
    9. Psycho-cultural situation awareness
  4. Methodological issues in SBP
    1. Verification and validation
    2. Sensitivity analysis
    3. Matching technique or method to research questions
    4. Metrics and evaluation
    5. Methodological innovation
    6. Model federation and integration
    7. Limitations of and barriers to SBP
    8. Research gaps and opportunities

Important Dates

Paper/full text poster Due: November 6 Extended: November 15, 2010
Notification of acceptance: December 6, 2010
Camera-Ready due: December 20, 2010

Format and Submission

SBP11 Conference Proceedings will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LCNS) by Springer. The papers must be in English and MUST be formatted according to the Springer-Verlag LNCS/LNAI guidelines. Sample LaTeX2e and WORD files are available from Springer. Full text for both oral presentations and posters should be submitted electronically before the deadline. The maximum length of papers is 8 pages and should be submitted in PDF format via the submission site – EasyChair. For any questions and inquiries, please send to sbp11@easychair.org.

Pre-Conference Tutorial Sessions

Four half-day sessions will be offered: two concurrent sessions in the morning and two concurrent sessions in the afternoon on the day before the full conference. Sessions will be designed to meet the needs of one of two distinct groups. One group is comprised of attendees who have backgrounds in computational science; computer science, engineering, and other mathematically oriented disciplines. The purpose of tutorials aimed at this group is for attendees to become familiar with the behavioral and social science concepts including terminology, theories, and traditional approaches to problem solving.
Other tutorial sessions will be designed for behavioral and social scientists and others (e.g. those with medical backgrounds or training in public health) who may have limited formal education in the computational sciences. Attendees will gain an understanding of terminology, theories, and general approaches employed by computationally based fields, especially with respect to modeling approaches.
The purpose of these tutorial sessions is to give each group of related disciplines a basic working knowledge in the complementary set of disciplines in order to pave the way for better communication across disparate disciplines and to enhance the conference experience for all attendees. More details regarding the preconference tutorial sessions, including instructors, course content, and registration information will be posted to the conference website as soon as this information becomes available at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2011/index.html. Note that the plans for the tutorial sessions are in progress and are subject to change.

Cross-Fertilization Roundtables

The SBP11 Cross-fertilization Roundtable session will be held in the afternoon of the first day of the technical portion of the conference. The purpose of the cross-fertilization roundtables is to help participants become better acquainted with people outside of their discipline and with whom they might consider partnering on a future SBP project. To accomplish this goal, this workshop will feature 3-4 sessions, each lasting up to 30 minutes. During each session, a number of roundtables will run concurrently. Each roundtable will focus on a different topic (although should demand warrant, there may be duplication of some topics across roundtables). Approximately 8-10 participants will sit at each table. Conference organizers will assign participants to roundtables based on their interests (to be indicated on the tutorial registration form) and will ensure that the composition of each roundtable offers opportunities for behavioral and social scientist to meet systems scientists and vice versa. Thus, by the end of the workshop period, each participant will have had an opportunity to converse with a variety people from complementary disciplines and may have a feel for selected people they might like to collaborate with. It is the intent of the conference organizers that this workshop will spawn the formation of numerous interdisciplinary investigative teams, and that those teams will collaborate on grant applications to sponsoring funding agencies. More details regarding the preconference tutorial sessions, including instructors, course content, and registration information will be posted to the conference website as soon as this information becomes available at http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/conferences/sbp2011/index.html. Note that the plans for the post conference workshop are in progress and are subject to change.