PhD scholarship available at QUT’s Information Systems School

PhD scholarships available with my colleague/co-author Prof. Jan Recker.  Contact details are below.

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PhD scholarship available at QUT’s Information Systems School

Applications are invited from suitable qualified graduates for a PhD scholarship at the Information Systems School at Queensland University of Technology as part of the “Woolworths Chair of Retail Innovation” initiative.

The term of the scholarship is three years. The scholarship provides financial support towards study and living costs.

Project Background

The PhD student will work in the Woolworths Chair for Retail Innovation initiative at the Information Systems School at Queensland University of Technology. The initiative’s objective is to conduct applied research on innovations in business, processes and technology-based systems, and the management of innovation processes in organisations. The domain of the initiative is the retail sector, especially Supermarket operations. Topics will address a variety of business, management, process, service and IT-components, and thus require holistic and multi-disciplinary approaches to research.

The project is driven by a demand to deliver innovative transformations to retail operations, processes and business models, with a focus on customer-centric value provision. At the core of this demand are the two foci of (a) exploring and exploiting innovation potential in the retail sector, and (b) creating a culture of innovation within retail organisations.

The Research Environment

QUT’s Information Systems School is currently the highest ranked IS research department in Australia based on research quality and the only IS research group that was ranked with a perfect '5-out-of-5' score in the 2010 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment. The school is also among the highest ranked IS departments in terms of publications in the top IS journals worldwide.

QUT’s Information Systems School has a global reputation for its work on Business Process Management and Process Innovation. The School has an unconditional focus on rigorous research with demonstrated practical relevance. Research from the school has appeared in premier journals such as the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the AIS, the European Journal of IS, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, and others.

To find out more, please visit http://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering/about/about-the-faculty/school-of-information-systems.

Application Criteria

The successful applicant

-  has a Master's degree in management, information systems, finance, marketing, business administration or a comparable field. He or she completed the Master’s degree with a GPA of 6 or higher (or equivalent).

-      has the ambition and capabilities to complete a high-quality empirical PhD project within 3 years.

-       has a strong research mindset, and evidence of skills in theoretical and empirical research.

-       possesses strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

-       ideally has a background and interest in the retail sector.

-       speaks and writes fluently in English.

-      likes to work in an international setting and in an applied research setting in close interaction with a key industry partner.

Application Procedure

Applicants are required to submit a letter of application for the scholarship to Jan Recker (j.recker@qut.edu.au) by 15 June 2012, briefly describing qualifications, relevant skills and areas of research interest.

Applicants will be screened and, if suitable, invited for further assessment and interviews.

The following supporting documents are required:

-       CV including a comprehensive list and details of all publications if any.

-       Certified copies of academic transcripts.

-       Copies of most important research papers or theses

-       A letter stating comprehensively how the above criteria are met by the applicant

-       2 letters of reference from academics who have taught/supervised the applicant at university.

CFP: International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI), Sept 27-28, Hangzhou China

CFP: International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI), Sept 27-28, Hangzhou China

VINCI12 will be held in Hangzhou, one of the most beautiful cities in China. And it is calling for papers.

  

VINCI conference brings together people with an interest in the confluence of technology and art/design, providing a forum for discussing topics of mutual interest and discovering new avenues for collaboration.

  

Please consider submitting and help to circulate.

If you have questions regarding the conference or the relevance of your work, please don't hesitate to contact the program chairs.

http://www.cad.zju.edu.cn/home/chenwei/VINCI2012/

Best wishes

Tony Huang

2nd CFP 1st Intl. Workshop on Theory and Applications of Process Visualization (TAProViz)

2nd CFP 1st Intl. Workshop on Theory and Applications of Process

Visualization (TAProViz),

Tallinn, Estonia – 3 September 2012

http://www.wst.univie.ac.at/topics/taproviz12/

In conjunction with the 10th International Conference on Business

Process Management BPM2012 - http://bpm2012.ut.ee/

========================

Call for Papers

========================

Visualizations can make the structure and dependencies between elements in processes accessible in order to support users who need to analyze process models and their instances.  

However, effectively visualizing processes in a user-friendly way is often a big challenge, especially for complex process models which can consist of hundreds of process components (e.g., process activities,

data flows, and resources) and thousands of running process instances in different execution states.

Many challenges remain to be addressed within the broad area of process visualization such as: scalability, human-computer interaction, cognitive aspects, applicability of different approaches, collaboration,

process evolution, run-time requirements of process instances and applications, etc.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

* Visual Metaphors in Processes

* Visual Design and Aesthetics for Processes

* Visualization of Dynamic Data in Processes

* Change Visualization for Processes

* Interface and Interaction Techniques for Process Visualization

* Visualization Techniques for Collaboration and Distributed Processes

* Visualization of Large-scale Processes

* Cognition and Perception in Process Visualization

* Evaluation and User Studies of Process Visualization

* Visual Modeling Languages

* Analysis Techniques and Visualization for Processes

* Process Visualization of Large Screens

* Mobile Process Visualization

* Visualization Tools and Systems for Processes

* Visualization Techniques for Processes

* Process Visualization and Sonification

* Virtual World Process Visualization

* Immersive Process Modeling Approaches

* 3D Process Visualization Approaches

========================

Format of the Workshop

========================

The 1/2 day workshop will comprise accepted papers and tool presentations. Papers should be submitted in advance and will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. All accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. There will be a single LNBIP volume dedicated to the proceedings of all BPM workshops. As this volume will appear after the conference, there will be informal proceedings during the workshop. At least one author for each accepted paper should register for the workshop and present the paper.

========================

Important Dates

========================

* Deadline for workshop paper submissions: 1 June 2012

* Notification of acceptance: 2 July 2012

* Camera-ready version: 30 July 2012

* Workshop: 3 September 2012

========================

Paper Submission

========================

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers for presentation in any

of the areas listed above.

Three types of submissions are possible:

1. full papers (12 pages long) reporting mature research results

2. position papers reporting research that may be in preliminary stage

that has not yet been evaluated

3. tool reports

Position papers and tool reports should be no longer than 6 pages.

Only papers in English will be accepted and must present original

research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere. Papers

should be submitted in the LNBIP format. The title page must contain a

short abstract, a classification of the topics covered, preferably using

the list of topics above, and an indication of the submission category

(regular paper/position paper/tool report).

All accepted workshop papers will be published by Springer as a

post-workshop proceedings volume in the series Lecture Notes in Business

Information Processing (LNBIP). Hard copies of these proceedings will be

shipped to all registered participants approximately four months after

the workshops, while preliminary proceedings will be distributed during

the workshop.

Submitted papers will be evaluated, in a double blind manner, on the

basis of significance, originality, technical quality, and exposition.

Papers should clearly establish their research contribution and the

relation to the theory and application of process visualization.

========================

Registration

========================

Accepted papers imply that at least one of the authors will register for

BPM2012 and present the paper at the TAProViz workshop.

Further workshop information is available from the website:

http://www.wst.univie.ac.at/topics/taproviz12/

Hope to see you at TAProViz'12!

Thanks and best regards,

Ross Brown

Simone Kriglstein

Stefanie Rinderle-Ma

TAProViz Organising Committee

Paper: Virtual worlds as a model-view approach to the communication of business processes models

A paper by my PhD student Hanwen Guo has just been accepted for the CAiSE 2012 Forum (old ERA A). The paper can be found here.

Well done Hanwen!

Title: Virtual worlds as a model-view approach to the communication of business processes models.

Abstract: The improvement and optimization of business processes is one of the top priorities in an organization. Although process analysis methods are mature today, business analysts and stakeholders are still hampered by communication issues. That is, analysts cannot effectively obtain accurate business requirements from stakeholders, and stakeholders are often confused about analytic results offered by analysts. We argue that using a virtual world to model a business process can benefit communication activities. We believe that virtual worlds can be used as an efficient model-view approach, increasing the cognition of business requirements and analytic results, as well as the possibility of business plan validation. A healthcare case study is provided as an approach instance, illustrating how intuitive such an approach can be. As an exploration paper, we believe that this promising research can encourage people to investigate more research topics in the interdisciplinary area of information system, visualization and multi-user virtual worlds.

Paper: Design and implementation of a virtual world training simulation of ICU first hour handover processes

Just had a journal paper accepted with the Australian Critical Care Journal. This is part of our collaboration with Professor Ian Baldwin at Austin Health in Melbourne, Australia, and the Smart Services CRC. This system simulates nurse to nurse ICU shift handover processes, and is being used at Austin Health as a teaching tool for postgraduate nurses. Eprint of journal paper is here.

Abstract

Nursing training for an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a resource intensive process. High demands are made on staff, students and physical resources. Interactive, 3D computer simulations, known as virtual worlds, are increasingly being used to supplement training regimes in the health sciences; especially in areas such as complex hospital ward processes. Such worlds have been found to be very useful in maximising the utilisation of training resources. Our aim is to design and develop a novel virtual world application for teaching and training Intensive Care nurses in the approach and method for shift handover, to provide an independent, but rigorous approach to teaching these important skills. In this paper we present a virtual world simulator for students to practice key steps in handing over the 24/7 care requirements of intensive care patients during the commencing first hour of a shift. We describe the modelling process to provide a convincing interactive simulation of the handover steps involved. The virtual world provides a practice tool for students to test their analytical skills with scenarios previously provided by simple physical simulations, and live on the job training. Additional educational benefits include facilitation of remote learning, high flexibility in study hours and the automatic recording of a reviewable log from the session. To the best of our knowledge, we believe this is a novel and original application of virtual worlds to an ICU handover process. The major outcome of the work was a virtual world environment for training nurses in the shift handover process, designed and developed for use by postgraduate nurses in training.

Ross

CFP: PRIMA 2012 Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

PRIMA 2012

The 15th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent Systems

Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

September 3-7, 2012

http://www.prima2012.org

Co-located with PRICAI 2012, DC 2012 and PKAW 2012

Important Dates

Workshop proposals

December 15, 2011

Papers/Tutorial proposals

March 30, 2012

Author notification

May 28, 2012

Camera-ready papers

June 15, 2012

Workshops and Tutorials

September 3-4, 2012

Conference

September 5-7, 2012

Agent computing is an exciting, transformational approach to developing computer systems that can rapidly and reliably solve real-world problems that usually demand human knowledge and expertise. The value, power and flexibility of agent and multi-agent systems has been demonstrated in application areas such as logistics, manufacturing, simulation, robotics, decision support, entertainment, and especially in online market environments. As one of the largest and fastest growing research fields of Computer Science, agent research today includes a wealth of topics. The PRIMA 2012 Program Committee invites submissions of original, unpublished, theoretical and applied work on any such topic, and encourages reports on the development of prototype and deployed agent systems, and of experiments that demonstrate novel agent system capabilities.

Submission. PRIMA 2012 proceedings will be published by Springer as a volume in the LNAI series and proceedings will be available at the conference. Submitted papers should be 12–15 pages in Springer LNCS format and must be in a form suitable for "double-blind" review. Each submission will be subject to peer review in two rounds coordinated by an international Senior Program Committee, and authors will be able to provide a short "rebuttal" of the reviews before final decisions are made. A broad range of agent topics are of interest, but all papers should clearly identify how their scientific or technical contributions advance the state-of-the-art of agent computing practice or have a strong potential to do so Submitted papers should not be under review or submitted for publication elsewhere during the review period.

Springer LNCS Author Instructions: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html

Submission: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=prima2012

Enquiries: prima2012-pc-chairs@cse.unsw.edu.au

Organization

General Chairs

Sandip Sen (University of Tulsa, USA)

Toshiharu Suguwara (Waseda University, Japan)

Local Arrangements Chairs

Dickson Lukose (MIMOS Berhad, Malaysia)

Cheah Wai Shiang (Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia)

Sponsorship Chairs

Longbing Cao (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

Matthias Klusch (DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany)

Sarvapali Ramchurn (University of Southampton, UK)

Jie Zhang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Tutorial Chair

Edith Elkind (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Workshop Chairs

Sherief Abdallah (British University in Dubai, UAE and

University of Edinburgh, UK)

Hiromitsu Hattori (Kyoto University, Japan)

Program Chairs

Iyad Rahwan (Masdar Institute, UAE and MIT, USA)

Wayne Wobcke (University of New South Wales, Australia)

Senior Program Commitee

Stephen Cranefield (University of Otago, New Zealand)

Frank Dignum (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)

Guido Governatori (NICTA, Australia)

Katsutoshi Hirayama (Kobe University, Japan)

Kate Larson (University of Waterloo, Canada)

Rey-Long Liu (Tzu Chi University, Taiwan)

Alessio Lomuscio (Imperial College London, UK)

Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)

Jeremy Pitt (Imperial College London, UK)

David Pynadath (University of Southern California, USA)

Alex Rogers (University of Southampton, UK)

Paolo Torroni (University of Bologna, Italy)

Publicity Chairs

Jacob Crandall (Masdar Institute, UAE and MIT, USA)

Koen Hindriks (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

Topics

Foundations of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Logics of Agency

Logics of Multi-Agent Systems

Normative Systems

Computational Game Theory

Uncertainty in Agent Systems

Agent and Multi-Agent Learning

Agent and Multi-Agent System Architectures

Agent Programming Languages and Platforms

Multi-Agent System Languages and Platforms

BDI Architectures and Extensions

Normative Multi-Agent Systems

Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

AOSE Methodologies

Tools for Agent and Multi-Agent System Development

Formal Specification and Verification

Deployed System Case Studies

Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation

Simulation Languages and Platforms

Artificial Societies

Virtual Environments

Workflow Simulation

Emergent Behaviour

Modelling System Dynamics

Application Case Studies

Collaboration/Coordination/Communication

Agent Communication Languages and Protocols

Distributed Problem Solving

Teamwork Models

Coalition Formation

Argumentation, Negotiation, Bargaining

Auctions and Mechanism Design

Trust and Reputation

Computational Voting Theory

Hybrid Technologies

Agents in Planning

Agent-Based Scheduling

Agent-Based Optimization

Distributed Constraint Satisfaction

Agents and Data Mining

Semantic Web Agents

Agents and Grid Computing

Agents and Service Oriented Computing

Agents and Pervasive Computing

Robotics and Multi-Robot Systems

Application Domains

Healthcare

Transport/Logistics

Emergency/Disaster Management

Energy/Utility Management

Sustainability/Resource Management

Games/Entertainment

eBusiness/eCommerce/eGovernment

eResearch/eLearning

Security/Surveillance

Smart Cities

Applications

Adaptive Personal Assistants

Embodied Conversational Agents

Virtual Characters

Multi-Modal User Interfaces

Autonomous Systems

Mobile Agents

Human-Robot Interaction

Social Recommender Systems

CFP: Intl. Workshop on Theory and Applications of Process Visualization

1st Intl. Workshop on Theory and Applications of Process Visualization

Visualizations can make the structure and dependencies between elements in processes accessible in order to support users who need to analyze process models and their instances.

However, effectively visualizing processes in a user-friendly way is often a big challenge, especially for complex process models which can consist of hundreds of process components (e.g., process activities, data flows, and resources) and thousands of running process instances in different execution states.

Many challenges remain to be addressed within the broad area of process visualization such as: scalability, human-computer interaction, cognitive aspects, applicability of different approaches, collaboration, process evolution, run-time requirements of process instances and applications, etc.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Visual Metaphors in Processes
• Visual Design and Aesthetics for Processes
• Visualization of Dynamic Data in Processes
• Change Visualization for Processes
• Interface and Interaction Techniques for Process Visualization
• Visualization Techniques for Collaboration and Distributed Processes
• Visualization of Large-scale Processes
• Cognition and Perception in Process Visualization
• Evaluation and User Studies of Process Visualization
• Visual Modeling Languages
• Analysis Techniques and Visualization for Processes
• Process Visualization of Large Screens
• Mobile Process Visualization
• Visualization Tools and Systems for Processes
• Visualization Techniques for Processes
• Process Visualization and Sonification
• Virtual World Process Visualization
• Immersive Process Modeling Approaches
• 3D Process Visualization Approaches

Format of the Workshop

The ½ day workshop will comprise accepted papers and tool presentations. Papers should be submitted in advance and will be reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. All accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series. There will be a single LNBIP volume dedicated to the proceedings of all BPM workshops. As this volume will appear after the conference, there will be informal proceedings during the workshop. At least one author for each accepted paper should register for the workshop and present the paper.

Important Dates

• Deadline for workshop paper submissions: 1 June 2012
• Notification of acceptance: 2 July 2012
• Camera-ready version: 30 July 2012
• Workshop: 3 September 2012

Paper Submission

Prospective authors are invited to submit papers for presentation in any of the areas listed above.

Three types of submissions are possible:

1. full papers (12 pages long) reporting mature research results
2. position papers reporting research that may be in preliminary stage that has not yet been evaluated
3. tool reports

Position papers and tool reports should be no longer than 6 pages.

Only papers in English will be accepted and must present original research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere. Papers should be submitted in the LNBIP format. The title page must contain a short abstract, a classification of the topics covered, preferably using the list of topics above, and an indication of the submission category (regular paper/position paper/tool report).

All accepted workshop papers will be published by Springer as a post-workshop proceedings volume in the series Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP). Hard copies of these proceedings will be shipped to all registered participants approximately four months after the workshops, while preliminary proceedings will be distributed during the workshop.

Submitted papers will be evaluated, in a double blind manner, on the basis of significance, originality, technical quality, and exposition. Papers should clearly establish their research contribution and the relation to the theory and application of process visualization.

Registration

Accepted papers imply that at least one of the authors will register for the BPM2012 and present the paper at the TAProViz workshop.

Further workshop information is available from the website.

Ross