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Submissions are solicited for the Twenty-Third Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in all aspects of neural and statistical information processing and computation. The conference is a highly selective, single track meeting that includes invited talks as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. Submissions by authors who are new to NIPS are encouraged. Preceding the main conference will be one day of tutorials (December 7), and following will be two days of workshops at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort (December 11-12).

Deadline for Paper Submissions: Friday June 5, 2009, 23:59 Universal Time (4:59pm Pacific Daylight Time). Submit Here

Technical Areas: Papers are solicited in all areas of neural information processing and statistical learning, including, but not limited to:

  • Algorithms and Architectures: statistical learning algorithms, kernel methods, graphical models, Gaussian processes, neural networks, dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, model selection, combinatorial optimization, relational and structured learning.
  • Applications: innovative applications or fielded systems that use machine learning, including systems for time series prediction, bioinformatics, systems biology, text/web analysis, multimedia processing, and robotics.
  • Brain Imaging: neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, EEG (electroencephalogram), ERP (event related potentials), MEG (magnetoencephalogram), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), brain mapping, brain segmentation, brain computer interfaces.
  • Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: theoretical, computational, or experimental studies of perception, psychophysics, human or animal learning, memory, reasoning, problem solving, natural language processing, and neuropsychology.
  • Control and Reinforcement Learning: decision and control, exploration, planning, navigation, Markov decision processes, game playing, multi-agent coordination, computational models of classical and operant conditioning.
  • Hardware Technologies: analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering, computational sensors and actuators, microrobotics, bioMEMS, neural prostheses, photonics, molecular and quantum computing.
  • Learning Theory: generalization, regularization and model selection, Bayesian learning, spaces of functions and kernels, statistical physics of learning, online learning and competitive analysis, hardness of learning and approximations, statistical theory, large deviations and asymptotic analysis, information theory.
  • Neuroscience: theoretical and experimental studies of processing and transmission of information in biological neurons and networks, including spike train generation, synaptic modulation, plasticity and adaptation.
  • Speech and Signal Processing: recognition, coding, synthesis, denoising, segmentation, source separation, auditory perception, psychoacoustics, dynamical systems, recurrent networks, language models, dynamic and temporal models.
  • Visual Processing: biological and machine vision, image processing and coding, segmentation, object detection and recognition, motion detection and tracking, visual psychophysics, visual scene analysis and interpretation.
  • Papers that balance new algorithmic contributions with a more applied focus, with substantial evaluation on real-world problems, are particularly encouraged.


Evaluation Criteria: Submissions will be refereed on the basis of technical quality, novelty, potential impact, and clarity.

Submission Instructions: All submissions will be made electronically, in PDF format. As in previous years, reviewing will be double-blind -- the reviewers will not know the identities of the authors. Papers are limited to eight pages, including figures and tables, in the NIPS style. However, this year an additional ninth page containing only cited references is allowed. Complete submission and formatting instructions, including style files, are available from the NIPS website, http://nips.cc. Electronic submissions will be accepted until June 5, 2009, 23:59 Universal Time (4:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time). Note that this year, final papers will be due in advance of the conference.

Demonstrations: There is a separate Demonstration track at NIPS. Authors wishing to submit to the Demonstration track should consult the Call for Demonstrations.

Policy on Dual Submissions: Submissions that are substantially similar to papers that have been previously published or accepted for publication, in either a journal or conference proceedings, are not acceptable. During the NIPS review period, a submitted paper may not be under review in parallel for another conference with a published Proceedings; the NIPS review period begins June 19 and ends September 4, 2009. Submission is permitted of a short version of a paper that has been submitted, but not yet accepted, to a journal.

Workshops: The workshops will be held at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort from December 11-12. The upcoming workshop proposal will provide details.

Program Committee

Jean-Yves Audibert (Ecole des Ponts ParisTech)
David Blei (Princeton University)
Kwabena Boahen (Stanford University)
Michael Bowling (University of Alberta)
Nicolo Cesa-Bianchi (University of Milan)
Aaron Courville (University of Montreal)
Koby Crammer (University of Pennsylvania)
Nathaniel Daw (New York University)
David Dunson (Duke University)
Paolo Frasconi (University of Florence)
Nir Friedman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Arthur Gretton (Carnegie Mellon University and Max Planck Institute)
Matthias Hein (Saarland University)
Aapo Hyvarinen (University of Helsinki)
Thorsten Joachims (Cornell University)
Mark Johnson (Brown University)
Charles Kemp (Carnegie Mellon University)
John Lafferty (Carnegie Mellon University) [co-chair]
Wee Sun Lee (National University of Singapore)
Tai Sing Lee (Carnegie Mellon University)
Jon McAuliffe (University of Pennsylvania)
Yael Niv (Princeton University)
Robert Nowak (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Pascal Poupart (University of Waterloo)
Carl Rasmussen (University of Cambridge)
Erik Sudderth (Brown University)
Ben Taskar (University of Pennsylvania)
Antonio Torralba (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Bill Triggs (Laboratoire Jean Kuntzmann, CNRS)
Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh)
Chris Williams (University of Edinburgh) [co-chair]
Andrew Zisserman (University of Oxford)