2024 Fall Symposium Series

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 

The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence is pleased to present the 2024 Fall Symposium Series, to be held Thursday-Saturday, November 7-9 at Westin Arlington Gateway, Arlington, Virginia. The Fall Symposium Series is an annual set of meetings run in parallel at a common site. It is designed to bring colleagues together in an intimate forum while at the same time providing a significant gathering point for the AI community. The two and one-half day format of the series allows participants to devote considerably more time to feedback and discussion than typical one-day workshops. It is an ideal venue for bringing together new communities in emerging fields.

Symposia generally range from 40–75 participants each. Participation was open to active participants as well as other interested individuals on a first-come, first-served basis. Each participant was expected to attend a single symposium. 

The program included the following seven symposia: 

• AI Trustworthiness and Risk Assessment for Challenging Contexts (ATRACC)
• Artificial Intelligence for Aging in Place
• Integrated Approaches to Computational Scientific Discovery
• Large Language Models for Knowledge Graph and Ontology Engineering (LLMs for KG and OE)
• Machine Intelligence for Equitable Global Health (MI4EGH)
• Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development
• Using AI to Build Secure and Resilient Agricultural Systems: Leveraging AI to mitigate Cyber, Climatic and Economic Threats in Food, Agricultural, and Water (FAW) Systems.

AAAI Code of Conduct for Events and Conferences 

All persons, organizations and entities that attend AAAI conferences and events are subject to the standards of conduct set forth on the AAAI Code of Conduct for Events and Conferences. 

Registration and General Information 

Registration Fees

The conference registration fee includes admission to one symposium, access to the electronic proceedings, coffee breaks, and the opening reception.

Refund Requests

The deadline for refund requests is October 4, 2024. All refund requests must be made in writing to fssreg@aaai.org. A $50.00 processing fee will be assessed for all refunds.

Registration Fee Schedule

AAAI Silver Registration

(Includes AAAI membership, plus the conference)

Visa Information 

Letters of invitation can be requested by accepted FSS-24 authors or registrants with a completed registration with payment. You can access the visa letter form via the link in your registration confirmation email.

Hotel Information 

For your convenience, AAAI has reserved a block of rooms at the Westin Arlington Gateway. The Westin Arlington Gateway is located in the Ballston area of Arlington. It is a short walk from the Ballston Metro Station, which allows guests to easily explore Arlington, downtown Washington, DC, Alexandria, or Georgetown. Reagan National Airport is easily accessible via the Washington Metro rapid transit.

The conference room rate per night is $219.00 (King/Double).  

Rates do not include applicable state and local taxes (approximately 13.25%), or hotel fees in effect at the time of the meeting. Symposium attendees must contact the Westin Arlington Gateway directly. Please request the group rate for the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) when reserving your room. The cut-off date for reservations is October 17, 2024 at 5:00 PM ET, local time at the hotel. Reservations after this date will be accepted based on availability at the hotel’s prevailing rate. All reservations must be secured by one night’s deposit per room, via credit card. Reservations may be cancelled with no penalty up to 5:00 pm, 72 hours prior to the date of arrival. After that time, a penalty of one night’s room and tax will be incurred. Upon check-in, date of departure must be confirmed. Early departure will result in a fee equal to one night’s guest room rate.  

Westin Arlington Gateway 
801 North Glebe Road,
Arlington, Virginia 22203 USA 

Transportation to the Hotel 

For complete transportation information and directions, please see 
https://www.marriott.com/hotels/maps/travel/wasag-the-westin-arlington-gateway/ and scroll down to “Getting Here.” 
Hotel Parking: On-site parking fee is 40 USD daily 

Disclaimer 
In offering the Westin Arlington Gateway (hereinafter referred to as “Supplier”), and all other service providers for the AAAI Fall Symposium Series, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence acts only in the capacity of agent for the Supplier, which is the provider of hotel rooms and transportation. Because the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence has no control over the personnel, equipment or operations of providers of accommodations or other services included as part of the Symposium program, AAAI assumes no responsibility for and will not be liable for any personal delay, inconveniences or other damage suffered by symposium participants which may arise by reason of (1) any wrongful or negligent acts or omissions on the part of any Supplier or its employees, (2) any defect in or failure of any vehicle, equipment or instrumentality owned, operated or otherwise used by any Supplier, or (3) any wrongful or negligent acts or omissions on the part of any other party not under the control, direct or otherwise, of AAAI. 

Submission Requirements 

Interested individuals should submit a paper or abstract by the deadline listed below, unless otherwise indicated by the symposium organizers on their supplemental website. Please submit your submissions directly to the individual symposium according to their directions. Do not mail submissions to AAAI. See the appropriate section in each symposium description for specific submission requirements. 

Submission Site 

Please be sure to select the appropriate symposium when submitting your work. Please see the individual symposia for submission site details. 

Important Dates 

• By July 5:  AAAI opens registration for Fall Symposium Series 
• August 2: (unless otherwise noted): Papers due to organizers 
• August 16: (unless otherwise noted): Organizers send notifications to authors 
• August 30: (recommended): Spring Symposium Series final papers due to organizers 
• October 4: Deadline for Registration Refund Requests – Late Registration Rate Begins

Onsite Registration Schedule 

Upon arrival please check in at the registration area for your badge. AAAI will release the exact location of registration closer to the event.

Registration hours will be: 

General Event Schedule 
Each Symposium schedule may vary slightly

Additional Information: 

General inquiries regarding the symposium series should be directed to AAAI at fssreg@aaai.org. 

AI Trustworthiness and Risk Assessment for Challenging Contexts (ATRACC)

AI systems, including those built on large language and foundational/multi-modal models, have proven their value in all aspects of human society, rapidly transforming traditional robotics and computational systems into intelligent systems with emergent, and often unanticipated, beneficial behaviors. However, the rapid embrace of AI-based critical systems introduces new dimensions of errors that induce increased levels of risk, limiting trustworthiness. The design of AI-based critical systems requires proving their trustworthiness. Thus, AI-based critical systems must be assessed across many dimensions by different parties (researchers, developers, regulators, customers, insurance companies, end-users, etc.) for different reasons. Assessment of trustworthiness should be made at both, the full system level and at the level of individual AI components. At the theoretical and foundational level, such methods must go beyond explainability to deliver uncertainty estimations and formalisms that can bound the limits of the AI, provide traceability, and quantify risk.

The focus of this symposium is on AI trustworthiness broadly and methods that help provide bounds for fairness, reproducibility, reliability, and accountability in the context of quantifying AI-system risk, spanning the entire AI lifecycle from theoretical research formulations all the way to system implementation, deployment, and operation. This symposium will bring together industry, academia, and government researchers and practitioners who are vested stakeholders in addressing these challenges in applications where a priori understanding of risk is critical.

Topics of Interest Include, but are not Limited to:

• Assessment of non-functional requirements such as explainability, accountability, and privacy as well as assessment from pilot stage to systematic evaluation and monitoring.
• Data quality, relevance, representativity, and appropriateness for the intended purpose.
• Approaches for verification and validation of AI systems.
• NeuroSymbolic methods that use data and knowledge to improve the trustworthiness of critical applications.
• Methods and approaches for enhancing reasoning in general purpose AI systems, e.g., causal reasoning techniques and outcome verification approaches.
• Mixture-Of-Experts and Multi-Agent systems with an emphasis on robustness, reliability, accountability, and emergent behaviors in risk-averse contexts.
• Evaluation of AI systems vulnerabilities and risks, including adversarial and red-teaming approaches.
• Links between performance and trustworthiness leveraged by AI sciences, system and software engineering, metrology, and Social Sciences and Humanities.
• User studies and evaluation of governance mechanisms in organizations and communities.

Symposium Details:

• Duration: 2 1/2 days
• Features: Keynote and invited talks from accomplished experts in the field of Trustworthy AI, panel sessions, presentation of selected papers, student papers, and a poster session.

Submission Details:

• Full papers: Maximum 8 pages
• Poster/short/position papers: Maximum 4 pages
• Deadline for submission: August 2nd
• Notification of acceptance or rejection: August 16th
• Camera-ready papers for symposium proceedings: August 30th
  
• Submission Link: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss24

All accepted papers will be included in the AAAI Fall 2024 proceedings.

For provisional schedule, program committee, and practical information, please visit the Symposium website.

Artificial Intelligence for Aging in Place

As the world’s population ages, many older adults prefer to age in place (AiP), maintaining their independence, community ties, and quality of life while remaining in their homes. While AI-based solutions hold the promise of facilitating AiP, developing these solutions poses several challenges. These include logistical challenges and privacy concerns associated with collecting data and ground truth information in real-world environments, challenges arising from deployments and evaluations in unstructured home environments, and technology acceptance and adoption issues. Furthermore, the abilities of this population can change rapidly over short periods due to age-related physical and cognitive decline. 

To address these challenges, this symposium will bring together interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners across AI, robotics, human-machine interaction, psychology, gerontology, public policy, and healthcare to foster a community aimed at (1) sharing experiences, successes, and failures, and (2) collaboratively identifying best practices and open questions.  

Topics 

The symposium invites submissions related (but not limited) to the following topics: 

• Human-centered design approaches for developing AI technologies to support AiP. 
• Empirical, theoretical, and design-based investigations of the use of AI-based technologies for older adults. 
• Policy guidelines and best practices for effectively developing AI-based solutions for older adults. 
• Ethical and societal considerations (e.g., privacy concerns, algorithmic bias). 
• Analysis of longitudinal, multimodal, imperfect data for home-based monitoring and support for older adults. 
• AI-based systems and devices designed to provide physical, cognitive, and/or social assistance for promoting independence. 
• Methods and systems for mediating interactions with the older adult’s care and social networks (e.g., telehealth, care coordination, communication systems).

Symposium Format  

The symposium will include keynote talks, interactive panel discussions, breakout discussions, and oral and poster presentations for accepted papers.  

Submissions  

Interested participants should submit a regular paper (4 – 6 pages, excluding references) or a short paper (2 – 4 pages, excluding references) for position, review, and work-in-progress pieces. We will also consider papers that include results that have already been published or are under review (with appropriate acknowledgment). The submissions should be formatted in standard double-column AAAI Proceedings Style via the AAAI submission site. Accepted papers will be published by AAAI as part of the AAAI Fall Symposium Series. Please visit our website for information on submission links and deadlines. 

Organizing Committee 

• Nina Moorman, Co-chair, (Georgia Institute of Technology) nmoorman3@gatech.edu 
• Pragathi Praveena, Co-chair, (Carnegie Mellon University) pragathi@cmu.edu 
• Michelle Zhao (Carnegie Mellon University) mzhao2@andrew.cmu.edu 
• Victor Antony (Johns Hopkins University) vantony1@jhu.edu 
• Nadira Mahamane (Georgia Institute of Technology) nmahamane3@gatech.edu 
• Agata Rozga (Georgia Institute of Technology) agata@gatech.edu 
• Laurel Riek (University of California, San Diego) lriek@ucsd.edu 
• Reid Simmons (Carnegie Mellon University) rsimmons@andrew.cmu.edu 
• Matthew Gombolay (Georgia Institute of Technology) matthew.gombolay@cc.gatech.edu 

Symposium External URL: 

https://sites.google.com/view/ai-aip-2024/home  

Integrated Approaches to Computational Scientific Discovery

Scientific discovery has intrigued AI researchers since the 1970s, but excitement about this topic has increased, with contributors from physics, applied mathematics, and other fields joining the movement. Nevertheless, most efforts have focused on individual components of discovery and the time seems ripe to develop integrated systems. These should combine not only different forms of discovery, but also other facets of science, including creation of measuring devices, design of controlled experiments, and communication of results. The Fall Symposium on Integrated Approaches to Computational Scientific Discovery will offer a venue for reporting progress in this challenging area.

Topics

We solicit submissions on topics that include:

• Closing the loop between hypothesis generation, experimental design,
  data collection, and model revision;
• Interleaving methods that define new variables and coordinate systems
  with ones that induce numeric equations and models;
• Integrating different facets of discovery, such as forming taxonomies,
  finding qualitative laws, and inducing numeric equations;
• Combining results extracted from the literature and regularities
  found in data to aid hypothesis generation; and
• Using language models to draft scientific papers that review prior
  work area, report new results, and discuss their import.

We also welcome submissions about human-machine teams whose members collaborate to achieve new scientific insights, which raises many of the same issues as integrated discovery systems. The symposium will organize sessions around these different types of integration, not around methodological paradigms.

Rather than focusing on algorithmic details of component algorithms, submitted abstracts and presentations at the symposium should focus instead on:

• The different aspects of discovery being integrated;
• The inputs of each module and their representations;
• The outputs of each module and their representations;
• How the modules are combined into an integrated system;
• Functionalities the integrated discovery system supports;
• Any scientific results the integrated system has produced.

Structuring talks in this way should increase communication among researchers with different backgrounds and suggest principles of integration that move beyond specific paradigms.

Submissions

Authors should submit abstracts of proposed talks through the AAAI Fall Symposium EasyChair site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fss24, along with one or two
references and links to their own papers in the area. Abstracts should be a full page in 11-point font and need not follow AAAI format.

Submissions are due Friday, August 23, 2024. The organizing committee will select abstracts that report integrated approaches to discovery, with preference given to ones that address the questions listed above. It will also favor systems that move beyond inducing predictive models to generate deeper accounts related to existing scientific theory, as well as models that are stated in established scientific formalisms.

Organizing Committee

Youngsoo Choi (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, choi15@llnl.gov),
Saso Dzeroski (Jozef Stefan Institute, saso.dzeroski@ijs.si),
Ross King (Chalmers University of Technology, rossk@chalmers.se),
Pat Langley (ISLE, patrick.w.langley@gmail.com)

Contact: Pat Langley (patrick.w.langley@gmail.com)

Symposium External URL

For additional details, please see the supplementary symposium site at http://cogsys.org/symposium/discovery-2024/

Large Language Models for Knowledge Graph and Ontology Engineering

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are highly trending. The interplay between these two technologies can go both ways, but the two directions are quite different in approach. This symposium specifically focuses on how LLMs can be used as tools to augment the extant capacity for ontology and knowledge graph engineering. Knowledge Graph Engineering (KGE) and Ontology Engineering (OE – together KG/OE) challenges in particular have to do with the (to date still) high involvement of humans and human expert in the KG/OE life cycle, including creation/modeling, alignment, evolution, reusability (from both ontological commitment and accessibility perspectives). The KG/OE communities have made steady progress in the past 20 years, but only now with LLMs, key KG/OE challenges appear to become addressable at scale.  

The goal of this symposium to focus and coordinate research. We wish to create a space and foundational community for the sharing of ideas for prompt engineering, fine-tuning, neurosymbolic approaches, quality control, and human-in-the-loop methods: all with LLMs for OE/KGE. 

Topics include, but are not limited to: 

• LLMs for Knowledge Graph and Ontology Creation 
  LLMs for Ontology and Entity Mapping 
• LLMs for Knowledge Graph and Ontology Evolution 
• LLMs for Knowledge Graph access and use 
• LLMs as Natural Language Interfaces for Knowledge Graphs and Ontologies 

Format of the Symposium: 

The program will consist of presentations of accepted full papers, posters, lightning talks, keynotes, and significant time for panel and plenary discussions. 

Submission of papers: 

Full papers (for oral presentation): 8-10 pages (not counting references). 
Short papers (for poster presentation): 3-4 pages (not counting references). 
Lightning talks (for brief spotlight presentation): 1-2 pages extended abstract (not counting references).  

Submissions are to be made via the official AAAI Symposium Easychair site.  

Symposium Committee: 

Pascal Hitzler, Kansas State University, USA (hitzler@ksu.edu) 
Andrea Nuzzolese, CNR, Italy (andrea.nuzzolese@gmail.com) 
Catia Pesquita, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal (clpesquita@fc.ul.pt) 
Cogan Shimizu, Wright State University (cogan.shimizu@wright.edu) 

Symposium External URL: 

https://kastle-lab.github.io/llms-and-kg-engineering

Machine Intelligence for Equitable Global Health (MI4EGH)

We invite you to participate in the AAAI 2024 Fall Symposium on Machine Intelligence for Equitable Global Health (MI4EGH), which will be held from November 7-9 in Arlington, Virginia. MI4EGH aims to explore the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting equitable global health outcomes, addressing a broad range of challenges such as algorithmic bias, privacy concerns, trustworthiness, vulnerability of AI, governance, and ethical issues. 

The MI4EGH Symposium is centered on leveraging AI to achieve health equity worldwide. The rapid advancements in AI provide significant opportunities to tackle global health issues, including epidemic prediction, healthcare accessibility, and mental health. Our goal is to foster a collaborative environment where researchers, practitioners, funding agencies, and policymakers can share insights and develop strategies for ethical AI design and implementation in healthcare. 

Topics include (but are not limited to) 

• AI in Epidemic Prediction and Management
• Healthcare Accessibility and Remote Diagnostics
• Fairness in AI Health Systems 
• AI for Mental Health 
• Health AI Privacy and Security
• AI-Enhanced Public Health and Medical Training 
• Health AI Governance, Policy, Ethics, and Public Trust

Symposium Format 

This symposium includes invited talks, presentations of accepted papers, panel discussions, posters, and spotlight talks of posters.

Submission 

MI4EGH solicits full papers (6 ~ 8 pages), position/short/poster papers (2 to 4 pages), and extended abstracts (2 pages) that can include ongoing research, surveys, opinions, and perspectives. All submissions must follow the instructions of the AAAI author kit and be submitted through AAAI EasyChair site. Review is single-blinded and accepted papers can be published in the AAAI Proceedings. 

Symposium URL 

For more information, visit the symposium webpage https://sites.google.com/aggies.ncat.edu/2024-mi4egh/home, or email mi4egh@gmail.com  

Organizing Committee 

Hong Qin, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga / Old Dominion University hqin@odu.edu  
Letu Qingge, North Carolina A&T State University lqingge@ncat.edu 
Jude Dzevela Kong, York University, jdkong@yorku.ca  
Frank Liu, Old Dominion University, fliu@odu.edu 

Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development

Behind any robot task or interaction is a representation that should (a) enable sufficient contextualization; (b) support predefined, learned, and/or reusable skills onboard the robot; (c) be verifiable and behave consistently; and (d) can be tested, executed, and modified for reuse on a variety of different robot morphologies. Capturing a desired task or interaction as a computational artifact (i.e., a representation) has long played a pivotal role in robotics. 

Many robotic subfields have traditionally employed a variety of different representational techniques, often borrowing from artificial intelligence (AI). Examples include variants of LTL, logic, planning languages, representations for social robotics, semantic representations of robot perception, and many more. The problem is that there is a lack of cohesion in when and how these representations are applied. 

The 2nd symposium on Unifying Representations for Robot Application Development (UR-RAD) aims to increase representational cohesion between AI and robotics researchers. Building off of the success of last year’s inaugural symposium, participants of UR-RAD 2024 can expect the following outcomes: (1) identifying representational trends in robotics and opportunities for adopting new representations; (2) fostering cross-institutional collaborations; and (3) making an impact beyond the symposium. 

Topics 

• Representational trends 
• Natural language as a representation 
• Novel representations & novel representation uses 
• AI planning for robotics 
• Formal methods in robotics 
• Representations for robot learning 
• Representations for user interfaces 
• Robot end-user development 
• Robot programming interfaces & paradigms 
• Robot runtime/control environments 
• Opportunities for standardization 
• Frameworks (e.g., ROS or middleware) 
• Open-source & collaboration initiatives 
• Identifying representation requirements 

Format 

The symposium will feature invited speakers, paper presentations, posters and demos, a panel, and breakout discussions. Authors of accepted papers will be required to present their work at the symposium. Authors will encouraged to (optionally) give a poster presentation or demo. 

Submission Requirements 

We invite the following contributions, formatted using the AAAI-24 author kit: 

• Research Papers (4-6 pages excluding references): describes work related to the topics above. 
• Position Papers (2-4 pages excluding references): discusses topics outlined above. 
• Artifact Papers (2-4 pages excluding references): describes artifacts (e.g., software tools or libraries) related to the topics above. 

Submission Deadline: August 2nd 
Decision Notification: August 16th 
Camera Ready Deadline: August 30th 

Submissions should be made through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss24

Organizing Committee 

David Porfirio (Chair, Naval Research Laboratory) 
Saad Elbeleidy (Peerbots) 
Ruchen Wen (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) 
Laura M. Hiatt (Naval Research Laboratory) 
Mark Roberts (Naval Research Laboratory) 
Willie Wilson (Franklin & Marshall College) 
Ross Mead (Semio) 
Laura Stegner (University of Wisconsin–Madison) 

Website and Contact Information 

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/aaai-ur-rad-symposium/home 
Contact information: urrad.symposium@gmail.com 

Using AI to Build Secure and Resilient Agricultural Systems

Leveraging AI to mitigate Cyber, Climatic and Economic Threats in Food, Agricultural, and Water (FAW) Systems.

The increasing frequency of threats to the Food, Agriculture, and Water (FAW) has heightened the need to develop more resilient and secure underpinnings to the systems that support these critical sectors. AI can make significant contributions to this effort by detecting, predicting, analyzing, and mitigating the threats, and thus creating novel, robust approaches to create a more secure and resilient FAW for the world. Threats to these systems can be climatic in nature, such as due to extreme weather, floods, and droughts; or economic, such as the impacts of trade policies and supply chain issues, but more recently, cybersecurity challenges are becoming more evident. Recent developments in data, sensors, and precision technologies have elevated their adoption in the FAW sector. However, these newly adopted cyber-physical systems also present additional cybersecurity challenges.

Symposium Format

The symposium will include keynote talks, panels, presentations of contributed work, poster sessions, and discussion sessions. The goal of this Fall Symposium is to bring together participants from academia, industry, and government to explore how AI is currently being used and can be expanded to support its key role in addressing challenges to FAW systems.

For any questions please contact Feras Batarseh (batarseh@vt.edu) and Frank Stein (fstein@vt.edu).

Submissions

We are accepting paper submissions for position, review, or research articles in two formats: (a) short papers (2-4 pages) and (b) full papers (6-8 pages). All submissions will undergo peer review. Accepted papers will be published in AAAI proceedings. Papers must be submitted through the AAAI Fall 2024 Symposia EasyChair site: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fss24

Submissions due 9 August, 2024.

Potential Topic Areas:

The symposium will be organized around several topics within which AI approaches apply. These topics include:

• Cybersecurity in FAW
• Climatic Threats to FAW
• Economic Threats to FAW
• FAW Cross-Cutting Issues

See an extended list of potential topics on our website: https://caia.cals.vt.edu/AAAI.html

Organizing Committee

Feras A. Batarseh (Co-Chair), Associate Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering & Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, Virginia Tech, batarseh@vt.edu
Frank Stein (Co-Chair), Research Faculty, Intelligent Systems, National Security Institute, Virginia Tech, fstein@ieee.org