[CfP] Workshop on Probabilistic Logic Programming (Extended Deadline and Invited Speakers Announced)

PLP-2021: The Eighth Workshop on Probabilistic Logic Programming
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A workshop of 37th International Conference on Logic Programming
September 20-27, 2021,
University of Porto, Portugal
http://stoics.org.uk/plp/plp2021

*Note that the event will be virtual*

** NEW Deadline for submissions: August 15th, 2021
** Invited Speakers: Manfred Jaeger and Nico Potyka

Overview
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Probabilistic logic programming (PLP) approaches have received much
attention
in this century. They address the need to reason about relational domains
under
uncertainty arising in a variety of application domains, such as
bioinformatics,
the semantic web, robotics, and many more. Developments in PLP include new
languages that combine logic programming with probability theory, as well as
algorithms that operate over programs in these formalisms.

The workshop encompasses all aspects of combining logic, algorithms,
programming and probability.

PLP is part of a wider current interest in probabilistic programming. By
promoting probabilities as explicit programming constructs, inference,
parameter
estimation and learning algorithms can be ran over programs which represent
highly structured probability spaces. Due to logic programming's strong
theoretical underpinnings, PLP is one of the more disciplined areas of
probabilistic programming. It builds upon and benefits from the large body
of
existing work in logic programming, both in semantics and implementation,
but
also presents new challenges to the field. PLP reasoning often requires the
evaluation of large number of possible states before any answers can be
produced
thus breaking the sequential search model of traditional logic programs.

While PLP has already contributed a number of formalisms, systems and well
understood and established results in: parameter estimation, tabling,
marginal
probabilities and Bayesian learning, many questions remain open in this
exciting, expanding field in the intersection of AI, machine learning and
statistics.

This workshop provides a forum for the exchange of ideas, presentation of
results and preliminary work, in the following areas

* probabilistic logic programming formalisms
* parameter estimation
* statistical inference
* implementations
* structure learning
* reasoning with uncertainty
* constraint store approaches
* stochastic and randomised algorithms
* probabilistic knowledge representation and reasoning
* constraints in statistical inference
* applications, such as
* * bioinformatics
* * semantic web
* * robotics
* probabilistic graphical models
* Bayesian learning
* tabling for learning and stochastic inference
* MCMC
* stochastic search
* labelled logic programs
* integration of statistical software

This list is by no means exhaustive.

Purpose
-----
After seven successful editions of this workshop, the eighth edition of PLP
will be held at
the ICLP virtual conference organised by the University of Porto. We hope
that this encourages
further collaboration between researchers in PLP and researchers working in
other areas of
ICLP.

Submissions
-----
Submissions will be managed via EasyChair (
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=plp21 ).

A mixture of papers are sought including: new results; work in progress;
and technical summaries
of recent substantial contributions. Papers presenting new results should
be at most 15 pages
long. Work in progress and technical summaries can be shorter (up to 5
pages). The workshop
proceedings will clearly indicate the type of each paper.

Contributions should be prepared in the CEURART style. Please visit the
workshop webpage
( http://stoics.org.uk/plp/plp2021 ) for full details.

At least one author of each accepted paper will be required to attend the
workshop to present the contribution.


Publication
-----
Informal proceedings will be made available electronically to attendees and
submitted to CEUR Workshop Proceedings repository
(http://ceur-ws.org/). The proceedings will consist of clearly marked
sections
corresponding to the different types of submissions accepted.



Deadlines
-----
Papers due: August 15th, 2021
Notification to authors: September 7th, 2021
Camera ready version due: September 14th, 2021
Workshop date: September 20-27, 2021

(all dates are AoE)


Invited Speaker(s)
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Manfred Jaeger, Aalborg University, Denmark
Nico Potyka, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Programme Committee Chairs
-----
Rafael Peñaloza (University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy)
Felix Weitkämper (LMU München, Germany)

Programme Committee
-----
Nicos Angelopoulos (Cardiff University, UK)
Elena Bellodi (University of Ferrara, Italy)
Krysia Broda (Imperial College, UK)
Henning Christiansen (Roskilde University, Denmark)
Fabio Cozman (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
James Cussens (University of Bristol, UK)
Luke Dickens (University College London, UK)
Carmine Dodaro (University of Calabria, Italy)
Arjen Hommersom (Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands)
Matthias Nickles (National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland)
Fabrizio Riguzzi (University of Ferrara, Italy)
Joost Vennekens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
Riccardo Zese (University of Ferrara, Italy)