GSO-2016

Eighth International Workshop on
Guided Self-Organization (GSO-2016)

The 8th International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization is a satellite Workshop at the The Fifteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. ALIFE XV takes place in Cancun, Mexico during 4-8 July 2016. GSO-2016 is organized by The International Association for Guided Self-Organization (TIA-GSO) and takes place on 5 July 2016 (Cancun, Mexico).

Research Aims and Topics

The goal of Guided Self-Organization (GSO) is to leverage the strengths of self-organization (simplicity, parallelization, adaptability, robustness, scalability) while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing process. GSO typically has the following features: (i) an increase in organization (structure and/or functionality) over some time; (ii) the local interactions are not explicitly guided by any external agent; (iii) task-independent objectives are combined with task-dependent constraints.

Of central interest are well-founded general methods for characterizing such systems in a principled way with the view of ultimately allowing them to be guided toward pre-specified goals. Information theory, nonlinear dynamics and graph theory are core to many of these methods, and quantifying complexity, its sources and effects is a common theme.

The GSO Workshop will bring together invited experts and researchers in self-organizing systems, with particular emphasis on the information- and network-theoretic foundations of GSO and the information dynamics of adaptive systems. The following topics are of special interest: information-theoretic measures of complexity, nonlinear dynamics, complex networks, information-driven self-organization (IDSO), applications of GSO to complex networks, distributed computation, machine learning, swarm intelligence, bio-inspired systems, computational neuroscience, systems biology, cooperative and modular robotics, etc.

The program includes 1 day, with two keynote talks and eight regular presentations.

Organising Committee

Mikhail Prokopenko, CSIRO, Australia
Carlos Gershenson, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México

Daniel Polani, University of Hertfordshire, UK

Program Committee

Nihat Ay, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in The Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
David Balduzzi, University of Wellington, New Zealand
Joschka Boedecker, University of Freiburg, Germany
Markus Brede, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Rene Doursat, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
Carlos Gershenson, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México
Claudius Gros, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, Germany
Heiko Hamann, University of Paderborn, Germany
Joseph Lizier, University of Sydney, Australia

Georg Martius, The Institute of Science and Technology, Austria
Daniel Polani, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom
Mikhail Prokopenko, University of Sydney, Australia
Christoph Salge, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, United Kingdom
Hiroki Sayama, Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA
Guy Theraulaz, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
Vito Trianni, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Rome, Italy
Justin Werfel, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Larry Yaeger, Google Inc., San Francisco, USA

Keynote Speakers

Prof Chris Adami, Michigan State University (USA)

Prof Takashi Ikegami, University of Tokyo (Japan)