2017 International Conference on Social Computing,
Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior
Representation in Modeling and Simulation (SBP-BRiMS)

July 5 (Wed) – 8 (Sat), 2017, Lehman Auditorium, George
Washington University, Washington DC, USA

Conference Website: http://sbp-brims.org

All papers are qualified for the Best Paper Award. Papers with student first authors will be considered for the Best Student Paper Award. Those
receiving these awards will be invited to publish an extended version in a special issue of the journal Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory.

IMPORTANT DATES:
Regular Paper Abstract Submission : February 22 (Wed), 2017
Regular Paper Submission : March 1 (Wed), 2017
Author Notification : March 24 (Fri), 2017
Final Version Submission : April 7 (Fri), 2017

Note, all regular papers will be evaluated for: presentation in plenary,
presentation in regular session, presentation as poster, or no presentation.
All accepted papers will be published in the physical proceedings – the
Springer LNCS volume. This volume is considered archival.

Challenge Problem Submission : May 12 (Fri), 2017
Those submitting a response to the challenge are to submit a poster and a
short paper by this date. All accepted papers will be published in the online proceedings only and will not be included in the Springer LNCS volume.
The online proceedings is not considered archival.

Posters & Demos Short Paper Submission : May 12 (Fri), 2017

This short paper submission is intended for late breaking results,
technology demos, and those papers from industry, government or the
military where constraints prevent the authors from writing a full paper. All short papers (including those describing demos) will be evaluated for:
presentation as a poster, or no presentation. All accepted papers will be
published in the online proceedings only and will not be included in the
Springer LNCS volume. The online proceedings is not considered
archival.

Tutorial Proposal Submission : March 10 (Fri), 2017

Conference : July 5(Wed) to 8(Sat), 2017,
including the following:
Pre-conference Tutorial Sessions : July 10, 2017 (first day conference)
Poster Session : At Conference Poster Night
Technology Demos : Lunch times & Poster Night
Challenge Problem Evaluation : At Conference Poster Night

ABOUT SBP-BRiMS:
SBP-BRiMS is a multidisciplinary conference with a selective single paper
track and poster session. The conference also invites a small number of
high quality tutorials and nationally recognized keynote speakers. The
conference has grown out of two related meetings: SBP and BRiMS, which
were co-located in previous years.

Social computing harnesses the power of computational methods to study
social behavior, such as during team collaboration. Cultural behavioral
modeling refers to representing behavior and culture in the abstract, and is a convenient and powerful way to conduct virtual experiments and
scenario analysis. Both social computing and cultural behavioral modeling
are techniques designed to achieve a better understanding of complex
behaviors, patterns, and associated outcomes of interest. Moreover, these
approaches are inherently interdisciplinary; subsystems and system
components exist at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., “cells to societies”) and across multiple disciplines, from engineering and the computational sciences to the social and health sciences.

The SBP-BRiMS conference invites modeling and simulation papers from
academics, research scientists, technical communities and defense
researchers across traditional disciplines to share ideas, discuss research results, identify capability gaps, highlight promising technologies, and showcase the state-of-the-art in applications in the areas of cultural behavioral modeling, prediction, and social computing.

Please see the SBP-BRiMS17 website for more details. Keynotes and
tutorials delivered in the previous SBP and BRiMS meetings are available
through the websites http://sbp-brims.org and
http://cc.ist.psu.edu/BRIMS2015/ .

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Submissions are solicited on research issues, theories, and applications.
Topics of interests include the following:

Advances in Sociocultural & Behavioral Processes
* Group interaction and collaboration
* Group formation and evolution
* Group representation and profiling
* Collective action and governance
* Cultural patterns & representation
* Social conventions, social contexts and processes
* Influence process and recognition
* Public opinion representation, identification and modeling
* Information diffusion
* Psycho-cultural situation awareness

Behavior Modeling
* Intelligent agents and avatars/adversarial modeling
* Cognitive robotics and human-robot interaction
* Models of reasoning and decision making
* Model validation & comparison
* Socio-cultural M&S: team/group/crowd/behavior
* Physical models of human movement
* Performance assessment & skill monitoring/tracking
* Performance prediction/enhancement/optimization
* Intelligent tutoring systems
* Knowledge acquisition/engineering
* Human behavior issues in model federations

Methodological Challenges
* Mathematical foundations
* Verification and validation
* Sensitivity analysis
* Matching technique or method to research questions
* Metrics and evaluation
* Methodological innovation
* Model federation and integration
* Evolutionary computing
* Optimization

Information, Systems, & Network Science
* Data mining on social media platforms
* Diffusion and other dynamic processes over networks
* Inference of network topologies and changes over time
* Analysis of link formations and link types
* Detection of communities and other types of structures in networks
* Analysis of high-dimensional networks
* Analytics for social and human dynamics

Military & Intelligence Applications
* Evaluation, modeling and simulation
* Group formation and evolution in the political context
* Technology and flash crowds
* Networks and political influence
* Group representation and profiling
* Reasoning about terrorist group behaviors and policies towards them

Applications for Health and Well-being
* Social network analysis to understand health behavior
* Modeling of health policy and decision making
* Modeling of behavioral aspects of infectious disease spread
* Intervention design and modeling for behavioral health

Other Applications
* Economic applications of behavioral and social prediction
* Viral marketing
* Reasoning about development aid through social modeling
* Reasoning about global educational efforts through cognitive simulation

FORMAT AND SUBMISSION:
The conference solicits three categories of papers:
Regular papers (max. 10 pages)
All topics and authors (academic, government, industry) welcome
Published in a Springer volume and online. Plenary or poster presentation.

Short papers and Late-breaking results (max. 6 pages)
All topics and authors welcome.
Published online. Typically a poster presentation.

Demos (2-page abstract, or max. 6 pages)
Published online. Typically a poster or demo presentation.

Paper Formatting Guideline
The papers must be in English and MUST be formatted according to the
Springer-Verlag LNCS/LNAI guidelines. Sample LaTeX2e and WORD files
are available at http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-
793341-0. It is not required to submit a cover page.

All regular paper submissions should be submitted as a paper with a
maximum of 10 pages using the foregoing format. All submissions for
posters, demo-presentations, challenge problem entries and late breaking
results should be submitted as a paper with a maximum of 6 pages using
the same format as the regular papers. All accepted entries will be posted on the SBP-BRiMS 2017 website.

A selection of authors will be invited to contribute journal versions of their papers to one of two planned special issues of the Springer journal
“Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory” and another high-
profile journal.

The submission website will be available at:
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sbpbrims2017. To register a
paper abstract, use the standard Easychair submission website and
submit your title and abstract. Until the final paper deadline, you will be able to update your submission.

PUBLICATION
For any questions and inquiries concerning submissions, please email the
program chairs at sbpbrims2017@gmail.com.

PRE-CONFERENCE TUTORIAL SESSIONS:
Several half-day sessions will be offered on the day before the full
conference. Sessions will be designed to meet the needs of one of two
distinct groups. One group will consist of attendees who have backgrounds
in computational science; computer science, engineering, and other
mathematically oriented disciplines. Other tutorial sessions will be
designed for behavioral and social scientists and others (e.g. those with
medical backgrounds or training in public health) who may have limited
formal education in the computational sciences. Attendees will gain an
understanding of terminology, theories, and general approaches employed
by computationally based fields, especially with respect to modeling
approaches.

Tutorial proposal submission:
Tutorial proposals should be submitted online to
sbpbrims@andrew.cmu.edu.

At minimum, each proposal must contain the following information:
* Title of the tutorial.
* Description of the tutorial topic and structure.
* Expected audience (including the expected backgrounds of the
attendees).
* Short bio and contact information of the organizers.

More details regarding the pre-conference tutorial sessions, including
instructors, course content, and registration information will be posted to the conference website (SBP-BRiMS.org) as soon as this information
becomes available. For further information, please contact
sbpbrims@andrew.cmu.edu.

CHALLENGE:
The conference expects to announce a computational challenge as in
previous years.
Additional details will be posted on the conference website.

FUNDING PANEL & CROSS-FERTILIZATION ROUNDTABLES:
Previous SBP-BRiMS conferences have included a Cross-fertilization
Roundtable session or a Funding Panel. The purpose of the cross-
fertilization roundtables is to help participants become better acquainted with people outside of their discipline and with whom they might consider partnering on future SBP-BRiMS-related research collaborations. The Funding Panel provides an opportunity for conference participants to interact with program managers from various federal funding agencies.
Participants for the previous funding panels have included representatives from federal agencies, such as the NSF, NIH, DoD, ONR, AFOSR, USDA, etc.

BEST PAPER AWARDS:
SBP-BRiMS17 will feature a Best Paper Award and a Best Student Paper
Award. All papers are qualified for the Best Paper Award. Papers with
student first authors will be considered for the Best Student Paper Award.

HOTEL AND LOGISTICS:
Information on hotel and logistics will be provided at the conference
website as it becomes available.

TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIPS:
It is anticipated that a limited number travel scholarships will be available on a competitive basis. Additional information will be provided on the SBP-BRiMS Conference website as it becomes available.