SOCIAL NETWORKS AND MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS SYMPOSIUM ( http://snamas.di.unito.it ) SNAMAS@AISB 2010 Convention ( http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb10/AISB2010.html ) 29th March - 1st April 2010, De Montfort University, Leicester

SYMPOSIUM CHAIRS

• Giulia Andrighetto (ISTC-CNR Rome)
• Guido Boella (University of Turin)
• Ugo Pagallo (University of Turin)
• Serena Villata (University of Turin)

ABSTRACT

One of the most interesting research topics in the field of multiagent systems is the definition of models with the aim of representing social structures such as organizations and coalitions, to control the emergent behavior of open systems. Organizations and coalitions are composed by individuals that are related to each other by different possible kinds of relations such as dependencies on goals, conflicts on resources, similar beliefs and so on. One important issue is how to represent these relations. Moreover, like the human organizations, these social structures are characterized also by an high degree of dynamism.

In dealing with societal issues, the multiagent systems field took inspiration mostly from organizational theory in economics and legal theory, while less attention is devoted to the research area describing the relations among the individuals inside human organizations and their dynamics: social network analysis. Social network analysis has emerged as a key technique inmodern sociology, anthropology, social psychology, communication studies, information science, organizational studies, economics as well as a popular topic of study.

Despite the common object of study,multiagent systems and social network analysis use concepts like agents, dependencies, etc. which often have only superficial similarities. The aim of this symposium is to underline the differences and the similarity points between these social network analysis and multiagent systems in the representation of the social structures and their dynamics, and to promote the interchange of knowledge and methodologies among the two fields.

At AISB 2009 Convention, the Program Committee members Guido Boella, Harko Verhagen, Giulia Andrighetto e Jaime Sichman held the first SNAMAS Symposium.
This Symposium fits the AISB‘09 Convention theme ``Adaptive and Emergent Behaviour and Complex Systems”, since both social networks analysis and multiagent systems deal with the behavior of complex systems composed by many agents and have among theirs topic adaptivity and emergence, since it is not realistic to consider only top-down rigidly designed social systems. The invited speaker of the event was Prof. Kathleen M. Carley, an international expert in the field of social network analysis and dynamic network analysis.
The event was followed by a special issue of the Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory on “Social Networks and Multiagent Systems” with
Editor-in-Chief: Kathleen M. Carley and Guest Editors: Giulia Andrighetto, Guido Boella, Jaime Sichman, Harko Verhagen.

TOPICS

Papers on the following non-exhaustive list of topics are solicited:
- Emergent behaviour in multiagent systems and social networks analysis
- Simulation of social systems
- Learning evolution and adaptation in multiagent systems and social networks analysis
- Artificial social systems
- Societal aspects
- Models of personality, emotions and social behaviour
- Organizations in Multiagent systems and Social Networks

INVITED SPEAKER

TBA

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission deadline: December 19, 2009.
Notification of acceptance: January 30, 2010.
Camera ready version: TBA
Symposium: 29th March - 1st April 2010

PAPER SUBMISSION

The guidelines for paper submission are as the following:

• The paper should be written in English.
• The maximum length of a paper is 6 A4-sized pages in ECAI format
  (format download: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html ).
• The paper should be in PDF format.
• Please submit via the online paper submission system (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=snamas2010).
• A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of a relevant journal.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Patrice Caire, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Cristiano Castelfranchi, ISTC-CNR Rome, Italy Rosaria Conte, ISTC-CNR Rome, Italy Gustavo A. Gimenez Lugo, Federal Technological University of Parana, Brasil Jeremy Pitt, Imperial College London, UK Jaime Sichman, University of Sao Paolo, Brasil Carles Sierra, IIIA-CSIC, Spain Pietro Terna, University of Turin, Italy Leendert van der Torre, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Harko Verhagen, Stockholm University, Sweden

CONTACTS

For further inquiries please contact:
guido@di.unito.it