Update: We have shortlisted the final proposals along with the proposers (faculty) and the students for the Summer workshop. We will not accept any more proposals/student nominations.
Call for Proposals
The MSR Summer Workshop on Artificial Social Intelligence (ASI) will be an intense project-based research endeavor to enable intelligent systems to be more socially and culturally aware. Proposals are invited from faculty members in Indian universities and Indian start-ups in topics including but not limited to:
- Computational Social Science
- Socially and culturally aware agents
- Speech and Language Systems for ASI
- Multi-modality and ASI
Proposals could suggest building a Socially Intelligent Agent or generic platforms for architecting such agents; we also invite proposals that seek to conduct large-scale socio-cultural studies using computational methods that will guide architecting ASI systems. Projects done in the summer workshop should lead to either a working system, dataset or an in-depth, large-scale study leading to publishable work.
All faculty and students selected for the workshop are expected not to pursue parallel work during the workshop, since this is intended to be an intense 4 week effort leading to publishable work and significant progress in the field.
Selection Process
The submitted proposals along with the nominations for PhD and/or Postdocs will be selected through a thorough evaluation and revision process by the Program Committee. In parallel, the undergrad and masters students for the workshop will be selected by the Organizing Committee through a different process.
The proposals will be evaluated by the members of the program committee on the basis of following criteria: innovativeness, generality, usability (of the proposed system/study), feasibility (of completing the project in 4 weeks), and preciseness of the goals and success metrics.
After initial round of evaluation, proposals will be shortlisted and the proposers will be invited to Microsoft Research India to give a presentation. Post this 4 to 6 projects will be selected for the summer workshop. Proposals will be refined and may be merged with other proposals before the final selection.
Submission Guidelines
Proposals are invited from faculty in Indian institutions in the following format:
- Name, Affiliation and contact of the faculty submitting the proposal
- Name of collaborators (if any): Up to ONE collaborator (could be a faculty member from outside India or a researcher in some non-academic lab or company, including start-ups) can be suggested.
- Aim of the project
- Context, challenges and usefulness
- Proposed approach
- Resources required: PhD/Masters/UG students, engineers, computational resources, data
- Success metrics: When would you call this project a success (think of only what can be achieved during the summer workshop – 4 weeks)
- Future plans: if you were to continue the work beyond the workshop, what would you do?
Proposals should be no longer than 2000 words (including diagrams, tables etc.), and can be sent in doc or pdf format.
Along with the proposal, please also send
- A brief CV of the proposer highlighting the expertise in the proposed area.
- Student Nominations: You can recommend names (along with affiliation, emails and CV) of up to
- 1 Post-doc fellow/PhD student
- 2 PG/UG students
The completed proposals should be emailed to msriasi2017@microsoft.com, cc-ing Monojit Choudhury at monojitc@microsoft.com no later than 11:59 pm IST 28th February 2017.
Please note that we cannot guarantee the selection of the students nominated in the proposal even if the proposal is selected, because we are seeking UG/masters student nominations through other means as well.
Important dates
Deadline for submitting proposals: Feb 28, 2017
Notification of shortlisted proposals: Mar 20, 2017
Presentation at MSRI: 1st week of April 2017
Notification of selection: April 30, 2017
Summer School: June 5-30, 2017 (tentative)
Who can participate and How?
Faculty/Researchers: Faculty members from universities in India are invited to submit proposals. They will be asked to present the proposal in person at Bangalore, if shortlisted. Projects can also have ONE collaborator from industry/other academic institutions from India or abroad. Selected faculty should be willing to work with other faculty/researchers if their proposals get merged. Faculty members can nominate ONE Post Docs/PhD student and up to TWO UG/master students in their proposal. Faculty members should also be willing to give lectures and tutorials in their areas of expertise during the workshop.
The Principal proposer of each selected project will receive an amount of Rs. 1.5 Lakhs as remuneration for the research efforts in the project. This amount is also expected to cover their travel to/from Bangalore, meals outside of those provided during the workshop and other incidental expenses. Faculty will have to make their own travel arrangements. Microsoft Research will provide accommodation with breakfast, and meals during working hours.
Important: The above remuneration will only be paid to the principal faculty proposer. Collaborators, if any, will receive accommodation and meals.
Post Doc/PhD students: Post Doc and PhD students CANNOT apply directly. They need to be nominated by the faculty member writing the proposal. Each proposal can have ONE Post Doc or PhD student nomination, from which the program committee will make the final selection.
Postdoc/PhD students will be provided with accommodation with breakfast, and meals during working hours. For outstation students, we will provide a travel allowance that should cover a large part of the estimated airfare (if booked well in advance), meals outside working hours and any other incidental expenses. They do not need to submit any bills or tickets to get the travel allowance. It will be a flat amount based on the city where their college is located. If they spend less than the allowance, they do not need to return the funds to us and if they spend more, we hope they can put in money from their own sources to cover the balance.
Masters/Undergraduate students: Masters and Undergraduate students will be selected by the program committee and assigned to projects based on their interests and skills. There are two routes through which these students can apply:
- A faculty submitting a proposal nominates up to TWO UG/masters students in their proposal.
- We will also seek UG/masters nomination from HoDs of a number of Indian institutes.
UG/Masters students will be provided with accommodation (on twin sharing basis) with breakfast, and meals during working hours. For outstation students, we will provide a travel allowance that should cover a large part of the estimated airfare (if booked well in advance), meals outside working hours and any other incidental expenses. They do not need to submit any bills or tickets to get the travel allowance. It will be a flat amount based on the city where their college is located. If they spend less than the allowance, they do not need to return the funds to us and if they spend more, we hope they can put in money from their own sources to cover the balance.
Computational Infrastructure
Garage style workstations will be provided to each team in Microsoft Research India premises. Team members are expected to work on their own laptops. However, we will provide Internet connection as well as Azure accounts to each team for running large scale experiments. Access to certain MS proprietary datasets and development environment could also be provided based on need and availability.
Each project will be assigned a research collaborator as well as an engineer from MSR/Microsoft, who will actively involve in the research as well as the development aspects of the project.
Best Project Award
All projects will be presented and there will be a competition at the end of the workshop to choose the winning project. The winning project will be awarded seed funding of INR 700,000/- from Microsoft Research India to continue the work.
Based on their performance in the workshop, the UG/PG students participating in the workshop will be considered for internship at MSR, if they wish so.
Contact
For any queries on the proposal / eligibility, etc. please write to : msriasi2017@microsoft.com, cc-ing Monojit Choudhury at monojitc@microsoft.com