CS: Two workshops, a book and three conferences: SPARS 2009, Strobl09, MRI Unbound.

Remi Gribonval just mentioned to me SPARS 2009, a workshop on Signal Processing with Adaptive Sparse/Structured Representations.

When: April 07-10, 2009
Where: Saint-Malo (France)

Site: http://spars09.inria.fr

SPARS'09 is the second edition of the international workshop dedicated to sparsity in signal processing, which first edition was held in Rennes in 2005 (http://spars05.irisa.fr).

Over the last five years, theoretical advances in sparse representations have highlighted their potential to impact all fundamental areas of signal processing, from blind source separation to feature extraction and classification, denoising, and detection ... In particular, these techniques are at the core of compressed sensing, an emerging approach which proposes a radically new viewpoint on signal acquisition compared to Shannon sampling. There are also strong connections between sparse signal models and kernel methods, which algorithmic success on large datasets relies deeply on sparsity.

The purpose of the SPARS 09 workshop is to present and discuss novel ideas, works and results, both experimental and theoretical, related to this rapidly evolving area of research.

SPARS 09 will be a single track workshop with contributed oral and poster presentations, and will feature invited lectures by the following plenary speakers :

• Anna Gilbert, University of Michigan, USA
• Justin Romberg, Georgia Tech, USA
• Ron De Vore, University of South Carolina, USA
• Martin Vetterli EPFL, Switzerland (to be confirmed)

Important dates

• September 15, 2008 : call for papers
• November 15, 2008 : submission deadline for extended abstracts
• January 9, 2009 : author notification + opening of registrations
• s January 31, 2009 : deadline for camera ready papers

Contributions are expected on the following topics (non-limitative list):

• Sparse coding, vector quantization and dictionary learning
• Sparse approximation algorithms : performance and complexity
• analysis, new methodologies, ...
• Compressed sensing
• Simultaneous processing of multiple signals/images
• Sparse/structured signal representations, visualization
• Compression and coding
• Feature extraction, classification, detection
• Source separation
• Sparsity measures in approximation theory, information theory and statistics
• Applications to image, audio, video, medical, multimedia and multichannel data processing

Any communication proposal will mandatorily consist of:
* The paper title;
* The name ot the authors with their complete address (mail and email, phone, fax), the name of the principal author being underlined
* The answers to the three questions (with at most 5 lines per question) :

• statement of the problem
• originality of the work
• new results

* A summary of two pages minimum and three pages maximum (single column), including figures. Final papers format : 4 pages maximum, double column, in PDF, A4, font>= 9pt

All submissions will be managed through the online system which will be made available on the website of the workshop.

The workshop is open in priority to participants who will give a presentation, however participation without a presentation should be possible depending on the number of participants. If you are interested, please contact the organizers in advance to let them know about your intention to participate.

While we are on the subject of sparsity and adaptivity, I just noticed that Stephane Mallat is about to release A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing, Third Edition: The Sparse Way. Returning to meetings, Laurent Duval points me to Strobl09: Conference on Time-Frequency

Where: Strobl, Austria
When: 15 - 20. Jun. 2009.

The conference will cover mathematical and computional aspects of harmonic analysis. The topic will include time-frequency analysis, pseudodifferential operators, wireless communications and time-varying systems, compressed sensing, sampling theory, signal transforms and wavelet theory, functions spaces.

These and other meetings/workshop are listed on the CS calendar.

Found on the interwebs:
ISMRM Workshop on Data Sampling and Image Reconstruction: MRI Unbound.
When: January 25-29, 2009
Where: Sedona, Arizona

I like the fact that they seem to organize a Reconstruction Challenge, this is a very good idea. Talking about very good ideas, Dave Donoho has finally updated his webpage and here is one interesting paper:

• Fifteen Years of Reproducible Research in Computational Harmonic Analysis
  with Arian Maleki, Morteza Shahram, Victoria Stodden, and Inam Ur-Rahman.

where he points out how Sparselab has been useful for people to learn about compressed sensing. I'll make a mention to the technical ones later but I think I covered them all.


And finally, there are two conferences that have mentioned Compressed Sensing in their list of interesting topics. I am sure that more and more conferences will do that in the future so I will probably mentioned only those for which CS and related subjects are the main focus of interest. In the meantime, we have:


IMMERSCOM 2009, the 2nd International Conference on Immersive Telecommunications
Website: http://www.immerscom.org
When: May 27-29, 2009
Where: University of California, Berkeley


INTERNET 2009, The First International Conference on Evolving Internet
When: August 25-31, 2009
Where: Cap Esterel, France