[TYPES/announce] PPS 2018: Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Languages, Semantics, and Systems 2018

[Cameron Freer]

Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Languages, Semantics, and Systems
(PPS 2018)
Colocated right before POPL (Los Angeles, CA) on January 9, 2018

https://conf.researchr.org/track/POPL-2018/pps-2018

Call for Extended Abstracts

Probabilistic programming is the idea of expressing probabilistic models
and inference methods as programs, to ease use and reuse.  The recent
rise of practical implementations as well as research activity in
probabilistic programming has renewed the need for semantics to help us
share insights and innovations.

This workshop aims to bring programming-language and machine-learning
researchers together to advance all aspects of probabilistic programming
languages, semantics, and systems. Topics include but are not limited to:

  * design of probabilistic programming languages;
  * inference algorithms for probabilistic programming languages;
  * semantics (axiomatic, operational, denotational, games, etc) and types
    for probabilistic programming;
  * efficient and correct implementation;
  * and last but not least, applications of probabilistic programming.

For a sense of the talks and posters in past years, see:
  * https://conf.researchr.org/track/POPL-2017/pps-2017
  * https://pps2017.soic.indiana.edu/
and
  * https://conf.researchr.org/track/POPL-2016/pps-2016
  * https://pps2016.soic.indiana.edu/

In the tradition of the previous meetings, we anticipate that work on
semantic
foundations of probabilistic programming will be at the core of PPS 2018,
but
we are explicitly broadening the scope of PPS to embrace all aspects of
probabilistic programming languages.

We expect this workshop to be informal, and our goal is to foster
collaboration and establish common ground.  Thus, the proceedings will not
be a formal or archival publication, and we expect to spend only a portion
of the workshop day on traditional research talks.  Nevertheless, as a
concrete basis for fruitful discussions, we call for extended abstracts
describing specific and ideally ongoing work on probabilistic programming
languages, semantics, and systems.

Extended abstracts are up to 2 pages in PDF format.  Please submit them by
October 17 using EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=pps2018

Tuesday, October 17, 2017: Submissions due
Friday, November 17, 2017: Author notification
Tuesday, December 19, 2017: Final papers due
Tuesday, January 9, 2018: Workshop, colocated right before POPL

Program committee:

  * Cameron Freer, Remine and Borelian (chair)
  * Andrew D. Gordon, Microsoft Research and University of Edinburgh (chair)
  * Johannes Borgström, Uppsala University
  * Bob Carpenter, Columbia University
  * Ohad Kammar, University of Oxford
  * Radu Mardare, Aalborg University
  * Annabelle McIver, Macquarie University
  * Norman Ramsey, Tufts University
  * Brian Ruttenberg, Charles River Analytics
  * Jean-Baptiste Tristan, Oracle Labs
  * Jan-Willem van de Meent, Northeastern University
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