Measuring Behavior special sessions consist of a series of talks around a common topic related to the general theme of measuring behavior. In previous conferences these sessions were known as symposia, and have included topics such as ‘automatic facial expression analysis’, ‘automation of observing and analyzing rodent behavior’ and ‘measuring meeting behavior’. 

Procedure

The special session chair proposes a topic, brings together a group of speakers, and submits a list of titles to the scientific program committee. You can use the form below to do that, but you are also welcome to contact one of the conference chairs or the SPC chair at any time (e.g. when you just have a title or idea) to discuss your proposed session. Simply copy and paste the form below into an email and send it to Andrew[at]measuringbehavior.org. 

After your proposal is accepted, you can then formally invite your speakers to submit extended abstracts of about 4 pages. You will be responsible for the quality of the content of those abstracts, which means that you should organize their review. Once their quality is acceptable, they should be submitted to the online review system, and they will then be reviewed with an emphasis on meeting the style guide for the conference proceedings. If approved, abstracts will be published in the Proceedings Book (handed out to all delegates) and published on the conference website. Authors will also be given the chance to write a paper for publication in a special edition of a scientific journal.

Sponsoring

The conference organization does not provide financial support for special sessions. We strongly encourage the organizer of special sessions to seek sponsorship so that you can finance attendance of speakers who might not otherwise be able to attend. There is no registration fee reduction for presenters; however, there is a discount for PhD students and a limited number of travel grants are available for PhD students. 

Deadlines

The deadline for submitting a special session (symposium) proposal is 5 January 2012. 

Speakers will have until 1st April 2012 to submit their abstracts. We will inform you as soon as possible if the symposium is accepted, but in any case before February 2nd.

These deadlines will not be extended.

FORM FOR SUBMITTING A SPECIAL SESSIONS PROPOSAL

Title 

Please write the title as you would like to see it appear in the program book

Short title

When your speakers submit their abstracts, they will select this title to show the abstract goes with your symposium. It should be maximum 2-3 words.

Organizer 

Name and contact details

Abstract of special session 

For the program book. This should be about 1 page in length. Provide a brief overview of the topic and its relevance for Measuring Behavior.

Content

List of speakers, titles of their talks and total duration of session

Talks at MB2012 are normally 15 minutes duration. You can also schedule time for discussion. A special session should normally be about 2 hours duration.