The workshop will be held near the North Carolina State University campus in a thriving region known as the Research Triangle which is home to three major Research Universities, hundreds of companies in biotechnology, information technology, communications, computer hardware and software. The Research Triangle is easily accessible from all parts of the U.S. though the Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The beautiful ocean outer banks and the Smoky mountains are within driving distance of the conference venue.

The aim of this two-day workshop is to identify potential areas of collaboration between the biological, statistical, and signal processing communities and to open new avenues of research to address new challenges in genetics by exploiting potential synergies between signal processing, statistics and Genomics and by building on their respective strengths. Such problem areas might include: signal processing and extraction of microarray and gell images; incorporation of accurate image formation models into clustering and classification algorithms; application of communications/signal- processing/image-processing techniques such as array processing and blind equalization; and novel high-throughput hardware/software approaches to large scale genomic computation. This workshop will consist of both invited sessions and contributed sessions. The invited speakers will give tutorial talks on genetics, bioinformatics, and genomic signal processing. There will also be a panel discussion and four plenary sessions. This call for papers is to solicit contributed papers for the poster sessions which are expected to be highly interactive. Those interested should submit a four-page summary describing original work. Final version of accepted papers will be published in an electronic proceedings which will be distributed by the web and by CD-ROM at the workshop. Acceptance will be based on quality, relevance and originality. Participation at the workshop will be limited to 130 attendees. Registration fee will be kept very low and travel grants will be offered to selected student participants.

AREAS OF INTEREST INCLUDE

• Digital signal processing and statistical approaches to bioinformatics problems
• Digital communications approaches to gene sequence estimation
• Image and multidimensional signal processing for microarray data
• Data mining and pattern recognition; signal extraction
• Processing of genomic signals relevant to aging, disease, and development
• Novel genetic signal and image models
• New genetics-based signal processing approaches and architectures
• Models for cellular metabolism and inter-cellular signaling

• June 1, 2002: Four page summaries due
• July 1, 2002: Accept/reject notifications sent out
• Sept 15, 2002: Final four-page camera-ready papers due

Co-General Chairs:
Prof. Alfred Hero, Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Prof. G. Tong Zhou, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA

Technical Program Committee:

• Chair: Prof. Hamid Krim, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
• Members:
  Prof. Debashis Ghosh, Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
  Prof. Michael Giddings, Departments of Microbiology, Immunology, and Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
  Prof. Simon Godsill, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK
  Prof. Jeffrey Macdonald, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
  Prof. Kerby Shedden, Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Local Arrangements:
Prof. Marc Genton, Statistics Department, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

For additional information, please contact Prof. Alfred Hero, Tel. (734) 763-0564; Email: gensips@eecs.umich.edu