Fourth German Conference on
		 Multi-Agent System Technologies (MATES 06)
		 September 19 - 21, 2006 in Erfurt, Germany
			  http://www.dfki.de/MATES
	Co-located with Net.ObjectDays 2006; September 18 - 21, 2006
			http://www.netobjectdays.org/

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission of papers:    April      2, 2006
Notification of authors: May       22, 2006
Camera-ready papers:     June      18, 2006
Conference:              September 19-21, 2006

AIMS & SCOPE

The German  conference on Multi-Agent system TEchnologieS  (MATES) provides an
interdisciplinary forum  for researchers, users and developers  to present and
discuss  latest advances in  research work  as well  as prototyped  or fielded
systems of intelligent agents and  multi-agent systems. The conference aims to
promote  theory and  application  and covers  the  whole range  of agent-  and
multi-agent technologies.

For  the  fourth  time  the  German  special  interest  group  on  Distributed
Artificial Intelligence  in cooperation with  the steering committee  of MATES
organizes  this  international  conference  in  order to  promote  theory  and
application  of  agents  and  multi-agent  systems.   Building  on  the  three
successful  predecessors in  2003,  2004,  and 2005,  MATES  2006 takes  place
from19th  to  21st  of  September  2006  in  Erfurt  in  the  context  of  the
Net.ObjectDays      2006.        The      Net.ObjectDays      (NODe      2006,
http://http://www.netobjectdays.org/de/index.html)  provide an umbrella  for a
set of  conferences - such as  GSEM (International Conference  on Grid Service
Engineering   and   Management)   and   SOAS  (International   Conference   on
Self-Organization and Adaptation of Multi-agent and Grid Systems) - that cover
aspects  of  almost  any  area  of agent  technologies,  autonomic  computing,
aspect-driven and model-driven  architectures, and component-based programming
as well as the intersections of these research areas.

Topics of interest  of MATES 2006 are all  aspects of agent-oriented computing
and  agent  technologies.  However,  while  service-oriented architectures  in
general  become  more  and  more   popular,  agent  technologies  need  to  be
re-considered and discussed  in the context of up-coming  trends in the design
of such architectures.  Web service technologies and the  semantic Web are the
most  obvious examples  of this  development.   But also  up-coming trends  in
general  software  design  like  the model-driven  architecture  and  workflow
patterns for service composition need  to be discussed. In this context agents
operate   in   a  heterogeneous   and   possibly  geographically   distributed
environment. A key challenge of developing agent-based systems in this context
is to search for services that meet the agent's objectives and compose them in
a flexible  manner. In the composition  of these services complex  patterns of
interaction might be involved and an intuitive and easy to read and understand
representation of these patterns is highly desirable.

We solicit papers that report on  recent advances in the domain of intelligent
agents  and   multi-agent  systems  in  general   but  specifically  encourage
elaborated  vision and challenge  papers that  discuss mid-term  and long-term
directions for these domains in the context of the above mentioned topics.

TOPICS

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Agent and multi-agent architectures
* Multi-agent platforms and tools 
* Agent-oriented software engineering
* Model-driven design of multi-agent systems
* Agent technologies in the context of service-oriented computing and
  architectures
* Agent-based service discovery, matchmaking, brokering, and composition
* Complex systems and their management
* Practical aspects of programming agent systems: Robustness, scalability and
  performance measurement
* Agent to non-agent interoperability
* Advanced theories of collaboration: Modelling and formation of teams,
  coalitions, groups, and organizations
* Agent communication languages
* Coordination, negotiation, argumentation, and conflict resolution
* Hybrid human and agent societies
* User modelling and interface agents
* Embodied conversational agents and believable agents
* Commitment, delegation, responsibility, and obligations in artificial and
  hybrid societies
* Semantic of the dynamics of organizational models
* Roles and structures, adaptive learning and cognition in organizational
  models
* Multi-agent planning and scheduling
* Adaptive agents and multi-agent learning
* Robustness, fault tolerance, scalability and performance measurement
* Artificial social systems: Conventions, norms, institutions; trust and
  reputation
* Multi-agent (social) simulation and (cognitive) modelling with agents
* Standards for agents and multi-agent systems 
* Agents and peer-to-peer computing
* Agents and autonomic computing
* Agents and pervasive computing
* Mobile agents
* Autonomous robots and robot teams
* Agents for e-business and e-government
* Deployed agent-based business applications
* Application of agent-technologies in industrial practice
* Agents in novel applications, e.g. bioinformatics and the semantic Web

AWARDS

MATES issues a "MATES 2006 Best Paper Award".

DOCTORAL MENTORING PROGRAM

MATES  2006 intends  to include  a doctoral  mentoring program,  aimed  at PhD
students in  advanced stages of their  research. This program  will provide an
opportunity for  students to interact closely with  established researchers in
their fields, to receive feedback on  their work and to get advice on managing
their careers.

PROCEEDINGS

The proceedings  of MATES  2006 are  planned to be  published in  the Springer
series "Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence" (LNAI).

SUBMISSION DETAILS

For preparation of  papers to be submitted please  follow the instructions for
authors     available      at     the     Springer      LNCS     Web     page:
<http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html>.   The  length  of each  paper
including figures and  references should not exceed 12  pages. All papers must
be written in English and submitted either in postscript or PDF format.

Papers that  have been accepted  or are under  review by other  conferences or
journals   are   not  eligible   for   submission.    However,  we   encourage
interdisciplinary  contributions submitted  or presented  in part  to  a forum
outside  of  agent  technology.   Submissions  not  conforming  to  the  above
requirements may be rejected without review.

All submissions must be sent electronically to

			    mates06@tzi.de

Acceptable  formats are PDF  and PostScript.

ORGANISATION

General Co-Chairs:

Elisabeth Andre (University Augsburg, D)
Ning Zhong (Maebashi IT, J)

Program Co-Chairs:

Klaus Fischer (DFKI Saarbrücken, D)
Ingo Timm (TZI Bremen, D) 

Steering Committee:

Hans-Dieter Burkhard (HU Berlin, D)
Stefan Kirn (University Hohenheim, D)
Matthias Klusch (DFKI, D)
Jörg Müller (Siemens AG, D)
Rainer Unland (University Duisburg-Essen, D)
Gerhard Weiss (TU München, D)

Program Committee:

Bernhard Bauer, U Augsburg, D
Michael Beetz, U Bonn, D
Wolfgang Benn, TU Chemnitz, D
Federico Bergenti, U Parma, I
Hans-Dieter Burkhard, HU Berlin, D
Monique Calisti, Whitestein Technologies, CH
Cristiano Castelfranchi , CNR, I
Thomas Christaller, Fraunhofer AIS, D
Rosaria Conte, NRC Rome, IT
Stephen Cranefield, U Otago, NZ
Hans Czap, U Trier, D
Mehdi Dastani, U Utrecht, NL
Yves Demazeau, LEIBNIZ/IMAG, F
Jörg Denziger, U Calgary, CDN
Torsten Eymann, U Bayreuth, D
Ana Garcia Serrano, TU Madrid, E
Fausto Giunchiglia, U Trento, I
Marie-Pierre Gleizes, IRIT Toulouse, F
Rune Gustavsson, Blekinge TH, S
Heikki Helin, TeliaSonera Helsinki, FIN
Heinrich Hussmann, TU Dresden, D
Toru Ishida, U Kyoto, J
Catholijn Jonker, U Nijmengen, NL
Hillol Kargupta, UMBC Baltimore, USA
Stefan Kirn, U Hohenheim, D
Franziska Klügl-Frohmeyer, U Würzburg, D
Matthias Klusch, DFKI GmbH, D
Ryszard Kowalczyk, TU Swinburne, A
Daniel Kudenko, U York, UK
Karl Kurbel, EU Viadrina Frankfurt, D
Winfried Lamersdorf, U Hamburg, D
Jürgen Lind, iteratec, D
Gabriela Lindemann, HU Berlin, D
Jiming Liu, Hongkong Baptist U, TJ
Stefano Lodi, U Bologna, I
Beatriz Lopez, U Girona, E
Thomas Malsch, TU Hamburg-Harburg, D
Heinz-Jürgen Müller, Berufsakademie Mannheim, D
Jörg Müller, Siemens, D
Werner Nutt, Heriot-Watt U Edinburgh, UK
James Odell, Agentis Software, USA
Andrea Omicini, U Bologna, I
Sascha Ossowski, U Rey Juan Carlos Madrid, E
Paolo Petta, OEFAI Vienna, A
Stefan Poslad , Queen Mary U London, UK
Frank Puppe, U Würzburg, D
Alois Reitbauer, ProFACTOR, A
Wolfgang Renz, HAW Hamburg, D
Heiko Schuldt, UMIT Innsbruck, A
Onn Shehory, IBM Research, IT
John Shepherdson, British Telecom, UK
Von-Wun Soo, National Tsing Hua U, TW
Steffen Staab, U Koblenz, D
Robert Tolksdorf, TU Berlin, D
Adelinde Uhrmacher, U Rostock, D 
Rainer Unland, U Duisburg-Essen, D
Wiebe Van der Hoek, U Liverpool, UK
Laszlo Zsolt Varga, MTA SZTAKI, H
Daniel Veit, U Karlsruhe, D

CONTACT

Klaus Fischer
German Research Center for
Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH)
D-66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
Phone: +49 (681) 302-3917
Fax  : +49 (681) 302-2235
Email: Klaus.Fischer@dfki.de

Ingo Timm
University of Bremen
Center for Computing Technologies (TZI)
Intelligent Systems
D-28334 Bremen
Phone: +49 (421) 218 - 81 76
Fax  : +49 (421) 218 - 71 96
Email: itimm@acm.org