newsletter

Welcome to the November edition of the monthly NeurIPS Newsletter!

The NeurIPS Newsletter aims to provide an easy way to keep up to date with NeurIPS events and planning progress, respond to requests for feedback and participation, and find information about new initiatives. Notably, this newsletter will focus on NeurIPS 2023, which will return to New Orleans from Sunday, December 10th – Saturday, December 16th, 2023.

You are receiving this newsletter as per your subscription preferences in your NeurIPS profile. As you prepare to attend NeurIPS, we hope that you will find the following information valuable. To remove yourself from receiving the NeurIPS newsletter, unselect the “Subscribe to Newsletter” checkbox in your profile:https://neurips.cc/Profile/subscribe. For more information on email preferences, visit: https://neurips.cc/FAQ/EmailPreferences

Topics this month include

1. Poster printing
2. Updates from our Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Chairs
3. Updates from our Tutorial Chairs
4. Updates from our Social Chairs
5. Updates from our Affinity Workshop Chairs
6. Updates from our Workshop Chairs
7. And the announcement of our collaboration with AIhub
8. Programme Agenda

1) From our Organizers: Poster Printing

You can use any service you want to print your poster. The NeurIPS service deadline was 9 Nov, but you can print your poster and bring it to New Orleans or use the FedEx service provided at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside before the 2 Dec order deadline. Read NeurIPS poster printing information page for additional insight and information about templates, virtual poster and paper thumbnails, poster pickup instructions, poster sizes and printing.

2) From our Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Chairs

Expanding the NeurIPS invitation letter

Visas continue to be a barrier to in-person attendance this year. We have expanded the visa guidance page (https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2023/Visa) and now provide more details (such as attendance at a prior year’s NeurIPS) in the automatically generated invitation letter (available after registration).

The invitation letter is an important piece of evidence in a visa application to attend NeurIPS in person. Building on our experience writing more detailed invitation letters in targeted cases (important details missing from the basic letter; expedited appointment requests), we have released a tool for registered attendees to request that the DIA Chairs augment their NeurIPS invitation letter; please see https://neurips.cc/visa/assistance for more information on who is eligible and what details we can include. In the first week that the tool was available, the DIA Chairs received and processed 19 requests, with at least 1 successful case of getting an expedited appointment so far!

Survey on barriers to in-person participation

The DIA Chairs have received many emails about visa refusals and extended wait times for visa interview appointments. Inspired by ACL’s visa survey(https://x.com/nedjmaou/status/1676994799490957317), we are launching a survey on barriers to in-person participation at NeurIPS to document and inform potential solutions to the difficulties of prospective in-person attendees. If you have faced difficulties attending NeurIPS in person (visa-related or otherwise), please complete the survey at https://forms.gle/oNFPfFxeZnLZfDoWA.

3) From our Tutorial Chairs

Conference tutorials will be held on Monday, Dec 11. Check out the full schedule here.

4) From our Socials Chairs

NeurIPS Socials are an excellent opportunity for all the members of our community to meet up, discuss, collaborate, debate, or celebrate around a common interest.

The Socials are scheduled at the end of the day on December 12th, 13th and 15th. Check out the full schedule here.

5) From our Affinity Workshop Chairs

As we approach the final weeks leading up to NeurIPS 2023, nine affinity groups are actively organizing workshops and socials, dedicated to creating inclusive spaces for marginalized communities at the conference. Most of these groups are progressively updating their pages on the NeurIPS website with details about events and papers. While most workshop acceptance notifications have closed, preparations are underway for visa invitation letters and travel arrangements. For further clarification or guidance, please check the respective group websites.

To showcase these valuable contributions, we are coordinating an in-person and virtual joint affinity poster session, emphasizing cross-learning among affinity groups. In addition to the workshops and poster session, many affinity groups will host receptions and socials at the venue or local restaurants/bars (more details coming soon). Collaborating with NeurIPS staff and DIA chairs, we are committed to providing childcare/lactation/quiet/work rooms and compiling FAQs about accessibility and gender inclusivity. Register for childcare before Nov 30 here https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2023/ChildCare.

This year NeurIPS is offering to stream affinity group events for free. No virtual pass will be needed to watch the stream, but note that some affinity groups might decide against streaming their event.

6) From our Workshops Chairs

With NeurIPS 2023 just around the corner, we couldn’t resist sharing a sneak peek. We’ve rounded up a few key highlights from a variety of workshops to offer you a glimpse into the upcoming program. Thank you to the workshop organizers who shared their highlight reels and exciting topics to be explored, summarized below:

• We have a wide spectrum of exciting workshops that connect AI/ML researchers with other interdisciplinary fields to solve important societal problems, such as theAI for Accelerated Materials Discovery (AI4Mat) Workshop for connecting with material scientists; the Generative AI and Biology (GenBio) Workshop for connecting with biologists; the Associative Memories & Hopfield Networks (AMHN) Workshop for connecting with neuroscientists and statistical physicists, with John Hopfield and Sepp Hochreiter as invited speakers; the Generalization in Planning Workshop for connecting with the reasoning and planning community. The AI for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response Workshop brings together first responders, humanitarian actors, and researchers to discuss how AI advances can aid in some of the most difficult situations in the world, e.g., the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake and the Israel-Hamas war.
• Many workshops aim to deepen the understanding and core solutions to specific domain problems. For instance, theTemporal Graph Learning (TGL) Workshopfacilitates the analysis and application of evolving network data, while the Goal-conditioned Reinforcement Learning Workshop explores the renewed interest in learning goal-directed behavior, one of the classical problems in AI, through various connections with a collection of invited speakers from different areas.
• Several workshops not only bring together ML researchers from industry and academia, but also policy experts from the government. For instance, theRegulatable ML (RegML) Workshop identifies and addresses various technical and policy challenges that arise when regulating ML models, while the Multi-Agent Security Workshop, supported by GovAI, provides a unique blend of technology and policy experts in government, industry, and academia on AI safety and security.
• Recurring workshops come with track records along with new themes for this year’s audience. For instance, theMachine Learning for Structural Biology (MLSB) Workshop is back for its 4th year with breaking results of a blind challenge for RNA structure prediction! The 2nd occurrence of the Gaze Meets ML Workshop facilitates interactive group discussions, fostering an open platform for discussing the state and future perspectives of gaze research in breakout sessions accessible to all NeurIPS attendees, with an award ceremony that assigns two Gazepoint EyeTrackers to the best paper awardees.

7) Our new collaboration with AIhub

Would you like to learn how to communicate your AI research to a general audience? AIhub staff and trustees are giving a tutorial at NeurIPS on science communication for AI researchers. You will learn how to turn your research articles into blog posts, how to use social media to promote your work, and how to avoid hype when writing about your research. The session will take place on Monday 11 December (room 235/236) and will comprise a talk from 12:45 – 13:45, followed by an informal, open drop-in session from 14:00 – 16:00 for one-on-one support with your sci-comm questions, ideas and stories. You can find out more at  https://aihub.org/sci-comm-intro-neurips-2023/.

8) Programme agenda

The NeurIPS 2023 schedule is live. To plan your days, check out the agenda here.

Thanks and looking forward to seeing you at the conference,

Alice Oh & Tristan Naumann

NeurIPS 2023 General Chairs