IJCB 2020 – CALL FOR COMPETITIONS

We invite competition proposals for the 2020 International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB 2020) in Houston, Texas, USA. The main goal of the competitions is to benchmark state-of-the art algorithms, to consolidate research, identify open biometrics-related problems and most importantly to present novel insights based on a group benchmarking effort within a specific problem area of biometrics. We solicit competition proposals on any topic of interest to the broader biometric community and strongly encourage proposals focusing on new emerging fields and open research questions that are able to attract a significant number of participants. Competition organizers having a strong track record in the field are especially welcome.

The deadline for submitting competition proposals is May 8th, 2020. Decisions will be circulated by May 12th, 2020.

*** Competition Proposal Submission ***
Competition proposals should be sent to the IJCB 2020 competition co-chairs, Hien V. Nyugen (hvnguy35@central.uh.edu) and Anush Sankaran (anush.sankaran@gmail.com), with the email subject »IJCB 2020 Competition Proposal: [title of your competition]«. The proposal should include the following information to facilitate the decision process:

• Title of the competition.
• Names, affiliations, contact information, and a brief CV of the competition organizers.
• A list of three most relevant publications related to the competition for each organizer.
• Justification:
    o Motivation for the competition, expected outcomes and anticipated impact,
    o Relevance to IJCB 2020,
    o Relationship to previous competitions, if any.
• Contribution
    o Description of the novelty of the competition,
    o Research questions to be investigated,
    o Expected contributions of the competition.
• Execution:
    o  Description of the dataset(s) used for the competition and the available annotations,
    o Details on the experimental protocol and result generation/submission procedure,
    o Information on the platform used (for data sharing, submission, verification of the results), if any,
    o Description of the evaluation criteria (performance metrics) and available baseline implementations/code (e.g., a starter kit).
    o A video tutorial of the competition, and the expected results, is preferred. Please upload the video on YouTube and share the link.
• Organization:
    o Expected minimum number of external participants (separate from the organizers),
    o Plan for promoting the competition and attracting participants,
    o Description of the planned coordination activities,
    o A detailed timeline for the competition.
• Other relevant information.

The authors are encouraged to use the template, available at the IJCB 2020 web page for their proposal: https://ieee-biometrics.org/ijcb2020/Program.html#cfc

*** Schedule ***
The competitions should preferably start in May or early June 2020 and be completed by the summary-paper submission deadline on August 15th, 2020. Competition organizers will also be requested to prepare a web page for the competition, which will be linked from the conference web site. The website should be online before the start of the competition.
 
*** Proceedings and Presentation ***
Competition organizers will be invited to submit a summary paper discussing organization, datasets, and results by August 15th, 2020. The summary papers will be considered for inclusion in the IJCB 2020 conference program and should follow the same formatting and presentation rules as regular papers. Unlike regular papers, competition papers will be reviewed by the IJCB program chairs. Organization of a competition in the scope of IJCB 2020 does not guarantee acceptance of the summary papers. The papers need to make a clear contribution either in terms of new insight, novel research questions addressed, novel research problems or novel algorithmic solutions. The presentation format (if accepted) will be determined based on the quality of the submission. Accepted summary papers will be included in the proceedings of IJCB 2020 and send for inclusion into IEEE Xplore.     

*** Important Dates ***
Deadline for submitting proposals:      May 8th, 2020
Decisions to organizers:         May 12th, 2020
Submission of summary papers:       August 15th, 2020

For any additional information please contact the IJCB 2020 Competition Co-Chairs:
Hien V. Nyugen (hvnguy35@central.uh.edu) and
Anush Sankaran (anush.sankaran@gmail.com)