We are happy to announce that the keynote speakers of ECAL 2017 cover a wide variety of topics and include:
 

• Bill Sellers (University of Manchester, UK): Reconstructing Ancient Life using Virtual Robots
• Csaba Pál (Biological Research Centre, Szeged, Hungary): Complex adaptations in evolution
• Frances Westall (CNRS, Orléans, France) and Thomas Georgelin (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France): Rocks and the origin of life
• Viola Schiaffonati (Politecnico di Milano, Italy): Experimenting with computing and in computing: Stretching the traditional notion of experimentation
• Philippe Faure (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France): Drug addiction and alteration of decision making process
• Sabine Hauert (University of Bristol, UK): Swarming nanomedicine
• Andreas Wessel-Therhorn (animator and film director) and Laurent Pujo-Menjouet (Université Lyon 1, France): The illusion of life

For this edition the special theme is “Artificial life and the scientific method: Create, play, experiment, discover”. We are especially expecting contributions that investigate the use of computer simulations in the scientific method, and/or the interactions between in silico, in vitro and in vivo experiments. Other topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following aspects of Artificial Life:

- Evolutionary dynamics
- Ecological and social dynamics
- Artificial chemistry, origins of life
- Computational cellular biology/physiology/systems biology
- Self-replication, self-repair and morphogenesis
- Bio-inspired, cognitive and evolutionary robotics
- Perception, cognition and behavior
- Evolution of language, computational linguistics
- Embodied, interactive systems
- Collective dynamics of swarms
- Complex dynamical systems and networks
- Cellular automata and discrete dynamical systems
- Economy/society/social media as living systems
- Computational humanities/anthropology/archeology
- Methodologies and tools for artificial life
- Interactions between in silico/in vitro/in vivo experiments
- Philosophical, epistemological and ethical issues
- Artificial life and education
- Artificial life-based art
- Applications of artificial life
- Living technologies

The submission deadline is April 9th, 2017. Guidelines for submission and template files can be found here:
https://project.inria.fr/ecal2017/submission-guidelines/
Accepted papers will be published by MIT Press as open-access electronic proceedings.

* ORGANISING COMMITTEE *

Dr Carole Knibbe (Scientific Chair, Université Lyon 1, LIRIS)
Prof Guillaume Beslon (Local Chair, INSA Lyon, LIRIS)
Dr David P. Parsons (Technical Chair, Inria Rhône-Alpes)
Prof Salima Hassas (Université Lyon 1, LIRIS)
Dr Dusan Misevic (Workshop Chair, University René Descartes, Paris)
Prof Nicolas Bredèche (Tutorial Chair, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris)
Prof Olivier Simonin (Sponsor Chair, Insa de Lyon, CITI)
Prof Hédi Soula (Social Networks Chair, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris)
Dr Jonathan Rouzaud-Cornabas (INSA Lyon, LIRIS)
Vincent Liard (INSA Lyon, LIRIS)
Caroline Lothe (Local support, Inria Rhône-Alpes)
Sophie Azzaro (Local support, Inria Rhône-Alpes)

We look forward to seeing you in Lyon in September!