by Roman Garnett (General chair), Carola Doerr (PC Chair), Jan van Rijn (PC Chair) and Leman Akoglu (PC Chair)
After two editions in Europe, the 2025 AutoML conference will return to North America, taking place from 8-11 September in New York City.
The AutoML conference provides a platform for high-quality research related to the rich and interdisciplinary field of automated machine learning. Similar to last year, the conference will feature two parallel tracks: one on AutoML methods and one on applications, benchmarks, challenges, and datasets (ABCD) for AutoML (see the call for papers for more!).
We would like to take this opportunity to highlight some changes to the program and organization of the conference this year. Major goals for this year are building bridges to new communities and providing more opportunities for participation. We are:
Promoting geographic diversity
Although previous editions of the conference have featured participation from numerous continents, we have seen some overrepresentation of a few geographic “hot spots” of AutoML research. This year, we are actively seeking to broaden the geographic diversity of the conference and grow our community accordingly. We are especially taking great care in encouraging geographic diversity while curating the panel of area chairs and PC members. and invited speakers.
Promoting content diversity – Expanding scope of workshop track
TThis year the conference will continue to feature a dedicated track (previously called the “workshop track”) for showcasing short papers, works in progress, etc. However, this year we will expand the scope of this track significantly, inviting short papers, late-breaking / journal papers, non-traditional content (blog posts, podcasts, etc.), posters, position papers, etc. Stay tuned for a call for content!
Promoting thematic diversity – Inviting proposals for workshops, etc.
In addition to the revamped workshop track, we are additionally reserving a half-day of the conference for externally organized events such as workshops, seminars, hackathons, etc. Through these more specialized events, we can expand the scope of the conference and, hopefully, expand the community as well. Stay tuned for a call for proposals!
Streamlined review process
The primary aim of the AutoML conference has always been – and remains – to provide a platform for high-quality research. Our philosophy for achieving this goal has always been to encourage a rigorous and thoughtful peer-review process. In previous years, this process has included mandatory author rebuttal and author–reviewer discussion phases. These discussions entail a great deal of effort from all participants involved, but historically have only provided useful insight for the decision phase for a small subset of papers.
This year, we seek to simultaneously streamline the review process and boost the signal-to-noise ratio in our review efforts, by:
- Asking area chairs to participate, in a sustainable and targeted manner, in the review process. For example, we will ask ACs to provide reviews for borderline papers and to be available to serve as emergency reviewers as required. As senior members of the community, these reviews will undoubtedly be of high quality and will be allocated to the papers requiring the most insight.
- Eliminating the mandatory author rebuttal phase. In its place, we will invite authors who feel they have received an unfair decision to reach out to the program chairs for additional careful review and reconsideration. This mechanism will allow targeted rebuttals to take place for the papers that most need additional oversight.
If you want to help out by joining the program and/or organization committee, please reach out to us at pc-chairs-2025@automl.cc.
We hope to welcome your submission in March, and hope to see you this September in New York City!
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