<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="DC48BE62-AEF3-492C-8ACF-E721218850D5" src="cid:A39EC184-B57D-4D38-88AA-C27B689B5BA7" class=""></div><div class="">------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class=""><div class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">LifeCLEF 2020 - Call for participation</b></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">------------------------------------------------------------</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">[Please distribute, Sorry for multiple copies]</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We cordially invite you to participate in the seventh edition of the LifeCLEF challenge (<a href="http://www.lifeclef.org" class="">http://www.lifeclef.org</a>). LifeCLEF is one of the labs of CLEF 2020 (<a href="https://clef2020.clef-initiative.eu/" class="">https://clef2020.clef-initiative.eu/</a>), which will be held in Thessaloniki Greece (22-25 September 2020). </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><div class=""><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;"><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><b class="">Motivation</b>: Building accurate knowledge of the identity, the geographic distribution and the evolution of species is essential for a sustainable development of humanity, as well as for biodiversity conservation. However, the burden of the routine identification of plants and animals in the field is strongly penalizing the aggregation of new data and knowledge. Identifying and naming living plants or animals is actually almost impossible for the general public and often a difficult task for professionals and naturalists. Bridging this gap is a key challenge towards enabling effective biodiversity monitoring systems. The LifeCLEF evaluation campaign aims at boosting and evaluating the advances in this domain since 2011. </span></p><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;">The 2020 edition of LifeCLEF proposes four data-oriented challenges related to the identification and prediction of biodiversity: </p><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;"><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><b class="">Challenge 1 - </b></span><b class=""><a href="https://www.imageclef.org/BirdCLEF2020" class="">BirdCLEF</a>: B</b><b class="">ird species recognition in audio soundscapes</b></p><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;"><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><b class="">Challenge 2 - <a href="https://www.imageclef.org/GeoLifeCLEF2020" class="">GeoLifeCLEF</a>: Location-Based Species Prediction </b><span class="">(based on environmental and occurrence data)</span></span></p><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;"><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><b class="">Challenge 3 - </b><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><a href="https://www.imageclef.org/PlantCLEF2020" class=""><b class="">PlantCLEF</b></a>: <b class="">Cross-domain plant identification </b>(from herbarium specimens to plant pictures)</span></span></p><p class="" style="margin: 0.6em 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; orphans: 2; widows: 2; position: static; z-index: auto;"><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><b class=""><b class="">Challenge</b> 4 - </b></span><span class="" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal;"><a href="https://www.imageclef.org/SnakeCLEF2020" class=""><b class="">SnakeCLEF</b></a>: <b class="">Image-based snake identification</b></span></p></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><b class="">Schedule (tentative, could be delayed a few weeks due to the covid19):</b></div><div class=""><span class=""><ul class="" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1.5em; list-style-image: url("applewebdata://82CF432B-FBC9-490C-BF3B-3FE3C61D0E20/images/menu-leaf.gif"); font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><li class="" style="margin: 0.15em 0px 0.15em 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.1em;">Beginning of May 2020: submission of runs by the participants</li><li class="" style="margin: 0.15em 0px 0.15em 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.1em;">Mid-May 2020: release of processed results by the task organizers (online)</li><li class="" style="margin: 0.15em 0px 0.15em 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.1em;">End of May 2020: deadline for submission of working note papers by the participants</li><li class="" style="margin: 0.15em 0px 0.15em 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.1em;">End of June 2020: camera ready working note papers of participants and organizers<a class=""></a></li><li class="" style="margin: 0.15em 0px 0.15em 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.1em;">22-25 Sept 2020: <a href="https://clef2020.clef-initiative.eu/" class="">CLEF 2020</a> Thessaloniki, Greece</li></ul></span></div><div class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></div><div class=""><span class=""><div class="" style="orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><b class="">Registration:</b></div><div class="">LifeCLEF relies on the <a href="https://www.aicrowd.com/" class=""><b class="">AIcrowd</b></a> open platform for registration, submission and results management. Participants have to first create a crowdAI account (<a href="https://www.aicrowd.com/participants/sign_up" class="">https://www.aicrowd.com/participants/sign_up</a>), and then go to the <i class="">Challenges </i>tab to access a specific LifeCLEF challenge. <b class="">In order to be compliant with the CLEF registration requirements, please edit your profile by providing the following information : <i class="">First name, Last name, Affiliation, Address, City</i>. <font size="2" class=""><span class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none currentcolor; outline: currentcolor none 0px;">Regarding the</span><span class="" style="font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.870588); vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none currentcolor; outline: currentcolor none 0px;"> <i class="">username</i></span><span class="" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px none currentcolor; outline: currentcolor none 0px;">, please choose a name that represents your team/organism since it will be used for reference purposes</span>.</font></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><font size="2" class=""><br class=""></font></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><font size="2" class=""><br class=""></font></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><font size="2" class="">Reward:</font></b></div><div class=""><span class=""><font class=""><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class="">The winner of each of the four LifeCLEF 2020 challenges will be offered a cloud credit grants of 5k USD as part of Microsoft's </span><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/ai-for-earth" style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class="">AI for earth</a><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;" class=""> program.</span></font></span></div><div class=""><b class=""><font size="2" class=""><br class=""></font></b></div><div class=""><b class=""><font size="2" class=""><b class="" style="font-size: 12px; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">Credits:</b></font></b></div></span></div><div class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="5EA395A7-CC13-447E-8726-370127B0598D" width="320" height="82" src="cid:6FC69993-2153-4DA7-BCF9-7EF21AA3AAAA" class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br class="">The Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF) Initiative mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:clef@dei.unipd.it" class="">clef@dei.unipd.it</a><br class=""><a href="http://www.clef-initiative.eu/" class="">http://www.clef-initiative.eu/</a><br class="">To (un-)subscribe, please, write to Nicola Ferro (<a href="mailto:ferro@dei.unipd.it" class="">ferro@dei.unipd.it</a>)</body></html>