• 📢 Mailing List: Join the Cognitive Systems mailing list for the most up-to-date information.
• 🧳 Logistics and Registration Information: Details about the conference venue, air and ground transportation, and hotels is now available at the logistics page.

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Overview

The Twelfth Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems will take place from Monday, October 13, to Wednesday, October 15, 2025, at the Global Learning Center at Georgia Institute of Technology. There will also be a day of pre-conference workshops on October 12, 2025.

The conference aims to bring together researchers to advance the original goals of artificial intelligence: to explain cognition and learning in computational terms and to reproduce a broad range of intelligent behaviors and human abilities in computational artifacts.

The conference welcomes many types of research, including demonstrations of new capabilities, empirical studies of implemented systems, and formal analyses of complex tasks. The term "cognitive" refers to any computational artifact that thinks or reasons, whether or not it works the same way as humans. Topics of interest include:

Conceptual Inference and Reasoning Problem Solving, Planning, and Heuristic Search Common Sense and Qualitative Modeling Memory Storage and Retrieval Structural Learning and Knowledge Capture Natural Language Understanding and Generation Discourse and Dialogue Processing Vision, Audition, and High-level Perception Mental Imagery and Iconic Processing Cognitive Models and Architectures Cognitive Robotics and Embodied Cognition High-level Execution and Control Multi-Tasking and Attention Social Cognition and Interaction Cognitive Aspects of Emotion and Personality Metacognition and Meta-level Reasoning Collaboration and Teaming

We encourage participation from anyone who is interested in computational approaches to complex cognition, human-level intelligence, and related topics.

Submissions

We invite researchers to submit papers for presentation at the conference via OpenReview. Papers should have no more than sixteen (16) single-column pages and must follow the formatting instructions. Appendixes will not count toward the 16-page limit. The meeting will consider two types of submissions.

• Technical papers should report an implemented cognitive system, the detailed design for such a system, or an analysis of some complex task. Authors of technical papers should examine the review form carefully before submission, as referees will expect them to address the questions therein.
• Commentaries should review the state of the field, pose challenge problems, or relate alternative frameworks. These essays will be reviewed separately, with the main criteria for acceptance being relevance to the conference, clear statements of positions, and effective communication. They may be less than 16 pages.

Authors of papers that are accepted for oral presentation at the conference may be invited to publish an expanded version as an article in the associated electronic journal Advances in Cognitive Systems.

Important Dates
— Paper Abstracts Due	July 28, 2025	August 11, 2025
— Paper Submissions Due	August 2, 2025	August 18, 2025
— All Reviews Submitted	August 27, 2025	September 8, 2025
— Paper Notifications Sent to Authors	September 5, 2025	September 15, 2025
— Camera Ready Papers Due	September 26, 2025	October 6, 2025
— Conference Schedule Released	September 12, 2025	October 12, 2025
The time zone for each deadline is 11:59 pm Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12:00)

Schedule, Logistics, and Registration

The Annual Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems will run from Monday, October 13, to Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at the Global Learning Center at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. The meeting will include extended technical presentations, leisurely breaks to encourage discussions, and poster receptions to foster additional interactions among participants.

The following pre-conference workshops will take place on Sunday, October 12, 2025, at the Technology Square Research Building:

• Goal Reasoning and Alignment Workshop

The schedule for conference and workshops will be available shortly after paper decisions have been made. Information about registration, transportation, and lodging is available at the meeting's logistics page.

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Program Chair

• Christopher J. MacLellan Georgia Institute of Technology

Organizing Committee

• Will Bridewell US Naval Research Laboratory
• Michael Cox Wright State University
• Matthew Klenk Toyota Research Institute
• Pat Langley ISLE / Georgia Tech Research Institute
• Jamie Macbeth Smith College
• Sergei Nirenburg Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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