International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics ’02

The First International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics was organized by the Machine Learning Centre of Hebei University in collaboration with the IEEE SMC Technical Committee on Cybernetics and was held in Beijing, 4-5 November 2002. This conference was the first of its kind and represented a major effort to bring together key researchers in the field of the machine learning and cybernetics around the world. It offered an opportunity in enhancing the mutual understanding of machine learning and cybernetics research progress in China and other parts of the world, and in developing connections among the places.

The event began with a reception on the day preceding the conference in which members of the organizing committee and session chairs met for social exchanges. The reception brought together old acquaintances and built new ties for future research collaborations. The conference was honoured to have the presence of Professor Wang Hong Rui, President of Hebei University, China and Dr. Michael Smith, President of the IEEE SMC Society, who gave speeches at the Opening Ceremony. Four distinguished speakers also gave keynote speeches in the conference. Prof. J. M. Keller (Chief-Editor, IEEE Trans. on Fuzzy Systems), talked on the application of soft computing techniques in sensor and algorithm fusion. Prof. Bernhard Schoelkopf, authority in Support Vector Machine, talked on the subject of kernels and their applications. Prof. J. M. Zurada (Chief-Editor, IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks), spoke on the issue of dimension reduction in data mining and the use of perceptron networks for producing IF-THEN rules. Prof. Zhongzhi Shi, Chinese Academy of Sciences, presented the design and implementation of a data mining platform.

The conference attracted well over 400 participants from all over the world. The papers presented in the conference covered a wide spectrum of topics both in theory and applications, in areas of fuzzy systems, neural network, statistical learning, etc. and represented research results from all major universities in China. We saw the enthusiastic participation of a lot of young researchers who shown great potentials in their works. Four papers were selected by a panel from the presented papers for the Outstanding Paper Award to recognize their outstanding contribution to the field.

The conference, which received over 600 paper submissions and over 400 attendees, represented one of the most successful international conferences of its kind. Virtually every major university in China was represented. To quite a few young and eager Chinese graduate students, this was their first international conference participation. It also represented the first major technically sponsored conference by the IEEE SMC Society in China. To keep up the momentum of this event, the 2003 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics is being organized in Xi-an. Apart from the sponsorship of Machine Learning Centre of the Hebei University and the IEEE SMC TC on Cybernetics, we also have the support of the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi-an, China. Keynote speakers include Professors Lotfi Zadeh, Donald Brown, S.Y. Kung, Z.Q. Liu and Daniel Yeung. Professors Mo Jamshidi, Donald Brown, Lim Keller, and Jacek Zurada will conduct four tutorial sessions. The organizers look forward to an enthusiastic participant all around China and other parts of the world.