Knowledge Discovery Nuggets Index

We announce a formation of SIGKDD -- Special Interest Group of ACM --
a professional Knowledge Discovery and
Data Mining Organization under the umbrella of ACM.

The primary focus of SIGKDD is to provide
the premier forum for advancement and adoption of the 'science' of
knowledge discovery and data mining. To do this, the
SIGKDD will encourage

• basic research in KDD (through annual research conferences, newsletter and other related activities)
  
• adoption of 'standards' in the market in terms of
  terminology, evaluation, methodology
  
• interdisciplinary education among KDD researchers,
  practitioners, and users
  

Despite all the activities, both in the market
and in R&D laboratories, the field is in its infancy.
Many of the commercial products do not have the
robustness, scalability, and functionality that customers
require. Various data-mining algorithms impose serious restrictions on
their application. The process of knowledge discovery and data mining
is far from automated, and therefore can be quite difficult to use
effectively.

The field of knowledge discovery and data mining is an
interdisciplinary one, requiring cross fertilization of several
fields, as noted earlier. Therefore, SIGKDD will work closely with
other related ACM SIGs, including SIGMOD, SIGART, SIGMIS, SIGIR,
SIGCHI, SIGGRAPH, etc., as well as non-ACM societies, such as AAAI,
IEEE, ASA (American Statistical Association), etc. The collaboration
will take the form of in-cooperation (and possibly co-sponsorship)
arrangements for the annual SIGKDD conferences, and possible cross
publication of relevant technical articles and informational data in
the newsletters.

Researchers and practitioners from fields other than
computer science (such as statistics and mathematics) will
be particularly welcome in SIGKDD.

Against this backdrop, many of the leaders of the field have agreed to
the formation of an international society on knowledge discovery and
data mining as an ACM SIG. In particular, the KDD Conference steering
committee, composed of former program and general chairs of previous KDD
conferences, has enthusiastically supported the formation of SIGKDD.
The initial activities of
SIGKDD will include converting the KDD conference into a SIGKDD annual
conference, and creating a SIGKDD newsletter. The newsletter will
publish invited and submitted technical articles, news, user stories,
etc. The conference will publish a proceedings of all accepted
technical papers on both
research and applications in the field of KDD.
The conference will include presentations of technical papers, tutorials, panel
discussions, prototype exhibits, etc. The conference is expected to
attract severak hundred attendees.

Brief biographical sketches of five of the prominent leaders of the
field who have committed to championing the efforts of SIGKDD, besides are at
www.acm.org/sigkdd

The SIGKDD Bylaws and the initial year budget have both been approved
by the ACM SIG Board on June 13, 1998.

The provisional executive committee of SIGKDD will consist of

Won Kim, Ph.D., Chair
Rakesh Agrawal, Secretary/Treasurer
Usama Fayyad, Director and Editor of SIGKDD Newsletter
Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, Director
Daryl Pregybon, Director
Padhraic Smyth, Director

The Chair position and the Secretary/Treasurer position
are elective ones and will be contested at the end of the SIG provisional
period. These six people will form an executive committee,
and there will be a separate advisory committee consisting of
prominent leaders from various disciplines both academia and industry.

The biographical sketches of the SIGKDD officers are at
http://www.kdnuggets.com/sigkdd/

This is a motivational report for research in sustainable ecology (an issue
that affects us all). Furthermore, a strong case is made that reserach in
computer science, library and information science, and communications
technology (IT/CS) is vital to the success of developing a National
Biodiversity Information Infrastructure and achieving the biodiversity and
ecology research goals as well as societal, educational and economic
benefits.

Section I: Increase the Information Content of the National Biological
Information Infrastructure and Section IV: Build a Next Generation'
National Biological Information Infrastructure (with our own Michael Lesk
being quoted!) are most relevant to the IT/CS communities.

There is plenty of motivation to start thinking about the research issues
and forming partnerships with the ecologists, etc.

This paragraph from Section IV says it very clearly:

'The biodiversity and ecosystems information domain is not at present as
amenable to correlation, analysis, synthesis and presentation across
networks as are other domains because of the problems of complexity pointed
out above and because the CS/IT community has, to date, more or less
ignored these sorts of data and the associated challenges. A concerted
research effort, by government, business, and academia is needed, and
needed soon, so that the masses of data and information that are stored in
the museums, libraries, and government agencies of this country, and that
are generated daily by Mission to Planet Earth and other activities, can be
put to good use.'

Maria Zemankova

 Automated Problem Solving Intelligent Agents Natural Language Processing

 Adaptive Control Intelligent Networks Neural Networks

 CAD/CAM Intelligent Database Planning & Scheduling

 Case-based Reasoning Intelligent Interfaces Practical Applications

 Computer Vision Intelligent Tutoring Reasoning Under Uncertainty

 Connectionist Models KBS Methodologies Robotics

 Data Mining Knowledge Acquisition Sensor Fusion

 Distributed AI Architect Knowledge Discovery Spatial & Temporal Reasoning

 Expert Systems Knowledge Representation Speech Recognition

 Fuzzy Logic Machine Learning System Integration Tools

 Genetic Algorithms Model-based Reasoning Verification & Validation

 Heuristic Searching

 

Authors are invited to submit 1) a URL address containing a printable
version of their paper; 2) a list of key words (some sample topics are
listed above); 3) no more than one page (by email) describing: a) the
contribution, b) the significance, and c) the results of the presented
work; and 4) one hard copy of their paper to the Program Co-chair at the
address given below no later than October 31,
1998. A list of special tracks will be announced through the URL:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~iimam/ieaaie99/ieaaie99.html

For submission guidelines and other info see URL above.
[edited GPS]

 Dr. Moonis Ali Dr. Ibrahim Imam

 General Chair of IEA/AIE-99 Program Co-Chair of IEA/AIE-99

 Southwest Texas State University Thinking Machines Corporation

 Department of Computer Science 16 New England Executive Park

 601 University Drive, Burlington, MA 01803, USA

 San Marcos TX 78666-4616 USA Email: ifi@think.com 


 Email: ma04@swt.edu 


 

Workshop proposals should follow the guideline at:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~iimam/ieaaie99/WS99.html

Tutorial proposals should follow the guideline at:

http://mason.gmu.edu/~iimam/ieaaie99/TU99.html