Features

On October 27-28, respected analytical thought leaders will join hundreds of data mining practitioners for the world's largest data mining conference, M2008 (www.sas.com/m2008). Hosted by SAS, the eleventh annual data mining conference will feature six keynote addresses and more than 30 session talks in multiple tracks.

To help individuals learn the latest data mining theories, trends and best practices in the field, SAS hosts M2008 its eleventh annual data mining conference, this October 27-28 in Las Vegas. The largest data mining conference of its kind, M2008 provides attendees a forum for exchanging ideas with hundreds of data mining practitioners and more than 50 of the most respected data mining experts in the world. This year's conference is chaired by SAS' Director of Higher Education Consulting Dr. Jerry Oglesby and Timothy Rey, manager of Dow Chemical's Data Mining and Modeling organization.

"At M2008, attendees will learn the latest advances, best practices, and case studies from some of the most sought-after data mining experts in the field," said Oglesby. Last year's conference attracted more than 800 data mining practitioners and business decision makers from more than 330 different business, academic, and government organizations, making it the largest data mining conference of its kind in the world.

"We've secured an outstanding lineup of speakers for M2008," Oglesby continued. "Not only are our speakers innovative thought-leaders in the field of data mining, but they are engaging practitioners who will provide information and ideas that will help our attendees become better data miners."

Keynote Speakers Confirmed keynote speakers to-date include:

• Bart Baesens, professor at the Faculty of Applied Economic Sciences at the K.U.Leuven (Belgium) and the School of Management of the University of Southampton (United Kingdom). Baesens has done extensive research on data mining, credit scoring, and web mining.

• Niall Fraser, founder and principal scientist of Open Options Corporation. Dr. Fraser is responsible for the ongoing technical development of the Open Options software and for managing key client applications.

• John MacGregor, The Dofasco Chair in Process Automation and Information Technology at MCMaster University. MacGregor is also a cofounder of the McMaster Advanced Control Consortium that is sponsored by many international companies and is president of ProSensus, Inc., a spin off company from the consortium.

• Michael North, Deputy Director of the Center for Complex Adaptive Agent Systems Simulation within the Decision and Information Sciences Division of Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. North has over fifteen years of experience developing and applying advanced modeling and simulation applications for various branches of the U.S. federal government; state government; several international agencies; private industry; and academia.

• Petra Perner, director of the Institute of Computer Vision and Applied Computer Sciences. Perner's research interests include image analysis and interpretation, machine learning, data mining, image mining and case-based reasoning.

• Daniel Thorpe, Senior Vice President at Wachovia and Director of Statistics and Modeling for the Insight and Innovation Division. Dr. Thorpe is responsible for generating customer insight from the huge amounts of data and information that Wachovia collects.

• Business applications
• Perspectives from retail
• Perspectives from financial services
• Perspectives from healthcare
• New and emerging technologies
• Data mining in marketing

More Information

• learn more about M2008
• View the list of confirmed speakers
• Register soon and $200