Panel Sessions

P1 - Preparing Academics for a Business World

P2 - Foundations of Computational Intelligence - the Basis of Smart Adaptive Systems of the Future?

P3 - The Art of Data Mining, and the Quest for Greater Insight

P4 - Industrial Applications of Computational Intelligence

P5 - Computational Intelligence and Games

P6 - Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Bioengineering

P7 - Publication Opportunities in Computational Intelligence

P8 - Computational Finance and Economics: Research, Applications, and the Future

P9 - Type-2 Fuzzy Systems: Past, Present, Challenges and Future Directions

P10 - Challenges and Opportunities of Computational Intelligence Research - Pioneers Speaking

P11 - Funding Opportunities in Computational Intelligence

Venue: Convention Hall B

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Preparing Academics for a Business World
Part I : June 2 (Monday), 10:30 - 11:30
Part II: June 3 (Tuesday), 10:30 - 11:30

Moderators:
Arthur Kordon, The Dow Chemical Company, USA
Ian Parmee, University of the West of England, UK
Ali Zalzala, Hikma Group Ltd., UAE

Outline:
The objective of the panel is to illustrate the manner in which academic researchers can work with industry whilst maintaining a fundamental research base and ensuring that such base benefits from industrial collaboration.

Members of the CI community are cordially invited to offer their experiences through a concise 10-minute presentation. A presentation should redress an actual relevant experience, and provide insights into the following four topics:

• Identifying a business needs.

• Estimating the potential of new research methods for value creation.

• Defining the competitive advantages of a new research method.

• Communicating research methods effectively to non-technical people.

Six presentations will be selected for the panel, and presenters may thereafter be invited to join the Task Force. The selected presenters will, along with the Panel moderators, offer realistic guidelines on how to create value by applying different computational intelligence methods in practice.

Interested parties should email a short description of their proposed presentation (maximum of up to 100 words) to any of the Panel moderators, by 10th May 2008.

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Foundations of Computational Intelligence - the Basis of Smart Adaptive Systems of the Future?
June 2 (Monday),  14:00 - 15:00

Moderator:
Bogdan Gabrys, Bournemouth University, UK

Panellists:
Wlodek Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
Nik Kasabov, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Trevor Martin, University of Bristol, UK
Jerry M. Mendel, University of Southern California, USA
Takashi Omori, Hokkaido University, Japan
Xin Yao, The University of Birmingham, UK
 

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The Art of Data Mining, and the Quest for Greater Insight
June 2 (Monday), 15:00 - 16:00

Moderator:
Kate Smith-Miles, Deakin University, Australia

Panelists:
Kristin Bennett, Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Sven Crone, Lancaster University, UK
Wlodzislaw Duch, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
Isabelle Guyon, ClopiNet, USA
Nik Kasabov, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Zhi-Hua Zhou, Nanjing University, China

Outline:
The data mining process requires a number of decisions to be made in each stage: from selection of data and variables, choice of suitable sampling methods, data pre-processing steps, and selection of the best knowledge discovery algorithms and their parameters. With so many choices that can have significant impact upon the eventual success of the results, data mining can sometimes be seen as more art than science unless the user is highly knowledgeable.

This panel discussion aims to bring together experts in data mining to see if we can come up with some ideas about our collective knowledge of when certain techniques (algorithms, pre-processing methods, etc.) are expected to perform well. How much insight do we have into the most effective data mining process? How can recent research in model selection and meta-learning help us to gain greater insight into the most effective data mining steps for a given problem? Can we take some of the mystery and need for trial and error out of the process, and come up with some expert guidelines, and lay the foundations for merging this information with large scale empirical analysis in the future?

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Industrial Applications of Computational Intelligence
June 2 (Monday),  16:30 - 18:00

Moderator:
Feng Xue, General Electric Global Research, USA

Panelists:
Piero Bonissone, General Electric Global Research, USA
Dimitar Filev, Ford Motor Company, USA
David B. Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Yaochu Jin, Honda Research Institute Europe, Germany
Arthur Kordon, The Dow Chemical Company, USA
Kenneth Marko, ETAS Inc., USA
Detlef Nauck, BT Group, UK
Anil Varm, General Electric Global Research, USA

Outline:
Computational Intelligence (CI) is a field that has greatly evolved in the last quarter of century. As part of the field, the several biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms including neural networks, evolutionary computation, fuzzy systems, and hybrid intelligent systems, are not just abstract ideas any more. They have been applied to various real-world applications to tackle the very difficult problems. We are observing an evolving world that requires more and more intelligent systems to deal with the complexity we have never experienced before. In this regard, it is meaningful to discuss the various applications of computational intelligence in industry today and associated challenges. The motivation is to foster further research and development in computational intelligence technologies for solving real-world problems.

At the IEEE WCCI-2008, we plan to have a panel session aimed at discussing these applications. The goal of this panel is to present to the audience how computational intelligence has been applied successfully to solve difficult real-world problems. The panel discuss will focus on:

• Successful industrial applications of computational intelligence and challenges involved in those

• Promising technologies and gaps in the current state of art based on industrial needs, and areas the academic research community may contribute

Panelist from different industries will present a variety of applications to drive discussions on challenges and technology gaps. A list of applications includes: Fuzzy logic and evolutionary search for model development in Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) and in Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM); Fuzzy logic as a tool for introducing engineering intuition into intelligent systems; CI for gaming; CI techniques, such as evolutionary algorithms and neural networks, for aerodynamic design optimization; CI in chemical industry for solving difficult problems in the area of manufacturing, new product development, and data mining; CI for developing controls and diagnostics for complex systems and challenges of introducing CI techniques into mainstream design and development process; CI solutions for mobile workforce management and a platform for automatic data analysis using fuzzy technology.
 

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Computational Intelligence and Games
June 3 (Tuesday),  14:00 - 15:00

Moderator:
Simon M. Lucas, University of Essex, UK

Panelists:
David B. Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Graham Kendall, University of Nottingham, UK
Sushil Louis, University of Nevada-Reno, USA
Jacek Mañdziuk, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland
Tomoharu Nakashima, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan
Julian Togelius, Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Switzerland
Xin Yao, The University of Birmingham, UK

Outline:
Games provide an excellent test bed for and application of a wide range of computational intelligence methods, including fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computation, and temporal difference learning. There has been a significant body of games-related work presented at IEEE CIS conferences, especially over the last five years, with special sessions at CEC since 2003, and a dedicated annual conference series (IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG)) since 2005.

The panel will begin with each panel member giving a short talk (less than 5 mins) outlining their own perspective on the area; the discussion will then be thrown open for other panel members and audience members.

Topics to be discussed may include:

• Major challenges for various game genres
• Emerging trends
• Working with the games industry
• Learning in games
• New games genres facilitated by CI techniques
• Interchange standards
• Cases of success or failure for CI in games
• General game intelligence (e.g. a general purpose 'drop-n-play' NPC (Non-Player Character).
• Competitions and Benchmarks

We have had successful panel sessions at previous IEEE CEC and IEEE CIG conferences: there is every reason to expect that this one will produce much lively and interesting discussion. A summary of the panel discussion will be published on the IEEE CIS Games TC website after the event.

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Computational Intelligence in Bioinformatics and Bioengineering
June 3 (Tuesday),  15:00 - 16:00

Moderator:
Kay C. Wiese, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Panelists:
Dan Ashlock, University of Guelph, Canada
Julia Pau-Choo Chung, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Gary Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Mihail Popescu, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA
Gwenn Volkert, Kent State University, USA

Outline:
Bioinformatics and Bioengineering have received much attention and interest in the past years. The topics are very interdisciplinary requiring collaboration of engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists and biochemists.

Bioinformatics addresses problems at the molecular level and is concerned with the development and application of innovative algorithms to solve these problems. Such problems include biological sequence analysis, RNA and protein structure prediction, pathway finding, gene finding, RNA gene finding, reconstructing phylogenetic trees, and many others. Most of these problems are very difficult to solve and considered NP-hard. For some problems deterministic polynomial time algorithms exist, but even in these cases, the answer provided by the algorithm may be far from the biological reality, due to model constraints and inaccuracies. Many bioinformatics problems can be tackled with computational intelligence methods (neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation), which can provide acceptable answers in acceptable time and even outperform deterministic algorithms in terms of biological accuracies.

This panel will share their experiences developing CI methods for bioinformatics and bioengineering. The panel will be run in an interactive mode, where questions and comments from the audience are highly encouraged. Panel members' expertise include neural networks, fuzzy systems, and evolutionary computation. The panelists have worked successfully on a number of challenging bioinformatics problems. The panel members are also actively involved in the IEEE/CIS Bioinformatics and Bioengineering Technical Committee. We hope to get people started in this exciting area and provide some helpful experiences and we also want to learn from the audience experiences. Anybody with an interest in computational intelligence in bioinformatics is welcome to attend.

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Publication Opportunities in Computational Intelligence
June 3 (Tuesday),  16:30 - 18:00

Moderator:
James M. Keller, IEEE CIS Vice President - Publications

Panelists:
Gary B. Fogel, IEEE Press Liaison
Nikhil R. Pal, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
Marios M. Polycarpou, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
Steve M. Welch, Manager, IEEE Press
Xin Yao, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
Gary G. Yen, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine
 

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Computational Finance and Economics: Research, Applications, and the Future
June 4 (Wednesday),  10:30 - 11:30

Moderator:
Han La Poutre, Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Netherlands

Panelists:
Shu-Heng Chen, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
David B. Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
Edward Tsang, University of Essex, UK
Donald C. Wunsch, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA
Lei Xu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Xin Yao, University of Birmingham, UK

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Type-2 Fuzzy Systems: Past, Present, Challenges and Future Directions
June 4 (Wednesday), 15:00 - 16:00

Moderator:
Jerry Mendel, University of Southern California, USA

Panelists:
Hani Hagras, The German University in Cairo, Egypt and the University of Essex, UK
Robert John, De Montfort University, UK
Woei Wan Tan, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Ronald Yager, Iona College, New York, USA

Outline:
The panel will discuss and debate the various aspects related to the past of type-2 fuzzy systems, their present and the future directions of type-2 fuzzy systems research. It will highlight the various successes and the potential of type-2 fuzzy systems to many real world applications as well as the various challenges facing type-2 fuzzy systems. It will also debate the future directions of type-2 fuzzy systems research.

The panel will consist of two parts: The first part will be structured, in that there will be a pre-determined set of issues that will be prepared ahead of time and sent to the panelists. The second part of the session, will be an open question and answer session in which the audience will have the chance to interact with the panelists to debate the various issues related to the past, present, challenges and future directions of type-2 fuzzy systems.
 

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Challenges and Opportunities of Computational Intelligence Research - Pioneers Speaking
June 4 (Wednesday), 16:30 - 18:00

The moderator and panelists are the recipients of IEEE Pioneers Awards on Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems or Evolutionary Computation.

Moderator:
David B. Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., USA
 
Panelists:
Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
James M. Keller, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA
Teuvo Kohonen, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Jerry M. Mendel, University of Southern California, USA
Hans-Paul Schwefel, Dortmund University of Technology, Germany
Michio Sugeno, Doshisha University, Japan
Ronald R. Yager, Iona College, USA
Takeshi Yamakawa, Kyushu Insititute of Technology, Japan
Lofti A. Zadeh, University of California-Berkeley, USA

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Funding Opportunities in Computational Intelligence
June 5 (Thursday), 10:30 - 11:30

Moderator:
Ah Chung Tsoi, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Panelists:
Fahmida Chowdhury, National Science Foundation (Cross Disciplinary Activities), USA
Akira Iwata, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Interdisciplinary and Frontier Sciences - Informatics), Japan
Pekka Karp, European Commission (Future and Emerging Technologies), Belgium
Irwin King, Hong Kong Research Grants Council (Engineering Panel), Hong Kong
Zhiqiang Liu, Hong Kong Research Grants Council (Engineering Panel), Hong Kong
Jonathan Manton, Australian Research Council (Mathematics, Information and Communication Sciences), Australia