FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT

SUMMER SCHOOL NN2005 - with a special poster session and workshop (bring your data sets).

NEURAL NETWORKS in CLASSIFICATION, REGRESSION and DATA MINING

July 4-8, 2005, ISEP - Porto, Portugal; www.nn.isep.ipp.pt; nn-2005@isep.ipp.pt

GENERAL INFORMATION

The Summer School will be held at Porto, Portugal, jointly organized by the Polytechnic School of Engineering of Porto (ISEP) and the Faculty of Engineering, Porto University (FEUP).

This year's edition, NN2005, includes a special WORKSHOP SESSION providing a discussion forum where the participants can obtain peer guidance for their projects.

Previous editions of the Summer School have reached a considerable success.
Two opinions:

"NN2003 adressed current topics in neural networks and machine learning in a thorough and accessible manner ... presented relatively new material that I found extremely useful ... there was something for experts as well as for beginners" - Prof. Darrel Whitley, Colorado State University.

"The Summer School ... was of a most impressive quality. ... the students were quickly brought up to a level where they could be introduced to more advanced material ... excellent introductions to neural networks, support vector machines, and genetic algorithms ... the students could further master their skills by applying the course material to case studies in a state-of-the art computer laboratory...a most impressive extensive guest program ... I highly recommend this course" - Prof. Mark J. Embrechts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (PROVISIONAL)

• Christopher Bishop (Assistant Director, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, U.K.)
• Fernando Sereno (Assistant Professor, High School of Education, Portugal)
• Joaquim Marques-de-Sá, Programme Chair (Associate Professor, Dept. Electr. and Comp. Engineering; Fac. of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal)
• José Carlos Príncipe (BellSouth Professor, Director Computational NeuroEngineering, University of Florida, USA)
• Juergen Schmidhuber (Professor Scuola Universitaria Professionale, Lugano, Switzerland)
• Luís Alexandre (Assistant Professor, Beira Interior University, Portugal)
• Mark Embrechts (Associate Professor at the Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems Faculty, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI Troy, USA)
• Paulo Cortez (Assistant Professor, University of Minho, Portugal)
• Steve R. Gunn (Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK)

LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (LOC)

• Alzira Faria - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal
• Jorge M. Santos - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal
• Rui Chibante - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal

COURSE CONTENTS

Neural networks (NN) have become a very important tool in classification and regression tasks. The applications are nowadays abundant, e.g. in the engineering, economy and biology areas. The Summer School on NN is dedicated to explain relevant NN paradigms, namely multilayer perceptrons (MLP), radial basis function networks (RBF), support vector machines (SVM) and entropy-based networks (ENN) used for classification and regression tasks, illustrated with applications to real data. Specific topics are also presented, namely relevance vector machines, recurrent networks, co-operative structures of NN and data mining using NN.

Classes include practical sessions with appropriate software tools. The trainee has, therefore, the opportunity to apply the taught concepts and become conversant with a broad range of NN topics and applications. A special workshop session will provide a discussion forum where the participants can obtain peer guidance for their projects.

Official language is English.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

A preliminary programme and further informations about the classes are available at the school webpage (www.nn.isep.ipp.pt)

POSTER and WORKSHOP SESSION

In the session "Workshop and Poster", we intend to discuss some of the posters presented by the participants.
The purpose of the poster is to present some problem that the participant wish to discuss with the lecturers and other participants, as a way of getting some advise in the better way to solve it using neural networks. Encouraging this form of participation as a means of interaction and cooperative learning, we invite you to present a poster with a specific problem, especially one involved with your research.
The organizing committee will welcome that the participants bring along the data sets and a summary description of the most important problem they would be interested in order to find possible solutions in this school.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

Early Registration: 15 May 2005

Hotel booking: 15 June 2005

Summer School: 4-8 July 2005

All participants are required to register prior to the start of the School - until the 15th of June - even if you choose to pay the late registration fee at the registration desk.
Please note that only a LIMITED number of participants can be accepted.

REGISTRATION

In order to attend the School you must fill in the registration form, available at the School web page. Please note that if you have any guests who would like to take part in the social programme, you must register them as well, by filling in the corresponding field in the registration form.

SCHOOL FEES

The registration fee for participants amounts to:

1. Early registration fee (paid before the 15th of May)
   • 300 Euro (students, ISEP and FEUP staff)
   • 350 Euro (all other participants)
2. Late registration fee (paid after the 15th of May)
   • 350 Euro (students, ISEP and FEUP staff)
   • 400 Euro (all other participants)

The registration fee includes:

• school package (manuscripts, CD)
• coffee breaks
• daily lunch
• welcome reception
• school banquet

NOTE: The registration fee for those who attended previous editions amounts to 20 euro per lecture and includes the school package and coffee-breaks. Please, contact the LOC for further details.

CONTACT ADDRESS

NN2005 Secretariat

Ms. Gabriela Afonso
Email: gafonso@fe.up.pt

Local Organizing Committee (LOC) - Summer School NN2005
Departamento de Matemática
Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto
Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida 431
4200-072 PORTO / PORTUGAL
Email: nn-2005@isep.ipp.pt

www.nn.isep.ipp.pt

Programme Chair:
Prof. Marques de Sá
Phone: 225081828
Email: jmsa@fe.up.pt