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<TITLE>SUMMER SCHOOL NN2005 - NEURAL NETWORKS in CLASSIFICATION, REGRESSION and DATA MINING</TITLE>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Times New Roman">Apologies for multiple posting</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">We appreciate if you can forward this Announcement to potential candidates.</FONT></I></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">FINAL ANNOUNCEMENT</FONT></SPAN>
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<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">SUMMER SCHOOL NN2005</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman"> - with a special poster session and workshop (bring your data sets).</FONT></B></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">NEURAL NETWORKS in CLASSIFICATION, REGRESSION and DATA MINING</FONT></B></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">July 4-8, 2005, ISEP - Porto, Portugal</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">;</FONT> </SPAN><A HREF="http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt"><SPAN LANG="pt"><U></U><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt</FONT></U></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">;</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">nn-2005@isep.ipp.pt</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">GENERAL INFORMATION</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The Summer School will be held at Porto, Portugal, jointly organized by</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">the Polytechnic School of Engineering of Porto (ISEP) and the Faculty of</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Engineering, Porto University (FEUP).</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">This year's edition, NN2005, includes a special WORKSHOP SESSION providing</FONT> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">a discussion forum where the participants can obtain peer guidance for</FONT> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">their projects.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Previous editions of the Summer School have reached a considerable success.</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Two opinions:</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">"NN2003 adressed current topics in neural networks and machine learning</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">in a thorough and accessible manner ... presented relatively new material</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">that I found extremely useful ... there was something for experts as well</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">as for beginners" - Prof. Darrel Whitley, Colorado State University.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">"The Summer School ... was of a most impressive quality. ... the students were</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">quickly brought up to a level where they could be introduced to more</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">advanced material ... excellent introductions to neural networks, support</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">vector machines, and genetic algorithms ... the students could further</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">master their skills by applying the course material to case studies in a</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">state-of-the art computer laboratory...a most impressive extensive guest</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">program ... I highly recommend this course" - Prof. Mark J. Embrechts,</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">PROGRAMME COMMITTEE (PROVISIONAL)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Christopher Bishop (Assistant Director, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, U.K.)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Fernando Sereno (Assistant Professor, High School of Education, Portugal)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Joaquim Marques-de-Sá, Programme Chair (Associate Professor, Dept. Electr. and Comp. Engineering; Fac. of Engineering, University of Porto, Portugal)</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• José Carlos Príncipe (BellSouth Professor, Director Computational NeuroEngineering, University of Florida, USA)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Juergen Schmidhuber (Professor Scuola Universitaria Professionale, Lugano, Switzerland)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Luís Alexandre (Assistant Professor, Beira Interior University, Portugal)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Mark Embrechts (Associate Professor at the Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems Faculty, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI Troy, USA)</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Paulo Cortez (Assistant Professor, University of Minho, Portugal)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">• Steve R. Gunn (Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">LOCAL ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (LOC)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">- Alzira Faria - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">- Jorge M. Santos - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">- Rui Chibante - Assistant, Dept. Mathematics, ISEP, Portugal</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">COURSE CONTENTS</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Neural networks (NN) have become a very important tool in classification and</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">regression tasks. The applications are nowadays abundant, e.g. in the</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">engineering, economy and biology areas. The Summer School on NN is dedicated</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">to explain relevant NN paradigms, namely multilayer perceptrons (MLP),</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">radial basis function networks (RBF), support vector machines (SVM) and</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">entropy-based networks (ENN) used for classification and regression tasks,</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">illustrated with applications to real data. Specific topics are also</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">presented, namely relevance vector machines, recurrent networks,</FONT> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">co-operative structures of NN and data mining using NN.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Classes include practical sessions with appropriate software tools. The</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">trainee has, therefore, the opportunity to apply the taught concepts and</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">become conversant with a broad range of NN topics and applications.</FONT> <FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">A special workshop session will provide a discussion forum where the </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">participants can obtain peer guidance for their projects.</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Official language is English.</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">A preliminary programme and further informations about the classes</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">are available at the school webpage (</FONT></SPAN><A HREF="http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt"><SPAN LANG="pt"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt</FONT></U></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">)</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">POSTER and WORKSHOP SESSION</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">In the session "Workshop and Poster", we intend to discuss some of the posters presented by the participants.<BR>
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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Encouraging this form of participation as a means of interaction and cooperative learning,</FONT><B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">we invite you to present a poster with a specific problem</FONT></B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">, especially one involved with your research.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The organizing committee will welcome that the participants</FONT><B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">bring along the data sets</FONT></B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">and a summary description of the most important problem they would be interested in order to find possible solutions in this school.</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">IMPORTANT DEADLINES</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">Early Registration: 15 May 2005</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">Hotel booking: 15 June 2005</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Summer School: 4-8 July 2005</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">All participants are required to register prior to the start of the School</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">- until </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">the 15th of</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">June - even if you choose to pay the late registration</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">fee at the registration desk. </FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Please note that only a LIMITED number of participants can be</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">accepted.</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">REGISTRATION</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">In order to attend the School you must fill in the registration form,</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">available at the School web page. Please note that if you have any guests</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">who would like to take part in the social programme, you must register</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">them as well, by filling in the corresponding field in the registration</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">form. </FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">SCHOOL FEES</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The registration fee for participants amounts to:</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">- Early registration </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">fee (paid before the 15th of May)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"> <FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">* 300 Euro (students, ISEP and FEUP staff)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"> <FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">* 350 Euro (all other participants)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman">- Late registration fee (paid after the 15th of</FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">May)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* 350 Euro (students, ISEP and FEUP staff)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* 400 Euro (all other participants)</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">The registration fee includes:</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* school package (manuscripts, CD)</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* coffee breaks</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* daily lunch</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* welcome reception</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">* school banquet</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">NOTE: The registration fee for those who attended previous editions</FONT><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"></FONT> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">amounts to 20 euro per lecture and includes the school package and</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">coffee-breaks. Please, contact the LOC for further details.</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">CONTACT ADDRESS</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">NN2005 Secretariat</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Ms. Gabriela Afonso</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Email: gafonso@fe.up.pt</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Local Organizing Committee (LOC) - Summer School NN2005</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Departamento de Matemática</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida 431</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">4200-072 PORTO / PORTUGAL</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Email: nn-2005@isep.ipp.pt</FONT></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"></SPAN><A HREF="http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt"><SPAN LANG="pt"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">http://www.nn.isep.ipp.pt</FONT></U></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="pt"></SPAN>
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<P><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Programme Chair:</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Prof. Marques de Sá</FONT></SPAN>
<BR><SPAN LANG="pt"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Tel. 225081828 - Email: jmsa@fe.up.pt</FONT></SPAN>
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