WORKSHOP ON THEORETICAL ISSUES IN NEURAL NETS, May 20-23, 1991

[Eduardo Sontag]

              WORKSHOP ON THEORETICAL ISSUES IN NEURAL NETS
                 Announcement and Call for Contributions

The Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS)
will host a workshop on "Theoretical Issues in Neural Nets" at Rutgers
University, for four days, May 20-23, 1991.  This will be a mathematically
oriented meeting, where technical issues can be discussed in depth.  The
objective is to have a Workshop that brings together people interested in a
serious study of foundations -- plus a few people who will give expository
lectures on applied problems and biological nets.  The area is of course very
diverse, and precisely because of this it might be worth trying to search for
conceptual unity in the context of the Workshop.  A preliminary list of main
speakers is as follows (with tentative topics listed, when available):

Dave Ackley, Bellcore (Genetic algorithms: Evolution and learning)
Andrew Barron, U. Illinois (Statistical selection of neural net architectures)
Andy Barto, U. Mass. (Expository talk: Learning & incrmntl dynamic programming)
Eric Baum, NEC Institute (Expository talk: Sample complexity)
Ed Blum, USC (Feed-forward networks and approximation in various norms)
Roger Brockett, Harvard (Combinatorial optimization via steepest descent)
George Cybenko, U. Illinois
Merrick Furst, CMU (Circuit complexity & harmonic analysis of Boolean functs)
Herbert Gish, BBN (Maximum likelihood training of neural networks)
Stephen Grossberg, Boston U. (Expository talk)
Steve Hanson, Siemens (Expository talk: Human learning and categorization)
Moe Hirsch, Berkeley (Expository talk: Network dynamics)
Wolfgang Maass, U. Ill./Chicago (Boltzmann machines for classification)
John Moody, Yale
Sara Solla, Bell Labs (Supervised learning and statistical physics)
Santosh S. Venkatesh, Penn
Hal White, UCSD

The organizing committee consists of Bradley W. Dickinson (Princeton), Gary M.
Kuhn (Institute for Defense Analyses), and Eduardo D. Sontag and Hector J.
Sussmann (Rutgers).  DIMACS is a National Science Foundation Science and
Technology Center, established as a cooperative project between Rutgers
University, Princeton University, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and Bellcore.  Its
objectives are to carry out basic and applied research in discrete mathematics
and theoretical computer science.  The center provides excellent facilities
for workshop participants, including offices and computer support.

If you are interested in participating in this workshop, please send a message
to Eduardo at sontag at hilbert.rutgers.edu.  If you would like to give a talk,
please e-mail a title and abstract to the above address by January 15th, 1991.
Please keep the abstract short, but give references to published work if
appropriate.  (Use plain TeX, LaTeX, or a text file; please do not use
snailmail.)  There is a possibility of proceedings being published, but nothing
has been decided in that regard.  If you are interested in attending but not
talking, send a note explaining your interest in the area.  The committee
will try to accommodate as many participants and as many talks as possible, 
but the numbers may have to be limited in order to achieve a relaxed workshop 
atmosphere conducive to interactions among participants.  Notification of
people concerning attendance is expected about the middle of February.