Course at the International School on Neural Nets "E.R.Caianiello" - 2nd Announcement

[Dario Malchiodi]

Many apologizes for cross posting


The following meeting may be of interest to researchers interested in
artificial intelligence, biology, neural networks and psychology


FROM SYNAPSES TO RULES: DISCOVERING SYMBOLIC RULES FROM NEURAL PROCESSED DATA
A course of INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL ON NEURAL NETS "E. R. CAIANIELLO"

ETTORE MAJORANA CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC CULTURE
ERICE-SICILY: 25 FEBRUARY - 7 MARCH 2002


Application deadline: December 15, 2001

The school aims at fixing a theoretical and applicatry framework for
extracting formal rules from data. To this end the modern approaches
will be expounded that collapse the two typical goals of the
conventional AI and connectionism - respectively, deducing within an
axiomatic shell formal rules about a phenomenon and inferring the
actual behavior of it from examples - into a challenging inferential
framework where we learn from data and understand what we have
learnt. The target reads as a translation of the subsymbolic structure
of the data - stored in the synapses of a neural network - into formal
properties described by rules.  To capture this trip from synapses to
rules and then render it manageable for affording real world learning
tasks, the Course will deal in depth with the following aspects:
i. theoretical foundations of learning algorithms and soft computing,
ii. intimate relationships between symbolic and subsymbolic reasoning
methods, iii. integration of the related hosting architectures in both
physiological and artificial brain.


TOPICS

Inferential bases for learning
Theoretical foundations for soft computing
Integration of symbolic-subsymbolic reasoning methods
Physics and metaphysics of learning
Toward applications


LECTURERS

* B. Apolloni, University of Milan, I
* D. Malchiodi, University of Milan, I
* D. Mundici, University of Milan, I
* M. Gori, University of Siena, I
* F. Kurfess, California Polytechnic State Univ., San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
* A. Roy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
* R. Sun, University of Missouri-Columbia, MO, USA
* L. Agnati, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, S
* G. Basti, Pontificia Università Lateranense, Rome, I
* G. Biella, C.N.R. LITA, Milan, I
* J. G. Taylor, King's College, London, UK
* A. Esposito, Istituto Italiano Alti Studi Scientifici, Vietri, I
* A. Moise, Boise State University, ID, USA

DIRECTORS OF THE COURSE
B. APOLLONI, A. MOISE

DIRECTORS OF THE SCHOOL
M. J. JORDAN, M. MARINARO

DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE
A. ZICHICHI



APPLICATIONS

Interested candidates should send a letter to:

* Professor Bruno Apolloni - Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione
Università degli Studi di Milano
Via Comelico 39/41 20135 Milano, Italy
Tel: ++39.02.5835.6284, Fax: ++39.02.5835.6228
e-mail: apolloni at dsi.unimi.it

specifying:

i) date and place of birth and present activity;
ii) nationality.

Thanks to the generosity of the sponsoring Institutions, partial support

can be granted to some deserving students who need financial aid.
Requests
to this effect must be specified and justified in the letter of
application. Notification of acceptance will be sent within the end of
January 2002.


For APPLICATION, CONTRIBUTING PAPERS, GRANTS, FEES, and further
information
please visit http://laren.usr.dsi.unimi.it/ericeSchool.html. For
information
about the Ettore Majorana Centre please visit http://www.ccsem.infn.it.