Report on 2008 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics

The 2008 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC 2008) was held in Kunming from July 12-15, 2008. This annual event was sponsored by the SMC Society with strong support from its Technical Committees (TC on Intelligent Internet Systems, TC on Machine Learning, TC on Computational Intelligence, TC on Media Computing, and TC on Computational Life Science).

Many key members of the SMC Society, including Daniel S. Yeung, President; William A. Gruver, Senior Past President; Michael Smith, Past President; Philip Chen, Vice President Systems Science and Engineering; Witold Pedrycz, EiC, SMC Transactions, Part A: Systems and Humans; Xizhao Wang, Board of Governors (BoG)Member; Seong-Whan Lee, BoG Member; Shyi-Ming Chen, BoG Member; Loi Lei Lai, Secretary; Robert Woon, Treasurer; Wing Ng, GOLD Representative, Asia Pacific and Patrick Chan, Student Activities Coordinator all played an important role in the organization of this event. ICMLC 2008 is the seventh of its kind and is now a well recognized annual event for researchers and professionals.

In the conference opening ceremony, Xizhao Wang gave a warm welcome to the delegates and he also introduced the guests, while Daniel Yeung and Ming Hu Ha spoke on behalf of the SMC Society and the Hebei University respectively.

A photo below shows the conference organizers on the stage from left to right - Xizhao Wang, Daniel Yeung, Shyi Ming Chen, Witold Pedrycz, Philip Chen, Michael Smith, Ming Hu Ha, William A. Gruver, Loi Lei Lai, Tin Kam Ho, Patrick Wang and Chih-Min Lin.

Opening Ceremony

The conference featured a number of themes representing the leading edge research and development in machine learning and cybernetics.

Two distinguished speakers gave keynote presentations, namely:

• Computational Techniques in Power - Past, Present and Future
  Loi Lei Lai, Electrical Engineering Department, City University London, United Kingdom
• Multimedia Information Security: An Overview of Research and Challenges
  Philip Chen, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas, San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A

Four tutorials were held:

• Linguistic models: from data to granular architectures
  Witold Pedrycz, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada and System Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences Warsaw, Poland
• Principles of Stochastic Discrimination and Ensemble Learning
  Tin Kam Ho, Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Research Center, Bell Labs, USA
• Application of Neural Network and Cerebellar Model Articulation Controller in Control Problem
  Chih-Min Lin, Department of Electrical Engineering, Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan
• Intelligence Pattern Recognition and Applications to Biometrics in an Interactive Environment
  Patrick Wang, College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, USA

More than 300 delegates from Mainland China, Taiwan, Poland, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, United States, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Macau and Australia attended the Conference.

Some activities of the conferences could be summarised as follows:

The Ph.D. Colloquium provided graduate students with an opportunity for senior faculty and researchers to critique their doctoral research. Six papers were selected to join the Colloquia. In each session, six international experts gave valuable advices to participants. A certificate of merit is given to each finalist. The Committee consists of Philip Chen, Shyi-Ming Chen, William A. Gruver, Tin Kam Ho, Loi Lei Lai, Chih-Min Lin, Man-Wai Mak, Witold Pedrycz, Michael Smith, Daming Shi, Eric Tsang and Xizhao Wang.

There was also a panel led by editors of journals to discuss practical difficulties associated with preparing journal articles.

IEEE SMCS Membership Booth was organised on-site to introduce derived benefits through joining the IEEE and the SMC Society.

IEEE SMC Society Booth

The Conference Banquet began with a celebration of the success of ICMLC2008. Michael Smith presented an address focused on the IEEE and SMC while Loi Lei Lai acted as the MC. A number of gifts were given to recognize various contributors to the success of the ICMLC2008 and, in particular, the leadership under both Daniel Yeung and Xizhao Wang was much appreciated.

For the Lotfi Zadeh Best Paper Award, five excellent papers were selected and presented during the Best Paper Award Session. A certificate of merit was given to each finalist and the winner received an award of USD300. The Winning Paper is "Improving Efficiency Of Multi-Kernel Learning For Support Vector Machines", co-authored by Chi-Yuan Yeh, Wen-Pin Su and Shie-Jue Lee, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The Committee consists of Michael Smith (Chair), Philip Chen, William A. Gruver, Tin Kam Ho, Witold Pedrycz and Xizhao Wang.

The delegates thoroughly enjoyed the two entertainment programs performed by local musicians and dancers featuring the local minority culture. A highlight was the Special Birthday Celebration for William A. Gruver who has made a major contribution to ICMLC since its very beginning.

Special Birthday Celebration for William A. Gruver

Playing Chinese musical instrument, further details on instrument could be found here and here.

Performance by dancers, Daniel Yeung, Mike Smith, Philip Chen, William A. Gruver, and Witold Pedrycz (Right to left)

Group photo of the conference organizers and volunteers

Xizhao Wang announced that ICMLC 2009 will be held next July jointly with ICWAPR (International Conference on Wavelet and Pattern Recognition) in Baoding, Hebei, China. Boading is a place with long tradition and history that dates back to the Western Han Dynasty, that is 206 - 220 BC and it is definitely worth visiting. It would be good to start saving up and getting papers organised!

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