Abstract:

Unstructured data is a valuable source of information and implicit knowledge. Yet, the bits and bytes of, e.g., text, image, or click-stream data need to be interpreted in order to transform them into business intelligence and actionable information. Clearly, this process needs to be automated to the largest possible extend in order to be scalable to the typical volumes of data. One way to accomplish this is through the use of machine learning and statistical modelling techniques. This talk will provide an overview of recent progress and new trends in machine learning and discuss their relevance for developing intelligent tools for search, information filtering, categorization, and knowledge extraction.

Thomas Hofmann received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Bonn in 1997. Since then he held postdoctoral positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as the University of California at Berkeley and the International Computer Science Institute. From 1999 until 2004 he was Assistant and Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Brown University. Since December 2004, he is Full Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He is also Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Publication and Information Systems (IPSI) as well as Chief Scientist and co-founder of Recommind Inc.

Abstract:

The old computing was about what computers could do;
the new computing is about what people can do.

To accelerate the shift from the old to the new computing designers need to:

1. reduce computer user frustration. Recent studies show 46% of time is lost to crashes, confusing instructions, navigation problems, etc. Public pressure for change could promote design improvements and increase reliability, thereby dramatically enhancing user experiences.
2. promote universal usability. Interfaces must be tailorable to a wide range of hardware, software, and networks, and users. When broad services such as voting, healthcare, and education are envisioned, the challenge to designers is substantial.
3. envision a future in which human needs more directly shape technology evolution. Four circles of human relationships and four human activities map out the human needs for mobility, ubiquity, creativity, and community. The World Wide Med and million-person communities will be accessible through desktop, palmtop and fingertip devices to support e-learning, e-business, e-healthcare, and e-government.

BEN SHNEIDERMAN is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/), and Member of the Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies & for Systems Research, all at the University of Maryland at College Park. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing (ACM ) in 1997 and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2001. He received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

Ben is the author of "Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems" (1980) and "Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction" (4th ed. 2004) http://www.awl.com/DTUI/ . He pioneered the highlighted textual link in 1983, and it became part of Hyperties, a precursor to the web. His move into information visualization helped spawn the successful company Spotfire http://www.spotfire.com/. With S Card and J. Mackinlay, he co-authored "Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think" (1999). "Leonardo's Laptop" (MIT Press) appeared in October 2002, and his new book with B. Bederson, “The Craft of Information Visualization” was published in April 2003.

Abstract:

Conventional data management occurs primarily in centralized servers or in well-interconnected distributed systems. These are removed from their end users, who interact with the systems mostly through static devices to obtain generic services around main-stream applications: banking, retail, business management, etc. Several recent advances in technologies, however, give rise to a new breed of applications, which change altogether the user experience and sense of data management. Very soon several such systems will be in our pockets, many more in our homes, the kitchen appliances, our clothes, etc. How would these systems operate? Many system and user aspects must be approached in novel ways, while several new issues come up and need to be addressed for the first time. Highlights include personalization, privacy, information trading, annotation, new interaction devices and corresponding interfaces, visualization, etc. In this talk, we take a close look at and give a very personal guided tour to this emerging world of data management, offering some thoughts on how the new technical challenges might be approached.

Yannis Ioannidis is currently a Professor at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of Athens. He received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1982, his MSc in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. Immediately after that he joined the faculty of the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he became a Professor before finally leaving in 1999. His research interests include database and information systems, digital libraries, personalization, scientific systems and workflows, eHealth systems, and human-computer interaction, topics on which he has published over seventy articles in leading journals and conferences. He also holds three patents.

Yannis Ioannidis became a "Fellow" of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) in 2004 and has been the recipient of the VLDB "10-Year Best Paper Award" in 2003, the Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) award in 1991, and several awards for teaching excellence. He has been a keynote or invited speaker at ICDT 2003, WAIM 2001, SSDBM 2000, PDP 2000, and ECDL 1998. He is a (co-)principal investigator of the currently active DELOS, BRICKS, DILIGENT, and DIAS projects (all funded by IST FP6). He is also the program committee chair of EDBT'06 and an Associate Editor of Information Systems, VLDB Journal, Journal of Digital Libraries, Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, and the electronic ACM Digital Symposium Collection. Finally, between July 2002 and March 2004 he served as the Information Technology advisor to the Minister of Health of Greece.