Minutes of the ECCAI General Assembly

Held in Lyon, France

on

Tuesday 23rd July 2002

 

 

ChairMAn’s Annual Report

For the President's annual report, please visit http://www.eccai.org/admin/chairreport_2002.pdf

 

 

file:///Z:/ECCAI/ECCAI-TMP/Presidents_report_2001.htm Treasurer's Annual Report

The final budget for 2001 (Financial Balance 2001) is enclosed. It should be noted, that in non-ECAI-years there is the usual slight negative balance.

 

Budget for 2002 and 2003

For  2002 it is already  clear, that we met the forecast with respect to membership fees income. Even without  taking into account a possible surplus from ECAI 2002, we will have a positive balance. For 2003 the usual frame is planned.

 

Final Report on ACAI-01

Olga Stepankova reports from a successful ACAI 2001 on “Multi-Agent Systems and Applications” held at Czech Technical University in Pague in July 2-13, 2001. There have been  29 speakers and 175 participants from 29 countries. The main parts of ACAI’01  are  published in LNAI 2086 Multi-Agent Systems and Applications I and LNAI 2322 Multi-Agent Systems and Applications II.

 

ECCAI Travel Grant Program

For this program we had 41 applications. 20 grants (400 € each) have been given; 19 of them for presenting a paper at ECAI technical program and 1 for a paper at STAIRS.

 

ECAI-2002 in Lyon Progress Report

The conference is running very smoothly. There are 127 persons registered for tutorials, 250 for workshops and for the overall conference  approx. 600. However, there is a significant number of registrations for visa-reasons only.  It is expected to have a positive financial balance.

 

The ECCAI Dissertation Award

The winner of the ECCAI Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award 2001 is Dorian Suc, University of Ljubljana for "Machine reconstruction of human control strategies". The Award was presented as part of a special session during  ECAI-02.

 

 

The ECCAI Fellows Programme

12 new fellows were selected by the ECCAI Fellow Selection Panel:

 

Georg Gottlob

OGAI, Austria

Professor, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

Constantine Spyropoulos

ETTN, Greece

Director or Research, NCSR "Demokritos", Greece

Gene Freuder

AIAI, Ireland

Director, Cork Constraint Computation Centre

Gennady Osipov

RAAI, Russia

Professor, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Felisa Verdejo

AEPIA, Spain

Professor, UNED, Spain

Daniel Kayser

AFIA, France

Professor, University Paris-Nord, France

Fausto Giunchiglia

IA*AI, Italy

Professor, University of Trento, Italy

Lorenza Saitta

IA*AI, Italy

Professor, University Piemonte Orientale, Italy

Boi Faltings

SGAICO, Switzerland

Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland

Hans-Dieter Burkhard

GI-KI, Germany

Professor, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany

Gerhard Brewka

GI-KI, Germany

Professor, University of Leipzig, Germany

Helder Coelho

APPIA, Portugal

Professor, University of Lisbon, Portugal

 

 

 

They have all made outstanding contributions over many years to the European AI community and we congratulate them.

 

AICom: Electronic Access Scheme

Some member societies do not use the service of electronic access to AICOM.  ECCAI will provide a link on its web site.

IOS Press is going to publish a book series “Dissertations in Artificial Intelligence”, there is an editorial board of approx. 100 AI researchers. The German dissertation series DISKI will continue independently.

Frank van Harmelen is pointing out that the cooperation with IOS Press concerning  the publication of the ECAI proceedings was very good and efficient.

 

Status of ETAI: The Electronic Transactions on AI

Our electronic journal, ETAI, has been thriving under the leadership of Erik Sandewall and is one of the pioneers in the area of electronic journals and rapid publishing. Erik has now taken over as co-editor of the AI Journal, which has resulted in changes at ETAI. A new structure is being put in place with Wolfgang Wahlster taking the role of Scientific Editor-in-Chief while Erik Sandewall continues as General Editor.

 

ECCAI Membership Fees for 2002 and 2003

There will be no change of the fees.

 

Membership Status of Societies

Name change of UK BCS-SGES to SGAI.

 

ACAI-2003: Proposal from Germany

The GA  approves unanimously  the proposal of Andreas Birk (Germany, Bremen) to organize  the ACAI-2003 “Summer school on Advanced Robotics”  in collocation with the RoboCup Camp from July 27th to August 6th  in Bremen.

 

Selection of General Chair for ECAI-04

For the position of the Conference Chair ECAI-04 in Valencia there is the nomination of  Prof. Ramon López de Mántaras from Barcelone.  The GA unanimously approves this proposal.

 

Selection of PC Chair for ECAI-04

For the position of  the  Program Chair ECAI-04 in Valencia there is the  nomination of  Prof. Lorenza Saitta from Piemont. The GA unanimously  approves this proposal.

 

ECAI-06 Proposal – Italy

Paolo Traverso is presenting a proposal from Trento to host ECAI-06 in Trento (Italy). The proposal convincingly demonstrates, that the site is well suited and that the proposed organization team has previously demonstrated, that they are very well able to organize conferences of the size of ECAI. The GA unanimously  approves this proposal.

 

Industry Relations and Initiative for Global AI Society Co-ordination – Report back

The President's annual report is addressing this top in detail (****http://www.eccai.org/Presidents_Report_2002/ECCAI_Presidents_Report_02.pdf***)

 

Proposed Change to ECCAI Articles

The proposed change to ECCAI Articles, which was already announced and discussed during the GA in 2001 in Prague is the following:

 

Article 11: change the second paragraph to read

"The board members are elected by the General Assembly for a 2-year term.  A board member cannot be elected for more than THREE consecutive terms as representative of the active members of a country."

This e ?change has the effect of providing the option of allowing Board members to serve for 6 years instead of only 4. This is desired to improve the continuity of the board.

 

The GA unanimously approves this proposal. As a consequence of this change the GA concludes to increase the number of board  members for the following period from 6 to 7 members.

 

Election of New Board Members

The term of Sylvia Miksch is terminated and hence she is leaving the ECCAI Board. The Board  and the GA thanks Sylvia Miksch for the years of  service  for ECCAI and for the enthusiasm she always showed for ECCAI.

 

The following board members are unanimously reelected for another term:

Marc Ayel

Silvia Coradeschi

Ulrich Furbach

 

There are the following  candidates for the remaining 4 positions:

            Ulises CortesCortés

            Werner Horn

            Rob Milne

Kris Van Marcke

Guus Schreiber

Rob Milne and Kris Van Marcke are included in this list, because it is their nomination for a 3rd term, according to the new Article.

 

As a result of the election ( Cortes Cortés 15, Horn  26, Milne 24, Van Marcke 25, Schreiber 13)  we have CortesCortés, Horn, Milne and Van Marcke elected. Hence the new Board is

 

Marc Ayel

Silvia Coradeschi

Ulises CortesCortés

Werner Horn

Rob Milne (President)

Kris Van Marcke

Ulrich Furbach

 

Any Other Business

Date for the next General Assembly will be during the Bremen ACAI 2003 (July 27th to August 6th).