At its recent recent General Assembly, on Friday October 31, the board of BNVKI-AIABN declared that the society intends to be a platform for AI research in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, in short the Benelux, and that it expressly invites and encourages researchers affiliated to Luxembourg-based academic institutions and companies involved in AI research to become involved as members. The association's board intends to hold on to both its statutory basis and the name BNVKI-AIABN (as well as to the URL http://www.bnvki.org), but intends to express the Benelux scope (the Benelux being a well established concept and union) by carrying a subtitle: "BNVKI-AIABN: Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligence".

AI Dissertation Award

Nominations are invited for the 2008 Artificial Intelligence Dissertation Award sponsored by ECCAI, the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence.

This Award includes a certificate signed by the ECCAI Chair and 1.500 Euros (which includes the travel grant for the Award ceremony). Nominations are due to Toby.Walsh@nicta.com.au by January 31st 2009.

Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended after December 1, 2007 in the general area of Artificial Intelligence. The dissertation must have been defended at an European university and the author must be a personal member of an ECCAI member society. Multiple submissions of the same doctoral dissertation to other dissertation award activities of other societies are excluded.

The selection of the most meritorious research PhD thesis is based on the originality, impact, and written quality of the work. Work that has been submitted to and/or accepted at workshops, conferences, or journals will be considered more favourably. Work that is primarily attributed to the student's own initiative will be considered more favourably. Finally, the quality of the written document in terms of its organization, polish, and use of language will be considered.

More information can be found at http://www.eccai.org/diss-award/current.shtml.

Conferences

ECCAI Conferences

Advanced Course in Artificial Intelligence (ACAI 2009) Intelligent Decision Support Systems
Belfast, August 23-29 2009.

This prestigious Summer School will focus on methods and tools available for the development of Intelligent Decision Support Systems. These systems can take decisions by themselves or by interacting and cooperating with humans. They have a wide range of applications, for example: healthcare, finance and emergency response. The Summer School includes courses on preference modelling, argumentation, multiagent systems, uncertainty reasoning and various applications, delivered by distinguished academics and professionals with extensive experience in the development and application of such systems. The courses are designed to be interactive and will consist of a mixture of lectures and hands-on practice.

The Summer School targets an audience at the PhD level who are interested in this exciting area: current PhD students, advanced MSc students and other professionals with suitable technical backgrounds.

More information on this event, including programme, registration and available travel grants, is found at the ACAI 2009 web site.

ECCAI Sponsored conferences

8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2009),
Budapest, Hungary, 10-15 May 2009.

National conferences