Joost N Kok - Böcker

One of the superb characteristics of Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA) is that it is an interdisciplinary ?eld in which researchers and practitioners from a number of areas are involved in a typical project. This also creates a challenge in which the success of a team depends on the participation of users and domain experts who need to interact with researchers and developers of any IDA system. All this is usually re?ected in successful projects and of course on the papers that were evaluated by this year’s program committee from which the ?nal program has been developed. In our call for papers, we solicited papers on (i) applications and tools, (ii) theory and general principles, and (iii) algorithms and techniques. We received a total of 184 papers, reviewing these was a major challenge. Each paper was assigned to three reviewers. In the end 46 papers were accepted, which are all included in the proceedings and presented at the conference. This year’s papers re?ect the results of applied and theoretical researchfrom a number of disciplines all of which are related to the ?eld of Intelligent Data Analysis. To have the best combination of theoretical and applied research and also provide the best focus, we have divided this year’s IDA program into tu- rials, invited talks, panel discussions and technical sessions.

Formanyyearstheintersectionofcomputing anddataanalysiscontainedme- based statistics packages and not much else. Recently, statisticians have - braced computing, computer scientists have started using statistical theories and methods, and researchers in all corners have invented algorithms to nd structure in vast online datasets. Data analysts now have access to tools for exploratory data analysis, decision tree induction, causal induction, function - timation,constructingcustomizedreferencedistributions,andvisualization,and thereareintelligentassistantsto adviseonmatters ofdesignandanalysis.There aretoolsfortraditional,relativelysmallsamples,andalsoforenormousdatasets. In all, the scope for probing data in new and penetrating ways has never been so exciting. The IDA-99 conference brings together a wide variety of researchers c- cerned with extracting knowledge from data, including people from statistics, machine learning, neural networks, computer science, pattern recognition, da- base management, and other areas.The strategiesadopted by people from these areas are often di erent, and a synergy results if this is recognized.The IDA series of conferences is intended to stimulate interaction between these di erent areas,sothatmorepowerfultoolsemergeforextractingknowledgefromdataand a better understanding is developed of the process of intelligent data analysis. The result is a conference that has a clear focus (one application area:intelligent data analysis) and a broad scope (many di erent methods and techniques).

The two premier annual European conferences in the areas of machine learning and data mining have been collocated ever since the ?rst joint conference in Freiburg, 2001. The European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) traces its origins to 1986, when the ?rst European Working Session on Learning was held in Orsay, France. The European Conference on Principles and Practice of KnowledgeDiscoveryinDatabases(PKDD) was?rstheldin1997inTrondheim, Norway. Over the years, the ECML/PKDD series has evolved into one of the largest and most selective international conferences in machine learning and data mining. In 2007, the seventh collocated ECML/PKDD took place during September 17–21 on the centralcampus of WarsawUniversityand in the nearby Staszic Palace of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference for the third time used a hierarchical reviewing process. We nominated 30 Area Chairs, each of them responsible for one sub-?eld or several closely related research topics. Suitable areas were selected on the basis of the submission statistics for ECML/PKDD 2006 and for last year’s International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2006) to ensure a proper load balance amongtheAreaChairs.AjointProgramCommittee(PC)wasnominatedforthe two conferences, consisting of some 300 renowned researchers, mostly proposed by the Area Chairs. This joint PC, the largest of the series to date, allowed us to exploit synergies and deal competently with topic overlaps between ECML and PKDD. ECML/PKDD 2007 received 592 abstract submissions. As in previous years, toassistthereviewersandtheAreaChairsintheir?nalrecommendationauthors had the opportunity to communicate their feedback after the reviewing phase.

The two premier annual European conferences in the areas of machine learning and data mining have been collocated ever since the ?rst joint conference in Freiburg, 2001. The European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) traces its origins to 1986, when the ?rst European Working Session on Learning was held in Orsay, France. The European Conference on Principles and Practice of KnowledgeDiscoveryinDatabases(PKDD) was?rstheldin1997inTrondheim, Norway. Over the years, the ECML/PKDD series has evolved into one of the largest and most selective international conferences in machine learning and data mining. In 2007, the seventh collocated ECML/PKDD took place during September 17–21 on the centralcampus of WarsawUniversityand in the nearby Staszic Palace of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The conference for the third time used a hierarchical reviewing process. We nominated 30 Area Chairs, each of them responsible for one sub-?eld or several closely related research topics. Suitable areas were selected on the basis of the submission statistics for ECML/PKDD 2006 and for last year’s International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2006) to ensure a proper load balance amongtheAreaChairs.AjointProgramCommittee(PC)wasnominatedforthe two conferences, consisting of some 300 renowned researchers, mostly proposed by the Area Chairs. This joint PC, the largest of the series to date, allowed us to exploit synergies and deal competently with topic overlaps between ECML and PKDD. ECML/PKDD 2007 received 592 abstract submissions. As in previous years, toassistthereviewersandtheAreaChairsintheir?nalrecommendationauthors had the opportunity to communicate their feedback after the reviewing phase.

A fundamental understanding of algorithmic bioprocesses is key to learning how information processing occurs in nature at the cell level. The field is concerned with the interactions between computer science on the one hand and biology, chemistry, and DNA-oriented nanoscience on the other. In particular, this book offers a comprehensive overview of research into algorithmic self-assembly, RNA folding, the algorithmic foundations for biochemical reactions, and the algorithmic nature of developmental processes.The editors of the book invited 36 chapters, written by the leading researchers in this area, and their contributions include detailed tutorials on the main topics, surveys of the state of the art in research, experimental results, and discussions of specific research goals. The main subjects addressed are sequence discovery, generation, and analysis; nanoconstructions and self-assembly; membrane computing; formal models and analysis; process calculi and automata; biochemical reactions; and other topics from natural computing, including molecular evolution, regulation of gene expression, light-based computing, cellular automata, realistic modelling of biological systems, and evolutionary computing. This subject is inherently interdisciplinary, and this book will be of value to researchers in computer science and biology who study the impact of the exciting mutual interaction between our understanding of bioprocesses and our understanding of computation.

Natural Computing is the field of research that investigates both human-designed computing inspired by nature and computing taking place in nature, i.e., it investigates models and computational techniques inspired by nature and also it investigates phenomena taking place in nature in terms of information processing.Examples of the first strand of research covered by the handbook include neural computation inspired by the functioning of the brain; evolutionary computation inspired by Darwinian evolution of species; cellular automata inspired by intercellular communication; swarm intelligence inspired by the behavior of groups of organisms; artificial immune systems inspired by the natural immune system; artificial life systems inspired by the properties of natural life in general; membrane computing inspired by the compartmentalized ways in which cells process information; and amorphous computing inspired by morphogenesis. Other examples of natural-computing paradigms are molecular computing and quantum computing, where the goal is to replace traditional electronic hardware, e.g., by bioware in molecular computing. In molecular computing, data are encoded as biomolecules and then molecular biology tools are used to transform the data, thus performing computations. In quantum computing, one exploits quantum-mechanical phenomena to perform computations and secure communications more efficiently than classical physics and, hence, traditional hardware allows.The second strand of research covered by the handbook, computation taking place in nature, is represented by investigations into, among others, the computational nature of self-assembly, which lies at the core of nanoscience, the computational nature of developmental processes, the computational nature of biochemical reactions, the computational nature of bacterial communication, the computational nature of brain processes, and the systems biology approach to bionetworks where cellular processes aretreated in terms of communication and interaction, and, hence, in terms of computation.We are now witnessing exciting interaction between computer science and the natural sciences. While the natural sciences are rapidly absorbing notions, techniques and methodologies intrinsic to information processing, computer science is adapting and extending its traditional notion of computation, and computational techniques, to account for computation taking place in nature around us. Natural Computing is an important catalyst for this two-way interaction, and this handbook is a major record of this important development.