2007 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics

The 2007 International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics (ICMLC 2007) was held in Hong Kong on August 19-22, 2007. This annual event was sponsored by the SMC Society with strong support from our 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), the Hong Kong SMC Chapter, and the Hong Kong Student Branch Chapter.

Many key members of the SMC Society, including President Larry Hall, Senior Past President Michael Smith, Junior Past President and IEEE Director William Gruver, President-Elect and VP Long Range Planning and Finance Daniel Yeung, VP Conferences and Meetings T.T. Lee, VP Publications Michael Berthold, Society Treasurer Philip Chen and Board of Governor Member Xizhao Wang all played an important role in the organization of this event. ICMLC 2007 is the sixth of its kind and is now a well recognized annual event for researchers and professionals in the Asia Pacific Region. Tutorial and keynote speakers included Don Brown, Larry Hall, Witold Pedrycz, Shyi-Ming Chen, and Michael Berthold.

The conference featured a number of themes representing the leading edge research and development in machine learning and cybernetics. Keynote presentations were given by four distinguished speakers: Lei Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, "A Unified Perspective on Advances of Independent Subspaces: Basic Temporal, and Local Structures;" Shuguo Wang, President of Harbin Institute of Technology, "Robotics Research at HIT: From Industrial Robotics to Service Robotics;" Jim Tien, past president of the SMC Society, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, "Real-Time Systems: When Services and Products Become Indistinguishable;" and Michael Berthold, Nycomed-Professor for Bioinformatics and Information Mining at Konstanz University, "Learning What to Ask: Active Classification of Cell Assay Images."

The Conference benefited from a significant number of participants from Taiwan, Korea and Japan. For the first time at ICMLC, the PhD Colloquium provided graduate students with an opportunity for senior faculty and researchers to critique their doctoral research. In another session, a panel, including editors of journals, discussed practical difficulties associated with preparing journal articles. Patrick Y.C. Cheng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Science, former Vice Chancellor of University of Hong Kong, and former President of the City University of Hong Kong, presented an address to the attendees at the Conference Banquet which was attended by some 300 delegates from different countries.

The Hong-Kong student branch chapter was also present at the conference

The conference banquet featured exciting performances of the colorful Lion Dances, a form of traditional dance in Chinese culture, in which performers mimic a lion's movements in a lion costume. The lion costume was operated by two performers who form the back and fore legs of the beast, mimicking the motions of a single animal as they move between platforms of varying elevations. The dance was traditionally accompanied by traditional music consisting of gongs and drums representing the descent of good luck.

Lion Dances

The attendees were also treated to a fascinating performance of Changing Faces, a highlight of Sichuan Opera which originated at the end of the Ming (1368-1644) and the beginning of the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. Face changing is a magical art. Actors can change more than 10 masks in less than 20 seconds! By raising the hand, swinging a sleeve or tossing the head, an actor uses different masks to show different emotions, expressing invisible and intangible feelings through visible and tangible masks. From green to blue, red, yellow, brown, black, dark and gold, these masks show fear, tension, relaxation, slyness, desperation, outrage, and so on. Changing Faces is one of the important cultural heritages in China.

"Changing faces" performance

Attendees at ICMLC 2007 had the opportunity to explore collaborations with others sharing the same research interests. Many attendees also took advantage of their presence to learn about the vibrant city of Hong Kong.

ICMLC 2008 will be held next summer in the scenic city of Kunming in Western China.

Group photo of the conference organizers and volunteers

Submitted by John Lee
Member of the ICMLC07 Organizing Committee