Advances in "smart" engineering system design techniques from artificial life to data mining and "fuzzy" logic will be the focus of ANNIE 2004, the Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering conference to be held Nov. 7-10 at the Marriott Pavilion Hotel in St. Louis.

Approximately 125 researchers from 15 countries will take part in the conference, says conference chair Dr. Cihan H. Dagli, a professor of engineering management and systems engineering and director of the Smart Engineering Systems Laboratory at UMR.

The program’s seven plenary sessions include presentations on machine learning techniques in bioinformatics, an engineering approach to computational intelligence, and alternative formulations for predictive learning.

Among the plenary speakers are Dr. C. Lee Giles, the David Reese Professor of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University, and Dr. John McLean, superintendent of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Giles’ presentation, titled "CiteSeer: The Next Generation," will focus on what makes the computer and information science search engine and digital library so popular. McLean’s talk, titled "AI & IA: The Use of Artificial Intelligence in High-Assurance Systems," will consider how information assurance systems could be constructed using artificial intelligence techniques.

More information about the conference is available on the ANNIE 2004 website at www.mst.edu/~annie.