The latest breakthroughs in “smart” engineering system design techniques – from artificial intelligence to data mining – will be covered during ANNIE 2006, the Artificial Neural Networks in Engineering conference to be held Nov. 5-8 at the St. Louis Pavilion Hotel in St. Louis.

These key research areas each address national and state needs, including critical infrastructure, cyber security, homeland security and defense, and computational intelligence and nanotechnology.

Approximately 150 researchers from 20 countries will take part in this 16th annual conference, says conference chair Dr. Cihan H. Dagli, a professor of systems engineering and computer engineering and director of the Smart Engineering Systems Laboratory at UMR.

The program’s seven plenary sessions include four presentations on bio-informatics and computational biology as well as special sessions on computational public health and infrastructure systems engineering.

Among the plenary speakers is Dr. Ann Miller, the Cynthia Tang Missouri Distinguished Professor of computer engineering at UMR. Miller’s presentation, titled “Engineering Trustworthy Complex Systems,” will focus on the security and reliability of autonomous, intelligent systems.

More information about the conference is available on the ANNIE 2006 website at www.mst.edu/~annie.