INNS-NNN Symposia (New directions in Neural Networks) 2008 November 24-25, 2008, Auckland, New Zealand

Welcome to NNN’08 – the First of the Symposia Series “New developments in Neural Networks” of the International Neural Network Society - INNS                 

In 2006 the Board of Governors of the International Neural Network Society (INNS, http://www.inns.org) decided to establish a biannual series of Symposia devoted to new developments in Neural Networks (NNN). I have the privilege to welcome you to the First Symposia of this series, NNN’08, Auckland, New Zealand.

The NNN’08 event is devoted to the topic of “Modeling the brain and the nervous system” and comprises two Symposia:

1. A Symposium on Development and Learning, organized and chaired by J.Weng, J.Krichmar and H.Wagatsuma;
2. A Symposium on Computational Neurogenetic Modeling, organized and chaired by L.Benuskova, A.Villa and N.Kasabov

We are proud to have 9 internationally established scientists in the subject area presenting their recent work at the symposium as invited speakers. Among them are A.Villa, J.Weng, G.Marcus, C.Abraham, H.Kojima, M.Tsukada, Y.Jin, L.Benuskova. Along them we have young researchers who have achieved interesting results and are presenting these results at the NNN’08. I would like to thank the organizers of the two Symposia, the invited speakers and the participants for making this event happened.

The NNN’08 is sponsored by INNS, KEDRI, AUT, Toyota USA, and the ICONIP’08 conference - a much larger annual conference of the Asia Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA, http://www.apnna.net) held also in Auckland (25-28.11.2008). My sincere thanks to the sponsors!

The NNN’08 event is hosted by the Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI, http://www.kedri.info), which is part of the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) – one of the most dynamic universities in New Zealand. I would like to thank the staff of KEDRI and the Local Organizing Chair Joyce D’Mello for helping with the organization of the NNN’08 Symposia. I would like to thank also Prof. Mario Koeppen – the PC chair of ICONIP, the publication team – Stefan Shliebs, Raphael Hu and Kshitij Dhobe, and the Web master Peter Hwang. 

I hope you all will enjoy the NNN’08 Symposia and will take some ideas home for a future research. I also invite you to become a member of the INNS (http://www.inns.org) and to follow any further developments in this exciting research area for the 21st century. Welcome! 

Professor Nikola Kasabov
Program Chair of NNN’08
President-Elect of INNS (http://www.inns.org)
November 2008, Auckland, New Zealand

 

©2008 Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI)