ILPnet2: ILP Network of Excellence
(NoE Nr. 977102)
Progress Report for the Period 01/09/1999 to 31/08/2000
ILPnet2 is the Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) Network of
Excellence
consisting of over 20 universities and research institutes.
In addition the network actively pursues
industrial relations through its End-User Club (EUC), consisting of
companies and other non-academic institutions interested in practical
applications of ILP. ILPnet2 succeeds ILPnet,
the ILP European Scientific Network.
The mission of ILPnet2 is defined by the following long-term objectives:
- To co-ordinate ILP research among the nodes of the network.
- To promote the co-operation and exchange of research results
among the network nodes.
- To disseminate information on ILP research and applications to
the outside world, including both academic and
industrial/non-academic institutions.
- To facilitate the transfer of ILP research results to practice.
- To support the establishment of the infrastructure necessary
for achieving the above objectives.
The workplan for the second year was as follows:
- Establish a common electronic workspace for network nodes.
- Organise a problem presentation workshop for end users.
- Organise a summerschool on ILP and its applications.
- Organise an ILP workshop.
- Maintain and add new material to WWW site,
bibliographic database, technical report series,
list of thesis abstracts, archives of datasets and software,
educational archive.
- Make ILP systems from the archive available for different platforms.
- Publish (electronically) the ILP Newsletter.
Below we report on the activities of ILPnet2 in the second year and relate
them to the workplan. These include the publication of the ILP Newsletter,
significant updates of the WWW resources (library, systems and
application descriptions)
and the organization of a number of educational events, one of which
was addressed at the EUC.
More detailed information on ILPnet2 activities can be found
starting at the ILPnet2 website at http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~ILPnet2/.
In the second year, ILPnet2 supported a number of
ILP-related educational events. These were as follows:
- A tutorial entitled Inductive Logic Programming Made Easy,
given by Luc de Raedt and Hendrik Blockeel at the
Fourth Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge
Discovery in Databases (PKDD-99),
Prague, Czech Republic, 16-18 September 1999.
- A two-day seminar on Data Analysis in Life Sciences, held
in Ljubljana, Slovenia,
18-19 May 2000. Lecturers included Ashwin Srinivasan, Ross King and
Saso Dzeroski. A substantial part of the seminar was devoted to ILP
and its applications in life sciences (e.g., to drug design and analysis
of genome data). This seminar was attended by six persons from
two institutions
in the ILPnet2 EUC. The seminar also received support from another
EU-funded project Sol-Eu-Net IST-1999-11.495: Data Mining
and Decision Support
for Business Competitiveness: A European Virtual Enterprise.
- Two ILP-related tutorials were given at the First International
Conference on Computational Logic (CL-2000),
held in London, 24-28 July 2000: Knowledge Representation
for ILP by Peter Flach
and Applications of ILP by Stephen Muggleton.
- Two ILP-related courses were given at the 12th European
Summer School
on Logic, Language and Information (ESSLI-2000), held 6-18
August 2000 in Birmingham: From machine learning to ILP: ILP
made easy
by Hendrik Blockeel and ILP for learning language in
logic by Stephen Muggleton
and James Cussens. Each of the courses comprised five two-hour lectures.
The 10th International
Conference on Inductive Logic Programming (ILP-2000), also
supported by ILPnet2,
took place 24-27 July 2000 in London. It was integrated with
the First International
Conference on Computational Logic (CL-2000). This exposed the
ILP community to a wide range
of work in computational logic and logic programming and
at the same tive gave ILP researchers the opportunity to
present their achievements
to the computational logic community. A report on ILP-2000 is
included in the appendix.
The common electronic workspace for computer
supported cooperative work was created in year one.
In the second year, we collected educational
materials from the ILPnet2 supported educational events listed above
and put them in the electronic workspace.
The materials in the electronic workspace are available to ILPnet2
nodes and EUC members.
Some additions were also made to the publicly available list of
educational materials.
on the web.
The educational materials in the electronic workspace at the end of year two
are the following:
- Hand-outs of the slides for all lectures at the seminar
Data Analysis in Life Sciences
- Hand-outs of the slides for the two ILP-related tutorials at
the First International
Conference on Computational Logic (CL-2000)
- Hand-outs of the slides for the two ILP-related courses at
the 12th European Summer School on Logic, Language and
Information (ESSLI-2000)
ILPnet2 exploits the Internet as the main medium of information dissemination.
Information disseminated in this way includes bibliographic information
(also technical reports and thesis abstracts), information on ILP
systems and information on ILP applications and datasets. In this
respect, ILPnet2
expands on activities undertaken by ILPnet, the ILPnet2 predecessor.
In year two, the ILPnet2 on-line library expanded from 750 entries to
almost 900 entries.
In addition, a further 300 entries have been collected from various
sources, such as
on-line websearches, library searches, etc. Once these entries have
been added to the
database, the library will have doubled in size compared to the start
of ILPnet2.
The ILPnet2 systems page, which was set up during the first year,
has been updated in several ways. First, pointers to WWW pages of
the ILP systems have been added. Thus, each entry in the list of
ILP systems contains at least one of two possible pointers. One
is a pointer to a short description of the system (the format of
all short descriptions is uniform) and another one points to the
WWW page of the system, usually provided by the developers. Second,
eight new entries have been added to the list, seven pointers to
WWW pages and one short description.
The ILPnet2 applications and datasets page has been restructured.
The pointers to short descriptions of applications (with common
format) have been grouped in five sections according to their
application domains: engineering, life sciences, environmental
sciences, natural language processing and other. Also, twenty-five
new short descriptions have been added in the last year.
The ILPnet2 website also contain information on the portability
of ILP systems to different platforms. This
activity began ahead of schedule in year one (four systems tested) and
continued in year two (three systems tested). Other information available
through the ILPnet2 website includes the ILP newsletter,
a list of ILP-related events and a list of educational materials.
The ILP Newsletter had four issues in the second year of ILPnet2.
In addition to being distributed via email, the newsletter is also available
through the ILPnet2 website at IJS. A list of ILP-related events was also
created in year two, containing 20 events for that year.
The list of educational materials, which include on-line versions of
lectures/slides and syllabi of ILP or ILP related courses, was updated
with several new entries.
Two events addressed at end-users took place in year two: a seminar
on data analysis in life sciences and a data analysis workshop.
A two-day seminar on Data Analysis in Life Sciences was
held in Ljubljana, Slovenia,
18-19 May 2000. Lecturers included Ashwin Srinivasan, Ross King and
Saso Dzeroski. A substantial part of the seminar was devoted to ILP
and its applications in life sciences (e.g., to drug design and analysis
of genome data). This seminar was attended by six persons from
two institutions
in the ILPnet2 EUC: The National Institute of Chemistry (Ljubljana)
and DIALOGIS (Bonn).
Next to the seminar, a data analysis workshop was organized.
Ashwin Srinivasan and Saso Dzeroski worked together
with Kathy Astrahantseff (DIALOGIS) to analyze data from
protein interaction assays. Three data analysis tasks were
addressed, including the detection of motifs common to
a set of proteins, a typical ILP task. The initial results
were encouraging and the domain expert is now collecting
more data from similar protein interaction assays.
A more detailed report is given in the appendix.
This was a key concern in the second year of the network. 3 new CEE
nodes have been
added to the network: the Technical University of Kosice (SK), the
Rudjer Boskovic Institute
in Zagreb (HR), and the Masaryk University in Brno (CZ).
In addition, 5 new associate nodes (this is a new category created
for new West-European
nodes) have been added: Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg (D),
Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg (D), Oxford University (UK),
Universidade Nova de Lisboa (P), and University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UK).
Finally, one new end-user has been added to the end-user club:
Swiss-Life Insurance in Zürich (CH).
Overall, the network now consists of 25 nodes, 5 associate nodes, and
14 end-users.
In summary, all of the activities planned in the workplan for the second year
have taken place in their originally planned or a similar form.
The planned problem presentation workshop for end users was replaced
with a data analysis workshop (planned for year three). This makes
sense, as problem presentations
already took place at the seminar in Caminha (year one). We still plan to have
at least one data analysis workshop in year three.
We did not have a separate summer school on ILP and its applications,
but had a variety of other educational events. In particular,
the two ILP-related courses at ESSLI-2000 can be considered as a replacement
for an ILP summer school: the two courses comprised 20 hours of lectures.
In general, we consider the strategy of giving ILP-related courses at
larger established events as a better method of attracting a wider audience.
In addition to continuing dissemination of various kinds of
information through the WWW, activities planned for the second year
include the organization of an
ILP workshop, a summerschool on ILP and its applications, and
the preparation/dissemination of an ILP toolbox for educational purposes.
- Tutorial Inductive Logic
Programming Made Easy
at the Fourth Conference on Principles and Practice of
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD-99),
Prague, Czech Republic, 16-18 September 1999.
- Seminar Data Analysis in Life
Sciences, held in
Ljubljana, Slovenia, 18-19 May 2000.
- Data analysis workshop Analysis of
Data from Protein Interaction Assays,
16-17 May 2000, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- ILP-2000: The 10th
International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming,
24-27 July 2000, London.
- ESSLI-2000: The 12th European
Summer School on Logic, Language and Information,
6-18 August 2000, Birmingham
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