"The 2001 German Future Prize - the President's Prize for Technology and Innovation- was awarded on 29 November, 2001 to Prof. Wolfgang Wahlster, past Chair of ECCAI, in a ceremony in Berlin attended by some 400 invited guests.

The President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Dr. Johannes Rau, presented the German Future Prize to Prof. Wahlster for his work on language technology and intelligent user interfaces. The prize carries a $230,000 personal cash award.

The President's prize is awarded each year for outstanding innovations in technology, engineering, or the natural sciences. Proven prospects for practical application, and the creation of new jobs are crucial criteria for the selection of nominees.

Prof. Wahlster, director of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and professor of AI and of Computational Linguistics at Saarland University, is the first computer scientist to receive this prize. In a brief speech, Prof. Wahlster said: "I am glad to have received this high honor now, in the middle of my career, and not at the end of my years of active research. The prize both encourages and obligates me to continue to tackle important open problems in the area of human-computer interaction, to create innovations that will lead to a humane knowledge society, and to inspire and educate young people who can contribute to this fascinating area of computer science. This prize will give a great boost to the rapid dissemination of the results of our research.""

Congratulations to Wolfgang from the ECCAI board

NEWS from the ECCAI board and the ECCAI web site

CALL for ECAI-04 CONFERENCE CHAIR

Deadlines :

1 April 2002
July 2002 : presentation of the bids and selection by the ECCAI General Assembly

Bid for the PC Chair and Guidelines at the second part of the document: https://eccai.org/admin/ecaiproc.shtml

For additional informations, please contact

CALL for ECAI-06 ORGANISATION

The deadlines :

31 January 2002 : notification of the intention to bid
1 May 2002 : submission of draft detailed bids
30 June 2002 : end of the discussion between the candidates and the ECCAI board
July 2002 : presentation of the bids and selection by the ECCAI General Assembly

Guidelines for organizing ECAI : https://eccai.org/admin/ecaiproc.shtml and see the last ECCAI bulletin

For additional informations, please contact

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DISSERTATION AWARD 2001

Deadline of submissions : 31 January 2002

For details, please visit: https://eccai.org/diss-award/2001.shtml

CONTENTS of Artificial Intelligence Communications

http://iospress.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=issue&issn=0921-7126&issue=current

CONTENTS of Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence

http://www.etaij.org

NEWS from the ECCAI Conferences

- ECAI'02

ECAI and PAIS deadline is getting closer and closer: it's time to begin thinking about the plan of your submission!

18 January 2002 : deadline for paper summaries (ECAI & PAIS)
22 January 2002 : deadline for papers (ECAI & PAIS)

The web site of the conference : http://ecai2002.univ-lyon1.fr/

- STAIRS'2002

The first European Starting AI Researcher Symposium, a meeting aimed at AI researchers at the beginning of their career: PhD students or people holding a PhD for less than one year. It offers them:

a first experience on submitting and presenting a paper in an international forum with a broad scope and thorough selection process;
the opportunity to gather knowledge and exchange ideas related to their research problems and approaches, and to attend ECAI at a reduced cost;
information on European research careers and mobility.

STAIRS'2002 will be held in Lyon, July 22-23, at the beginning of ECAI'2002.

Additional information about STAIRS'2002 will be found on the symposium web pages: http://stairs2002.univ-lyon1.fr

NEWS from the ECCAI societies

- from

2nd Hellenic AI Conference (SETN02), at Thessaloniki on 11-12 April, 2002?
The Web site of the conference is: http://www.csd.auth.gr/~setn02/

- from , AFIA Chair :

In addition with AI-Communications and ETAI, AFIA built a new electronic journal in AIL'AFIA est heureuse d'annoncer la création et la mise en ligne de son
JEDAI : http://jedai.afia-france.org
Papers are posted on the web site and anybody might add comments. At a final step the Journal content is a selection to the best papers.

Other News

- from

We would like to inform you of the availability of the LNAI volume 2049: "Machine Learning and Its Applications". The idea for this book was conceived during the Advanced Course in Artificial Intelligence (ACAI '99). Details about ACAI '99 can be found at: http://www.iit.demokritos.gr/skel/eetn/acai99/
The book is primarily based on material that was presented in ACAI '99, but it goes beyond that by containing several position papers on open research issues of machine learning. Among the authors of the book are most of the lecturers in ACAI '99: Ivan Bratko, Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, Luc De Raedt, Yves Kodratoff, Pat Langley, Ryszard S. Michalski, Jonathan Shapiro, Sergios Theodoridis, Maarten van Someren and other machine learning researchers.

More information about the volume at: http://link.springer.de/link/service/series/0558/tocs/t2049.htm

- Next ECCAI-Bulletin in January 2002

ECCAI Bulletin Editor : Marc AYEL