Greetings to all members of the AI Community from the top of Vinson Massif (4968m), the highest point on the Antarctica continent. With 24 hour daylight it isn't that cold here!

The deadline for the submission of papers to ECAI-04 is fast approaching.
We expect this years conference to be the biggest and best yet, so polish off that paper and start making plans to attend. see you in Valencia!

Rob Milne, ECCAI president

NEWS from the ECCAI board

Last CALL for ECAI-08 ORGANISATION

The deadlines :

1 May 2004 : submission of draft detailed bids
30 June 2004 : end of the discussion between the candidates and the ECCAI board
July 2004 : presentation of the bids and selection by the ECCAI General Assembly at Valencia

Guidelines for organizing ECAI
See also the map of the last ECAIs
and the content of the last ECCAI General Assembly

For additional informations, please contact

Last call for 2003 ECCAI ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE DISSERTATION AWARD
see the ECCAI website

The deadline for receipt of submissions is January 31, 2004.
Submissions and Requests should be sent to: Ulrich Furbach
University Koblenz-Landau, AI Research Group
Universitaetstr. 1
D-56070 Koblenz, Germany
Email: [email protected]

This Award includes a certificate signed by the ECCAI Chair and 1.500 Euros (which includes the travel grant for the Award ceremony). The Award will be presented during ECAI 2004 in Valencia, Spain (23-27 August 2004). about the Program Chair.

Eligible doctoral dissertations are those defended after December 1, 2002 in the general area of Artificial Intelligence. The dissertation must have been defended at an European university and the author must be a personal member of an ECCAI member society. Multiple submissions of the same doctoral dissertation to other dissertation award activities of other societies are excluded.
To be considered, a dissertation must be nominated by the thesis supervisor, who must submit the following items:
- three copies of the dissertation or a link to a WWW version of the thesis,
- five copies of an extended abstract (3 to 5 pages) in English,
- if the thesis was not written in English the nomination must include an English paper describing the core ideas of the thesis that has been submitted for publication in an international journal or a prestigious conference. The nominee must be the first author of this paper.
- nomination letters from two referees selected by the dissertation supervisor, supporting the submission and stating their assessment of why the thesis should win the award.

ECCAI Journals

Artificial Intelligence Communications: Volume 16, Number 4/2003 (see last bulletin)
http://iospress.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=issue&issn=0921-7126&issue=current

Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence: http://www.etaij.org

ECCAI Conferences

- ECAI'04: http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004

Last news :

• (15/01/2004) ECAI 2004 Final Call for Papers available
• (15/01/2004) List of accepted tutorials available.
• (14/01/2004) Information about a travel grant for ECAI 2004 offered by AISB.
• (30/12/2003) List of accepted workshops available.

Important Dates:
• 13 Feb 2004: Deadline for paper summaries
• 18 Feb 2004: Deadline for papers

Highlights on ECCAI societies : AEPIA

The Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (AEPIA) was funded in 1983 aiming to encourage the development of Artificial Intelligence both in Spain and South America. AEPIA is member of the ECCAI and founder member of IBERAMIA, the Iberoamerican Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The association also supports several national and international events with high interest for the members (CAEPIA, TTIA, etc.).

The aims of AEPIA include creating and coordinating working groups; giving support to technology transference and entities (such as universities, R&D centers, enterprises, institutions, etc.) in order to contribute to the application of Artificial Intelligence techniques; and also giving support to students and researchers in technology, development, application and teaching issues.

Since 1997, AEPIA activities are managed through the association journal (Artificial Intelligence: Iberoamerican Journal on A.I.), which publishes threeor four issues per year, printing 450 numbers of each issue on average. AEPIA also coordinates the Artificial Intelligence distribution list INT-ARTIF (supported by RED-IRIS) and maintains a teaching resources repository about Artificial Intelligence.

Others

from Patrick Doherty ()

Call for Papers
The 4th International Cognitive Robotics Workshop ( website)
Co-Located with ECAI 2004, August 23 and 24, 2004, Valencia, Spain

from Ulises Cortés ()

A Workshop on e-Government & e-Democracy at Santiago, Chile, May 24-27, 2004
http://www.eu-lat.org

Next ECCAI-Bulletin in April 2004