Call for Participation

• Objective: This workshop, whose participants must register for ECCBR-02, will provide an interactive forum for discussing and encouraging research and development of mixed-initiative case-based reasoning (CBR) approaches, which are methodological CBR variants characterized by an iterative sharing/swapping of control between the user and the software system (e.g., to guide retrieval, support incremental query elaboration). Our primary goal is to develop a shared understanding of the status of research and commercial activities on mixed-initiative CBR (MI-CBR), problems that need to be addressed, and approaches for solving them. We want to identify problems that could be addressed by research groups or individual students, and identify new application areas for MI-CBR. Our subsidiary goal is to publish a survey/status journal article on MI-CBR.

• Background/Motivation: Many researchers, practitioners, and organizations have developed MI-CBR variants that support interesting computational behaviors. For example, Inference Corporation pioneered a "conversational" CBR (CCBR) approach in products that became the most broadly applied CBR tools during the 20th century. Several other companies (e.g., empolis) have since developed advanced MI-CBR products, and this topic has also been addressed by several researchers (e.g., Burke, Cox, Gupta, Göker, McSherry, Shimazu, Yang). Applications/foci have included intelligent information retrieval, customer support, e-commerce, and planning tasks, among others. However, no recent survey exists that tightly relates both the research contributions and commercial systems related to MI-CBR (e.g., CCBR, incremental instance-based learning, recommender systems). Also, no meeting has focused on this topic, although one special issue has addressed it (i.e., Special Issue on Interactive CBR, Applied Intelligence, 14(1), 2001, edited by Aha and Muńoz-Avila). Researchers who share these interests have had limited opportunities to discuss this topic at more general meetings. Structure: This 1-day workshop will consist of a series of focused discussions, led by participants selected by the Workshop Committee, that identify and summarize past contributions, current work, and open issues concerning mixed-initiative CBR (MI-CBR) methodologies. Some invited presentations may also be integrated with this sequence to provide additional detail on information related to the workshop's focus (e.g., we may solicit presentations from group leaders to summarize their group's work). Workshop details will be determined with the assistance of feedback solicited from expected participants (via an e-mail list). Scribes will be recruited from among the participants to assist with recording the discussions and/or authoring the survey article.

• Paper review process: We do not solicit paper submissions for this workshop, with the following exceptions (using a max 4-page Springer-LNCS format):
  • Group leaders who wish to summarize their group's work on MI-CBR
  • Active MI-CBR researchers/practitioners who wish to summarize recent contributions (please note that we distinguish interactive from mixed-initiative approaches)
  • Position statements regarding MI-CBR activities/advances
  • Interested CBR researchers/practitioners who require a publication to attend. In general, these submissions, if accepted, will not be presented, nor undergo a rigorous review, unless they directly address one or more of the selected discussion topics.
  Submissions should be emailed to the workshop's Chair by 7 June 2002, with a notification deadline of 5 July 2002. Accepted submissions may be granted additional pages. Printed copies of the workshop notes will be available at ECCBR-02, and we will attempt to place them at the workshop's www site.

• Attendees: This workshop will be open to all registered participants of ECCBR-02. Although ECCBR-02 attendees are welcome to contact us any time prior to 4 September, please contact the Chair to state your intention to attend, and to be added to the mailing list for workshop-related decisions and announcements.

  We are expecting the following people to attend, as of 22 August 2002. Linked next to their names are their completed Participant Questionnaires.

  1. David W. Aha, Naval Research Laboratory (USA)
  2. Martin Atzmueller, U. Wuerzberg (Germany)
  3. Cristina Barbero, Motorola Electronic S.P.A (Italy)
  4. Joachim Baumeister, U. Wuerzberg (Germany)
  5. Ralph Bergmann, U. Hildesheim (Germany)
  6. M. Lourdes Borrajo Diz, U. Vigo (Spain)
  7. Derek Bridge, U. College Cork (Ireland)
  8. Robin Burke, DePaul U. (USA)
  9. Mike Cox, Wright State U. (USA)
  10. Martha Dorum Jaere, Borak Desarollo S.L (Spain)
  11. Peter Duxbury-Smith, Bluewin (Switzerland)
  12. Cormac Gebruers, U. College Cork (Ireland) (questionnaire)
  13. Markus Grabert, National U. of Ireland (Ireland)
  14. Kalyan Moy Gupta, ITT Industries (USA)
  15. Daniel Hennessy, U. Pittsburgh (USA)
  16. Deepak Khemani, IIT Madras (India)
  17. Rosalia Laza, U. Vigo (Spain)
  18. Sara Manzoni, U. Milano Bicocca (Italy)
  19. David McSherry, U. Ulster, Coleraine (Northern Ireland) (questionnaire)
  20. Alec Morgan, General Motors (USA)
  21. Sasidhar Mukkamalla, Lehigh U. (USA)
  22. David Patterson, U. Ulster, Jordanstown (Northern Ireland)
  23. Petra Perner, Institute of Computer Vision and Applied Computer Sciences (Germany)
  24. Miltos Petridis, U. Greenwich (UK)
  25. Enric Plaza i Cervera, IIIA-CSIC (Spain)
  26. Sowmya Ramachandran, SHAI (USA)
  27. Francesco Ricci, IRST (Italy) (questionnaire)
  28. Michael Richter, U. Kaiserslautern (Germany)
  29. Magali Ruet, U. Enit (France) (questionnaire)
  30. Maria Salamo, U. Ramon Llull, La Salle (Spain)
  31. Sascha Schmitt, U. Kaiserslautern (Germany)
  32. Hideo Shimazu, NEC (Japan)
  33. Raja Sooriamurthi, Indiana U. (USA)
  34. Armin Stahl, U. Kaiserslautern (Germany)
  35. Barbara Weber, U. Innsbruck (Austria)
  36. Werner Wild, Evolution (Austria)
  37. David C. Wilson, U. College Dublin (Ireland) (questionnaire)
  38. Robert Wylie, National Research Council (Canada)
  39. Lu Zhang, U. Liverpool (England)
  40. Shikun Zhou, Robert Gordon U. (Scotland)

• WWW: http://home.earthlink.net/~dwaha/research/meetings/eccbr02-micbrw

• Dates:
  

  7 June 2002	Requested deadline to state intention of participating
  7 June 2002	Submission deadline
  5 July 2002	Review notification deadline
  26 July 2002	Deadline for camera-ready copies
  4 September 2002	Workshop date (Aberdeen, Scotland)

• Workshop Committee:

  David W. Aha (Chair)
  Naval Research Laboratory, Code 5515
  4555 Overlook Ave., SW
  Washington, DC 20375
  aha@aic.nrl.navy.mil
  +1 202 404-4940
  

  Derek Bridge
  Department of Computer Science
  University College, Cork
  Ireland
  d.bridge@cs.ucc.ie
  +353 (0)21 4902133
  

  Robin Burke
  Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences
  California State University, Fullerton
  Fullerton, CA 92834
  rburke@fullerton.edu
  +1 714 278-5513
  Note: Robin will join DePaul University in Fall, 2002
  

  Michael T. Cox
  Computer Science and Engineering
  Wright State University
  Dayton, OH 45435-0001
  mcox@cs.wright.edu
  +1 (937) 775-5126
  

  Joseph A. Giampapa
  The Robotics Institute
  Carnegie Mellon University
  5000 Forbes Ave
  Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890
  (412) 268-5245
  garof+@cs.cmu.edu
  

  Kalyan Moy Gupta
  ITT Industries
  Naval Research Laboratory, Code 5515
  4555 Overlook Ave., SW
  Washington, DC 20375
  gupta@aic.nrl.navy.mil
  +1 202 767-6645
  

  David McSherry
  School of Information and Software Engineering,
  University of Ulster
  Coleraine BT52 1SA,
  Northern Ireland
  dmg.mcsherry@ulst.ac.uk
  +44 (0)28 7032 4130
  

  Hideo Shimazu
  Internet Systems Lab
  NEC Corporation
  8916-47, Takayama, Ikoma
  Nara, Japan 630-0101
  shimazu@da.jp.nec.com