DM: IAT'99: Call for Participation

[IAT99 Conference]

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               ****************************************
               *                                      *
               *   IAT'99 :  Call for Participation   *
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     1st Asia-Pacific Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology
               ========================================
                    December 14-17 1999   Hong Kong

             Homepage:  http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/IAT99


You are invited to attend and participate in the First Asia-Pacific 
Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'99) to be held in 
Hong 
Kong on December 14-17, 1999.  The conference will take place at the 
Lam 
Woo International Conference Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University, 
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong.

IAT'99 is an international forum that will bring together innovators 
from around the world in the growing field of intelligent agents and
their applications to share their original research results and 
practical development experiences. A unique feature of the conference 
is that it emphasizes a multi-facet view of the emerging agent 
technology,
from its computational foundations, in terms of models, methodologies,
and tools for developing a variety of embodiments of agent-based 
systems,
to its practical impact on tackling real-world problems. 

The technical program of IAT'99 is structured into 17 sessions, 
focusing
on the following areas:

            A.  Agent Architectures
            B.  Multiagent Cooperation
            C.  Distributed Intelligence 
            D.  Formal Agent Theories 
            E.  Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Agents
            F.  Personalized Web Agents
            G.  Software Agents
            H.  Mobile Agents
            I.  Agent-Supported Enterprise 

104 full papers were submitted from 24 countries and regions of all 
continents. Out of them, 29 regular papers (27.8%) and 36 short 
papers 
were accepted for presentation and publication. The proceedings of 
IAT'99 is published by The World Scientific Publishing as a book,
entitled "Intelligent Agent Technology: Systems, Methodologies, and

Tools" (ISBN 981-02-4054-6).

IAT'99 is sponsored by Hong Kong Baptist University, The Croucher 
Foundation, Epson Foundation, The MIT Press, ACM Hong Kong, IEEE 
Hong Kong Section Computer Chapter, and in cooperation with ACM 
SIGART, SIGKDD, and SIGCHI.

================
SPECIAL FEATURES
================

The IAT'99 program is enriched by 4 invited speakers: Setsuo Ohsuga, 
Jeffrey Bradshaw, Jan Zytkow, and Daniel Ling, from Artificial 
Intelligence, Autonomous Agents, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 
and User Interfaces communities.

The IAT'99 participants will be able to see and try new technologies 
close up at the IAT'99 Agent Technology Exhibition, featuring live 
system demonstrations from MITRE Corporation, IBM Santa Teresa Lab, 
IBM Almaden Research Center, NEC, Toshiba, Japan 
Information-technology 
Promotion Agency (IPA), and a number of other corporate/university 
labs.

As part of the technical program, a panel discussion on Trends and 
Prospects of Intelligent Agent Technology will be held and chaired 
by Jeffrey Bradshaw.

==============
SOCIAL PROGRAM
==============

In order to provide a better opportunity for the IAT'99 participants 
to discover Hong Kong, IAT'99 will include a complimentary 
sightseeing bus tour to visit some of the most famous scenic places
in Hong Kong.

Immediately following the sightseeing tour, the IAT'99 participants 
and their guests will get a chance to see Hong Kong at night and to
interact with each other in a very informal, relaxing atmosphere, as
they take part in the IAT'99 Cruise with Buffet Banquet. 

  (NOTE: Admission tickets are limited and will be offered on a 
  first-come-first-serve basis. The student registration does not 
  include the admission to the banquet.) 

==================
EARLY REGISTRATION
==================

The deadline for early registration is *November 1, 1999*. 
Registration forms for the conference, tutorials, and workshop 
("Agents in E-Commerce") can be found at the IAT'99 homepage:

                http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/IAT99 


                      ======================
                      IAT'99 ADVANCE PROGRAM
                      ======================

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday, December 14 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--------------------------------
Tutorials and
Workshop on Agents in E-Commerce
--------------------------------
(Full Day)

---------------------------
Pre-Conference Registration
---------------------------
16:00 - 18:00


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday, December 15 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Registration
08:30 - 09:00

Opening Ceremony
09:00 - 09:20

Reception
09:20 - 09:35

------------
Invited Talk
------------
09:35 - 10:35
    How Can AI Systems Deal with Large and Complex Problems?
       Prof. Setsuo Ohsuga (Waseda University, Japan)

------------------------------------
Session 1    Agent Architectures (I)
------------------------------------
10:40 - 11:40

(1) A Framework for Multi-Agent Systems Development 
       David Kinny (University of Melbourne, Australia)
(2) A Reactive Scheduling Agent Architecture for Coordinating    

    Assistants 
       Wayne Wobcke (BT laboratories, UK) 
       Arash Sichanie 
       (Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK)
(3) Evaluating the FIPA Standards on the Field: An Audio Video    
    Entertainment Application 
       R. Cattoni and A. Potrich (ITC-irst, Centro per la 
       Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica SSI Division, Italy) 
       P. Charlton and E. Mamdani 
       (Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK)

---------------------------------------
Session 2    Multiagent Cooperation (I)
---------------------------------------
10:40 - 11:40

(1) Facilitate Agreement in Cooperative Design by Detecting 
    Irrational Claims in Negotiation 
       T. Yoshida, T. Teduka and S. Nishida 
       (Osaka University, Japan)
(2) Mutual Valuations between Agents and Their Coalitions 
       Stefan J. Johansson 
       (University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Sweden)
(3) Reinforcement Learning with Bidding for Automatic 
    Segmentation 
       Ron Sun (University of Missouri, USA)
       Chad Sessions (University of Alabama, USA)

Coffee Break
11:40 - 11:55

-------------------------------------
Session 3    Agent Architectures (II)
-------------------------------------
11:55 - 12:55

(1) A Multi-Agent Approach to Self-Organizing Vision Systems 
       Thorsten Graf and Alois Knoll 
       (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
(2) Robot Media Communication: A Real-World Guide Agent to  
    Construct Transparent Knowledge Boundaries between Real 
    and Virtual Spaces 
       Noriko Etani 
       (Nara Institute Of Science and Technology, Japan)
(3) Gate Growth: Grammar Encoded Evolutionary Design for 
    Autonomous Agent
       Kensuke Takita (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan)
       Yukinori Kakazu (Hokkaido University, Japan)

--------------------------------
Session 4    Software Agents (I)
--------------------------------
11:55 - 12:55

(1) Training Intelligent Agents Using Human Internet Data 
       Elizabeth Sklar (Brandeis University, USA)
       Alan D. Blair (University of Queensland, Australia)
       Pablo Funes and Jordan Pollack (Brandeis University, USA)
(2) Goodinator: Quick and Prudent Meeting Coordination with a   
    Multi-Agent System 
       Koji Kida, Kenji Yoshifu, Takayoshi Asakura and 
       Toshiaki Miyashita (NEC Corporation, Japan)
(3) Natural Language Processing in Multi-Agent Systems 
       Jingye Zhou (Xiangtan University, China)
       Jianwen Yin, Jianer Chen and John Yen 
       (Texas A&M University, USA)

Lunch
12:55 - 14:00

------------
Invited Talk 
------------
14:00 - 15:00
    Steps Toward the Permanent Colonization of Cyberspace
       Dr. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (The Boeing Company, USA)

----------------------------------------
Session 5    Multiagent Cooperation (II)
----------------------------------------
15:05 - 16:05

(1) How to Cooperate in Iterated Chicken Game and Iterated  
    Prisoner's Dilemma? 
       Bengt Carlsson (University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Sweden)
(2) An Argument-Based Agent System with the Contract Net Protocol 
       Shinya Maeda, Chunyang Guan and Hajime Sawamura 

       (Niigata University, Japan)
(3) Design and Implementation of Multi-Agent Coordination 
       David Ramamonjisoa and Issam A. Hamid 
       (Iwate Prefectural University, Japan)

------------------------------
Session 6    Mobile Agents (I)
------------------------------
15:05 - 16:05

(1) Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Route Tracing by Use of 
    Mobile Agents 
       Midori Asaka 
       (Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA), Japan)
       Takefumi Onabuta 
       (The Japan Research Institute, Ltd. Japan)
       Shinichi Nakasuka (University of Tokyo, Japan)
(2) Intention Spreading: An Extensible Theme to Protect Mobile 
    Agents from Read Attack Hoisted by Malicious Hosts 
       Sau-Koon Ng and Kwok-Wai Cheung 
       (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK)
(3) DBMAS: A Multi-Agent System for Databases 
       Jianrong Chen, Sue Greenwood and John Nealon 
       (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

Coffee Break
16:05 - 16:20

------------------------------------- 
Session 7    Distributed Intelligence
------------------------------------- 
16:20 - 18:00

(1) From ALife Agents to a Kingdom of N Queens 
       Han Jing (University of Science and Technology of China)
       Jiming Liu (Hong Kong Baptist University, HK)
       Cai Qingsheng (University of Science and Technology of China)
(2) Soap Bubbles and the Dynamical Behavior of Multi-Agent 
    Systems
       W. K. F. Lor and P. De Wilde 
       (Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, UK)
(3) The Motivation for Dynamic Adaptive Autonomy in 
    Agent-Based Systems 
       K. Suzanne Barber, Anuj Goel and Cheryl E. Martin 
       (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)
(4) A Team Model in a Dynamic Fire World 
       M. Goyal and N. Parameswaran 
       (University of New South Wales, Australia)
(5) How Flexible Should Agent Behaviour Languages Be? 
       B. Mayoh, T. Krink, E. G. Werk (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
       Du Junping (Automation Department, China)

--------------------------------------
Session 8    Formal Agent Theories (I)
--------------------------------------
16:20 - 18:00

(1) Knowledge Granularity Spectrum, Action Pyramid, and the 
    Scaling Problem
       Yiming Ye (IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA)
       John K. Tsotsos  (University of Toronto, Canada)
(2) Embodied Ontologies: Ontologies for Real Agents 
       Hiroshi Tsukimoto (Toshiba Corporation, Japan)
(3) Recipe Structure for Dynamic Worlds 
       S. Au and N. Parameswaran 
       (University of New South Wales, Australia)
(4) Dynamic Planning Model for Agent's Preference Satisfaction:
    First Results
       Pavlos Moraitis 
       (Technical University of Crete Greece, Greece)
       Alexis Tsoukias 
       (University of Paris-Dauphine France, France)
(5) Belief-Goal-Role Agents: From Conception to Specification 
       Walid Chainbi (FSEG-SFAX, Tunisia)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thursday, December 16 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

------------
Invited Talk
------------
08:45 - 09:45
    Robot-Discoverer: A Role Model for Any Intelligent Agent
       Prof. Jan M. Zytkow (University of North Carolina, USA)


-------------------------------------------
Session 9    Agent-Supported Enterprise (I)
-------------------------------------------
09:50 - 11:10

(1) Improving Telecom Service Access Convergence Using 
    Software Agents
       Marko Palola, Marko Heikkinen and Rauli Kaksonen 
       (VTT Electronics, Finland)
(2) Allocative Auctions: An Application Context for CSCW and 
    Intelligent Agents
       Helen Meng, Yuk Chi Li, Ka Kit Lau and Yun Wing Lee 
       (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK)
(3) Self-Adaptation and Reconfiguration of an Agent-Based 
    Production System: Virtual Factory
       Yingjiu Liu, Pierre Massotte and Pierre Couturier 
       (Ales School of Mines, France)
(4) Supporting Collaborative Building Design: A Multi-Agent 
    Approach
       Wei Dai, R. Drogemuller, J. Mashford, M. Rahilly and 
       K. K. Yum
       (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research 
       Organisation, Australia)

-----------------------------------------
Session 10    Personalized Web Agents (I)
-----------------------------------------
09:50 - 11:10

(1) A Personalized Web Agent with Implicit Feedback and 
    Hybrid Filtering Strategy 
       Junggee Han and Juntae Kim (Dongguk University, Korea)
(2) User Profile Based Personalized Web Agent 
       Young Jun. So, Hae Jung Baek,  and Young-Tack Park 
       (Soongsil University, Korea)
(3) Multi-Agent Based Approach for Information Retrieval in
    the WWW 
       Tarek Helmy, Babak Hodjat and Makoto Amamiya 
       (Kyushu University, Japan)
(4) Distributed Information Retrieval Agent JMAT 
       Zhongzhi Shi, Wei Li, Hu Cao and Xiaoli Li 
       (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)

Coffee Break
11:10 - 11:25

------------------------------------------------------------
Session 11    Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Agents (I)
------------------------------------------------------------
11:25 - 13:05

(1) An Agent-Based Architecture in Knowledge Discovery and
    Data Mining
       T. B. Ho, T. D. Nguyen and N. B. Nguyen 
       (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
(2) Learning Novel Concepts through Natural Language 
       Jingye Zhou (Xiangtan University, China)
       Jianwen Yin, Jianer Chen and John Yen 
       (Texas A&M University, USA)
(3) An Efficient K-Means-Based Clustering Algorithm 
       D. L. Yang, J. H. Chang, M. C. Hong and J. S. Liu 
       (Feng Chia University, Taiwan)
(4) Design of Robust, Survivable Intrusion Detection Agent 
       Sourav Bhattacharya and Nong Ye 
       (Arizona State University, USA)
(5) A Bayesian Alarm Network as Independent Intrusion 
    Detection System 
       Dusan Bulatovic (Informatika ad Yugoslavia)
       Dusan Velasevic (University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia)

----------------------------------------
Session 12    Formal Agent Theories (II)
----------------------------------------
11:25 - 13:05

(1) Modeling Sociality in the BDI Framework 
       Pietro Panzarasa, Timothy J. Norman and 
       Nicholas R. Jennings
       (Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London,
       UK)

(2) Modeling Agents as Reflective Intentional Systems 
       Maria Fasli (University of Essex, UK)
(3) Circumscribed-Polyhedron Approximation for Maximum 
    Hypersphere Search
       Hiroshi Watanabe and Einoshin Suzuki 
       (Yokohama National University, Japan)
(4) An Agent System in Stratums Theory
       Luis Carlos Molina Acevedo (Colombia)
(5) Towards Situation-Specific Agent Theories 
       Paul Davidsson and Bertil Ekdahl 
       (University of Karlskrona/Ronneby, Sweden)

Lunch
13:05 - 14:15

-------------------------------------------------------------
Session 13    Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Agents (II)
-------------------------------------------------------------
14:15 - 15:15

(1) Integration of Multiple Heterogeneous Databases Using a 
    Client-Side Meta Search Agent 
       Taehee Kim, Seonho Kim, Sun-Hwa Hahn and Jin-Hyung Kim 
       (Korea Research and Development Information Center)
(2) Active User Interfaces for Building Decision-Theoretic 
    Systems
       Scott M. Brown (Air Force Research Laboratory, USA)
       Eugene Santos Jr. (University of Connecticut, USA)
       Sheila B. Banks (Calculated Insight, Orlando, USA)
(3) System Expansion and Integration with Agents in HSTAT 
       Xiaocheng Luan (AppNet Inc., USA)
       Maureen Prettyman (National Library of Medicine, USA)
       Robert Antonucci (AppNet Inc., USA)

--------------------------
Agent Exhibition Show Time
--------------------------
14:15 - 15:30

----------------
Sightseeing Tour
----------------
15:30 - 19:30

------------------------
Cruise and Banquet Party
------------------------
20:00 - 23:00


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, December 17 1999
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

------------
Invited Talk
------------
09:00 - 10:00
    Intelligent Agents: Embodied and Disembodied
       Dr. Daniel T. Ling (Microsoft Corporation, USA)

----------------------------------
Session 14    Software Agents (II)
----------------------------------
10:05 - 11:05

(1) Microsoft Agent, A Multi-Client Programming Interface
    for Interactive Computer Characters 
       Tandy Trower (Microsoft Corporation, USA)
(2) An Adaptive Meeting Scheduling Agent 
       J. William Murdock and Ashok K. Goel 
       (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
(3) Software Interface Agents 
       Yong Jin Cho, Dong Hyun Roh and Hyun S. Yang 
       (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

--------------------------------
Session 15    Mobile Agents (II)
--------------------------------
10:05 - 11:05

(1) Learning Improves Mobile Agent Efficiency 
       Sam Joseph, Masanori Hattori and Naoki Kase 
       (Toshiba Corporation, Japan)
(2) Increasing the Dependability in a Multi-Agent System
       Ralph Deters (University of Saskatchewan, Canada)
(3) An Efficient Fault-tolerant Protocol for Mobile Agents 
       Ting On Lee and Kam W. Ng 
       (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, HK)

Coffee Break
11:05 - 11:20

------------------------------------------
Session 16    Personalized Web Agents (II)
------------------------------------------
11:20 - 13:00


(1) Information Filtering on the Web: 
    a Hybrid Case-Based Approach
       G. L. Gentili, M. Marinilli, A. Micarelli and 
       F. Sciarrone
       (Universit di Roma Tre Dipartimento di Informatica e 
       Automazione, Italy)
(2) Engineering Information Discovery and Monitoring Systems 
    along the Dimensions of Agency and Ontology 
       Kwang Mong Sim and Pui Tak Wong 
       (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK)
(3) Intelligent Information Discovery with Self-Training 
    Autonomous Agents 
       D. Fragoudis and S. D. Likothanassis 
       (University of Patras, Greece)
(4) More Efficient Web Searching by Modeling Users' 
    Long-Term Goals 
       Dimitre Dimitrov and James Warren 
       (University of South Australia, Australia)
(5) Information Retrieval Agents Based on Evolutionary 
    Computation to Reflect User Preference 
       Jee-Haeng Lee and Sung-Bae Cho 
       (Yonsei University, Korea)

---------------------------------------------
Session 17    Agent-Supported Enterprise (II)
---------------------------------------------
11:20 - 13:00

(1) Supporting Coordination: A Multi-Agent Approach
       Monica Divitini 
       (IDI-Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology, 
       Norway)
(2) Agent-Based Information Gathering System for 
    Life Cycle Costs
       Tiemei Irene Zhang and Elizabeth Kendall 
       (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia)
(3) Applying Market Based Agent to Fuzzy Decision 
    Support System 
       P. W. Lei, M. I. Heywood and C. R. Chatwin 
       (University of Macao, Macao)
(4) Virtual Enterprise Information System
       Li Yu, Huang Biqing and Wu Cheng 
       (Tsinghua University, China)
(5) A Virtual Shop Navigation System Based on the 
    Multi-Agent Technology
       N. Bensaid and Ph. Mathieu 
       (Universite de Lille I, France)

Lunch
13:00 - 14:15
----------------------------------
Panel: Trends and Prospects of IAT
----------------------------------
14:15 - 15:15
Chair: Dr. Jeffrey M. Bradshaw