Workshop on Abduction and Induction in
Artificial Intelligence  and  Bioinformatics
Aix-en-Provence, 15th September, 2007

co-located with the 1st Franco-Japanese
Symposium on Knowledge Discovery
in Systems Biology


 INTRODUCTION

Background: Abduction and induction are forms of logical reasoning that are used in many applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). To a first approximation, abduction reasons from effects to possible causes while induction learns general rules for particular observations. These complementary processes are explored from logical and philosophical perspectives in a book entitled Abduction and Induction: Essays on their Relation and Integration and are further examined in two recent workshops at AIAI'05 and ECAI'06.

Motivation: Previous meetings in this series have shown that abductive and inductive reasoning can be integrated in an incremental cycle of knowledge development with potential applications in bioinformatics and other areas of AI. But attempts to apply such techniques have begun to reveal a need for more expressive logical formalisms and inference mechanisms. Hence, this year's workshop will focus on expressive methodologies for logic-based abduction and induction with possible impact in bioinformatics. It will aim to draw together leading researchers working on these and related problems in order to consolidate what has been learnt so far and stimulate further developments in this area.

Aims: The workshop will provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of the research concerning expressive methodologies and applications of abduction and induction for knowledge discovery. Particular emphasis will be placed on logical formalisms and inference methods with actual or potential relevance to the field of bioinformatics.

Co-Location: To encourage discussion and promote interaction between logicians and biologists, AIAI'07 will be co-located with the 1st Franco-Japanese Symposium on Knowledge Discovery in Systems biology. Several events will be shared and open to the participants of both meetings.

Venue: The workshop will be held at the AquaBella Hotel in Aix-en-Provence, 30km from Marseilles in the South of France. Participants arriving from ICLP'07 (8-13 Sep) can take a direct flight from Porto to Marseilles (Portugalia Airlines or Ryanair). Participants leaving to ECML'07 (17-21 Sep) can fly from Marseilles to Warsaw changing in Paris (Air France) or Prague (Czech Airlines).

Credits: The event is generously sponsored by the Laboratory for the Analysis and Architecture of Systems at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Japanese National Institute of Informatics --- as part of a strategic Franco-Japanese collaboration on Knowledge-based Discovery in Systems Biology.

 PROGRAMME (Revised)

09.15
OPEN
09.30
Invited Talk: A knowledge-based approach for representing, reasoning, and hypothesis generation in biochemical networks
Chitta Baral
10.15
Logic-statistic modeling and analysis of biological sequence data: A Research Agenda
Henning Christiansen
10.45
COFFEE
11.15
Nonmonotonic Abductive Inductive Learning
Oliver Ray
11.45
Using Abduction and Induction for Operational Requirements Elaboration
Dalal Alrajeh, Oliver Ray, Alessandra Russo and Sebastian Uchitel
12.15
LUNCH
14.00
Towards Refinement of Abductive or Inductive Hypothesis through Propagation
Gauvain Bourgne, Amal El Fallah Seghrouchni and Nicolas Maudet
14.30
Reconsideration of Circumscriptive Induction with Pointwise Circumscription
Koji Iwanuma, Katsumi Inoue and Hidetomo Nabeshima
15.00
COFFEE
15.30
Equivalence Issues in Abduction and Induction
Chiaki Sakama and Katsumi Inoue
16.00
Invited Talk: Fuzzy logic connectives in abductive inference and clustering
Jospeh Aguilar-Martin
16.30
PANEL DISCUSSION
17.30
CLOSE
20.00
DINNER
 PROCEEDINGS
A draft pdf of the complete workshop proceedings can be downloaded by clicking this link.

Extended versions of selected papers appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Logic (volume 7, number 3) which can be accessed by clicking this link.
 ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Oliver Ray (primary contact)
University of Bristol, UK
e-mail: oray@cs.bris.ac.uk
Antonis Kakas
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
e-mail: antonis@cs.ucy.ac.cy
Katsumi Inoue
National Institute of Informatics, Japan
e-mail: ki@nii.ac.jp
Peter Flach
University of Bristol, UK
e-mail: Peter.Flach@cs.bris.ac.uk
Andrei Doncescu
National Center for Scientific Research, France
e-mail: Andrei.Doncescu@laas.fr
 PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
Chitta Baral (Arizona State University, USA)
Andrei Doncescu (National Center for Scientific Research, France)
Peter Flach (University of Bristol, UK)
Katsumi Inoue (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Antonis Kakas (University of Cyprus, Cyprus)
Ross King (University of Wales, UK)
Ramon Otero (University of Corunna, Spain)
Oliver Ray (University of Bristol, UK)
Chiaki Sakama (Wakayama University, Japan)

(c) Oliver Ray, last updated 13/09/2007