Keynote Speech: Big Data – Big Deal[details]
	Professor Nick Cercone
	Department of Computer Science and Engineering
	York University
	CSE 1003
	4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3
	Homepage: here |  Email: ncercone@yorku.ca

	Invited Speech: Multiple Instance Learning for Visual Categorisation[details]  Tutorial: Principle of Image Categorization[details coming soon!]
	Professor Xiangjian He
	School of Computing and Communications
	Faculty of Engineering & Information Technology
	University of Technology Sydney
	PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia
	Homepage: here | Email: Xiangjian.He@uts.edu.au

	Tutorial: Recursive and iterative clustering in granular hierarchical, network, and temporal datasets[details]
	Professor Pawan Ligras
	Dept. of Math and Computing Science
	Saint Mary's University
	Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3C3
	Homepage: here | Email: pawan@cs.smu.ca

Keynote Speaker

Title: Big Data – Big Deal

With significant contributions from Igor Jurisica (University of Toronto), Ming Li (Waterloo), Sara Diamond (OCAD University), Fred Popowich (Simon Fraser University), Marin Litoiu (York University), Jimmy Huang (York) and Aijun An (York University)

Abstract. This paper position paper is based on a major cooperative research and development proposal to Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council for a Big Data Research, Analytics, and Information Network (BRAIN). Challenges presented by Big Data research are introduced and several projects are sketched in four theme areas of important Big Data research, the solutions of which will further decision making in these areas of investigation. The four themes are large-scale data analytics and cloud computing, computational biology, health informatics, and interactive content analytics. The importance of training highly qualified personnel, knowledge mobilization and novelty are discussed.

Keywords: big data, large-scale data analytics, computational biology, health informatics, interactive content analytics, visualization.

The paper can be downloaded from here.

Short Biography

Nick Cercone is Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at York University. Prior to that he was Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada from 2002-2006. He was Chair of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo from 1997-2002. From 1993 until 1997 he was Associate Vice President (Research), Dean of Graduate Studies and International Liaison Officer at the University or Regina. Formerly he was Director of the Centre for Systems Science at Simon Fraser University (1987-1992) and chairman of the School of Computing Science (1980-1985) at Si¬mon Fraser.

Cercone’s research interests include natural language processing, knowledge-based systems, knowledge-discovery in databases, data mining, computational linguistics, and design and human interfaces. He is the author of over 400 refer¬eed publications, several best paper awards, and has graduated 100 graduate students.

Cercone co-founded Computational Intelligence, edits Knowledge and Information Systems, and serves on the editorial board of six journals. He is a member of the ACM, IEEE, AAAI, AISB, AGS, and ACL, and a past president of the CSCSI/SCEIO (Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence), of the Canadian Society for Fifth Generation Research, and of the Canadian Association for Computer Science (CACS/AIC). Cercone served on the Canadian Ge¬nome Assessment and Technology Board, the CANARIE Board, CanWest, the Institute for Robotics and In¬telligent Systems (IRIS) Research Committee, the Saskatchewan Research Council Board, and the Regina Economic Development Authority (information technology). Cercone also serves on NSERC, CFI, CHRP, CRC, CITO and NSF committees, and in 1996 he won the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Society's Distinguished Service Award. In 2002 Cercone became a Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to Knowledge Discovery. In 2010 Cercone became a Fellow of the Canadian artificial intelligence society.

Cercone received the BS degree in Engineering Science from the University of Steubenville in 1968, the MS degree in Computer and Information Science from Ohio State University in 1970, and a PhD degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta in 1975. Cercone worked for IBM Corporation in 1969 and 1971 on design automation.