Supervised and Unsupervised Ensemble Methods Workshop

Ensembles of supervised learning machines and, in particular, ensembles of classifiers have been established as one of the main research topics in machine learning. Methods for combining unsupervised clusterings have been recently proposed to improve the reliability of clustering algorithms and to assess the validity of discovered clusters. Statistical, algorithmic, representational, computational and practical reasons can explain the success of ensemble methods.

Nevertheless, several problems remain open: for instance in many cases the theoretical reasons of the practical success of several widely used ensemble methods is unclear; the relationships between the diversity and accuracy of base classifiers forming an ensemble and the impact of these characteristics on the effectiveness and the performances of ensemble methods is a controversial question among machine learning researchers; the search of the "best" set of base classifiers or the "best" set of combination methods with respect to the characteristics and the distribution of the data is an open and interesting research line.

Though ensemble methods are subject to intensive research, there are also other open questions, related to real-world applications of such methods. Moreover, innovative applications in the field of unsupervised learning have been recently proposed.

This workshop intends to provide a forum for researchers in the field of Machine Learning and Data Mining to discuss the above and other related topics regarding ensemble methods and their applications.

Programme Committee

• Nicolo' Cesa-Bianchi, University of Milano, Italy
• Carlotta Domeniconi, George Mason University, USA
• Robert Duin, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands
• Mark Embrechts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
• Ana Fred, Technical University of Lisboa, Portugal
• Joao Gama, University of Porto, Portugal
• Giorgio Giacinto, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Larry Hall, University of South Florida, USA
• Ludmila Kuncheva, University of Wales, UK
• Francesco Masulli, University of Genova, Italy
• Petia Radeva, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
• Juan Jose' Rodriguez, University of Burgos, Spain
• Fabio Roli, University of Cagliari, Italy
• Paolo Rosso, Polytechnic University Valencia, Spain
• Carlo Sansone, Federico II University of Napoli, Italy
• Jose' Salvador Sanchez, University Jaume I, Spain
• Grigorios Tsoumakas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Jordi Vitria', Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
• Ioannis Vlahavas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
• Terry Windeatt, University of Surrey, UK