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CIARP 2008 was organized by the Cuban Association for Pattern Recognition (ACRP) and the Advanced Technologies Applications Center (CENATAV) of Cuba. It was sponsored by the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), the Mexican Association for Computer Vision, Neural Computing and Robotics (MACVNR), the Portuguese Association for Pattern Recognition (APRP), the Spanish Association for Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (AERFAI), the Special Interest Group on Pattern Recognition of the Brazilian Computer Society (SIGPR-SBC), and the Chilean Association for Pattern Recognition (AchiRP). Before starting the scientific report about this congress, it is necessary to point out that the Hurricane Ike negatively affected the carefully arranged program and schedule prepared by the organizing committee of CIARP08. Due to this natural phenomenon which swept across all Cuba, a non-negligible number of researchers (from both Cuba and elsewhere) could not reach Havana for the beginning of this event, Tuesday, September 9. For obvious security reasons, the population in Havana moved to shelters or sought refuge in houses and hotels. Despite this uninvited and terrible “participant”, I can say that the reaction by the different committees was extremely impressive, preparing in just a few hours a new schedule, program, diplomas, accreditations…. The result was a 1-day delay in the 13th (an unlucky number?) CIARP. However, any ramifications of this delay were minimized as much as possible in the remaining three days of the conference. After adjustments for Ike, the congress numbers were the following: 74 papers (oral presentations and posters) from 93 registered authors were presented; 2 of the 3 plenary talks were given; 3 of the 4 tutorials were exhibited; and although all the social events were readjusted to this special situation, all but one took place. Hurricane aside, and focussing on strictly scientific aspects, CIARP2008 has continued the tradition of being a forum for the exchange of scientific results and experiences, for sharing new knowledge, and for increased co-operation between research groups in pattern recognition and related areas. This year, the forum attracted participants from 34 countries (8 from Iberoamerica), who submitted a total of 182 papers. After the double-blind reviewing process, 93 papers by 180 authors from 29 countries were accepted. Topics spanned pattern recognition, computer vision, image analysis, and speech recognition and their application to technological areas. It is important to say that the breakdown in oral and poster papers was not related to quality grading. This year, after the discussions during the conference, the authors of the best papers were also invited to prepare extended versions for a special issue of the prestigious journal Pattern Recognition Letters. The purpose of this was to enhance the visibility of the best submissions and to stimulate further good scientific papers. Three invited speakers gave lectures on topics ranging from text recognition to computer vision: · Professor Karl Tombre, from the Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine (France), gave a tutorial entitled “Graphics Recognition” in which a complete survey of this issue was given. · Professor Michael Berry, from the University of Tennessee, USA talked about “The art and science of text mining”, revealing the area of text analytics to non-experts in this field. · Professor Xiaoyi Jiang from the University of Münster (Germany) presented a tutorial on “Processing and Applications of 3D Range Images: Fundamentals and new developments”, highlighting the technological applications of these “volumes”. In addition, an IAPR-CIARP 2008 award was presented to the authors Sergei Lewin, Xiaoyi Jiang and Achim Clausing of the best paper “Perceptually Motivated Shape Evolution with Shape-Preserving Property”. The aim of this award is to acknowledge and encourage excellence, originality, and innovativeness of new models, method, and techniques with an outstanding theoretical contribution and practical application to the field of pattern recognition and/or data mining. The social program was appreciated as well. It is worth highlighting the moving Camerata Romeu Orchestra concert given at the Havana International Convention Center the last night of the conference. The next CIARP 2009 conference will be held in Guadalajara, Mexico, organized by the CINVESTAV, with Prof. Eduardo Bayro-Corrochano as General Chair. |
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Conference Report: CIARP 2008 |
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Report prepared by Pedro Real Jurado (Spain) |
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Proceedings of the conference have been published by Springer-Verlag in Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series (volume number 5197).
Click on the image to go to the publisher’s web site for this volume. |
