Welcome Conference committee IJCAI-07 and India's premier Professional Conferences Organizers (PCO), look forward to welcoming you all to IJCAI-07 at Hyderabad in association with Conference Committee, IJCAI-07. Hyderabad is the capital of Andhra Pradesh in India, a city with historical heritage, and now a hub of IT
industry, besides Biotech & Pharma. India is a country of diversity and contrasts, where modern exists with the traditional. We hope that the ambience will provide a new direction to AI, to handle innovative challenges thrown up by development. AI areas that have their own specialized conferences now, may be encouraged to come back to contribute in IJCAI.

This invitation highlights the many planned activities during the packed week of the conference! At this time of year, there are several other technical events in Hyderabad, including major IT exhibitions, which IJCAI delegates can attend if they wish. The weather in January is ideal, with cool mornings and nights, and pleasant day times. Coinciding with this is the Gulf Information Technology Exhibition – GITEX-2007 that is being held at HITEX halls next to the HICC (which is the IJCAI-07 venue) from the 9th – 11th Jan’07.

KW Conferences assures all participants full support in Registration, Accommodation, Reception and transport arrangements for your stay at Hyderabad. Efforts are being made to arrange Airport Transfers and pick ups for delegates from central location to venue on all days.

Conference at a Glance

Technical Conference Programme
Visit the conference website – www.ijcai-07.org – for the latest information on the conference programme. The duration and location of the different events in Hyderabad is given below:-
(Click here for the Location Map for various venues)

HICC… Hyderabad International Convention Centre (www.hicc.com )
IIITH… International Institute of Information Technology (www.iiit.ac.in)
INFOSYS… Infosys (www.infosys.com)

IJCAI-07 Call for technical papers has resulted in 1365 authors submitting papers which have been reviewed. Over 300 Papers will be presented in Eight parallel tracks, apart from ten Invited Talks including Key Note in HICC. There will be oral and poster presentations to allow researchers to share their findings to the delegates working world-wide in areas including constraint satisfaction, learning, knowledge representation & reasoning, multi-agent systems, natural language processing, planning and scheduling, robotics, search, uncertainty and web/information retrieval & data mining. AI applications including Art, Music, Artificial Life, Philosophical foundations, Mathematical Foundations will also be covered.

Distinguished Speakers

Keynote Speaker

• Raj Reddy, Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.

Invited Speakers

•  Patrick Doherty, Linkoeping University, Sweden
  Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Research: Challenges and Prospects
• Carole Goble, University of Manchester, UK
  The e-Scientist is the Semantic Web's Friend (or a Friend Of A Friend)
• Ken Goldberg, University of California, Berkeley, USA
  Sensitivity Analysis: Unexpected Outcomes in Art and Engineering
• Hideyuki Nakashima, Future University, Japan
  Cyber-Assisting Real World with Ambient Intelligence and Semantic
  Computing
• Martha Pollack, University of Michigan, USA
  Intelligence Assistive Technology: The Present and the Future
• Devika Subramanian, Rice University, USA
  Events, Patterns and Analysis: Forecasting International Conflict by
  Analyzing Wire News Stories

Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award

• Ronald J. Brachman, VP of Worldwide  Research Operations at Yahoo! Research

Research excellence Award

• Alan Bundy, University of Edinburgh, UK
  Cooperating Reasoning Processes: More than just the sum of their parts

Computers & Thought Speaker

• Peter Stone, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  Learning and Multiagent Reasoning for Autonomous Agents: Creating Complete Autonomous Agents in Collaborative and Adversarial Dynamic Environments

IJCAI-07 Inauguration & Welcome Dinner
The Official Inauguration will be held at International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIITH) on Monday 08 Jan 2007 at 1815 hours. Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, IJCAI-07 Conference Chair, will chair the Opening Ceremony. President of India has been requested to inaugurate IJCAI-07.

Immediately following the Inaugural Session, a welcome reception and dinner will be hosted for all delegates and invitees at the International Institute of Information Technology Guest House. Delegates will have an opportunity to interact with all guests and will be entertained with Indian classical music. The Welcome Dinner is complimentary and included in the registration package.

Tutorials Pogramme
20 Tutorials will be held at IIITH/Infosys campuses from 6 to 8 Jan 2007. The duration of each tutorial is four hours. The list of accepted tutorials is available on the website – www.ijcai-07.org/tutorials.html/

Workshops Programme
28 Workshops will take place at IIITH/Infosys from 06 to 08 Jan 2007. Participation is limited to those invited by the workshop organizers prior to the conference. Detailed descriptions and submission guidelines for each workshop can be found on the IJCAI-07 website – www.ijcai-07.org/workshops.html

Social Event
Conference Banquet at Chowmahalla Palace on 10 January 2007
Chowmahalla Palace, situated near the Mecca Masjid was built in 1750 by Salabat Jung and is a replica of the Shah of Iran’s Palace in Teheran. This palace has been selected as the venue for a very special evening that will leave you with fond memories for a long time.

Guests will receive a traditional welcome, and then will be escorted to the main palace or Khilwat Darbar in 250 year old royal buggies. Here you can watch a Kathak programme presented by 36 artistes, during which cocktails and typical Hyderabadi snacks will be served. The show will be followed by a Chowki style dinner where authentic Hyderabadi food will be served.

A nominal fee of US$ 50 / INR 2,100 per person will be charged for all participating in this important social event.

To know more about the Chowmahalla Palace, please visit: http://www.chowmahalla.com