NIPS*2001

Neural Information Processing Systems: Natural and Synthetic

• Luc Devroye, McGill University -- Nonparametric density estimation: VC to the rescue
• Daphne Koller, Stanford, & Nir Friedman, Hebrew University -- Learning Bayesian networks from data
• Shawn Lockery, University of Oregon -- Why the worm turns: How to analyze the behavior of an animal and model its neuronal basis
• Christopher Manning, Stanford -- Probabilistic linguistics and probabilistic models of natural language processing
• Bernhard Scholkopf, Biowulf Technologies and Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics -- SVM and Kernel methods
• Sebastian Thrun, Carnegie Mellon University -- Probabilistic robotics

• Barbara Finlay, Departments of Psychology, and Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University -- How brains evolve, and the consequences for computation
• Alison Gopnik, Department of Psychology, University of California at Berkeley -- Babies and Bayes-nets: Causal inference and theory-formation in children, chimps, scientists and computers
• Jon M. Kleinberg, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University -- Decentralized network algorithms: Small-world phenomena and the dynamics of information
• Tom Knight, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT -- Computing with Life
• Judea Pearl, Department of Computer Science, UCLA -- Causal inference as an exercise in computational learning
• Shihab Shamma, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland -- Common principles in auditory and visual processing

• Activity-Dependent Synaptic Plasticity - Paul Munro pmunro@mail.sis.pitt.edu (may switch to Friday only)
• Neuroimaging: Tools, Methods & Modeling - Benjamin Martin Bly ben@psychology.rutgers.edu, Lars Kai Hansen, Stephen Jose Hanson, Scott Makeig, Stephen Strother

• Brain-Computer Interfaces - Lucas Parra lparra@sarnoff.com
• Causal Learning and Inference in Humans & Machines - Joshua B. Tenenbaum jbt@psych.stanford.edu
• Competition: Unlabeled Data for Supervised Learning - Stefan C. Kremer skremer@q.cis.uoguelph.ca
• Geometric Methods in Learning - Amir H. Assadi ahassadi@facstaff.wisc.edu
• Kernel-Based Learning - John Shawe-Taylor john@cs.rhul.ac.uk, Craig Saunders craig@cs.rhul.ac.uk
• Occam's Razor & Parsimony in Learning - David Stork stork@rii.ricoh.com
• Variable & Feature Selection - Isabelle Guyon isabelle@clopinet.com

• Computational Neuropsychology - Mike Mozer mozer@cs.colorado.edu
• Information & Statistical Structure in Spike Trains - Jonathon D. Victor jdvicto@med.cornell.edu
• Machine Learning in Bioinformatics - Colin Campbell C.Campbell@bristol.ac.uk, Sayan Mukherjee sayan@ai.mit.edu
• Machine Learning Methods for Text and Images - Jaz Kandola jaz@cs.rhul.ac.uk
• Minimum Description Length - Peter Grunwald Peter.Grunwald@cwi.nl
• Multi-sensory Perception & Learning - Ladan Shams ladan@caltech.edu, John Fisher fisher@ai.mit.edu

• Vancouver International Airport to Hyatt Regency: (Driving time: ~25-40 minutes) Take Grant McConnachie Way over the Arthur Laing Bridge. Take the Granville Street Exit from bridge and continue straight down Granville Street (approximately 60 blocks). Turn left onto West 16th Avenue then turn right on Burrard Street. Continue down Burrard Street and over the Burrard Street Bridge. Continue on Burrard for approximately 8 blocks. You will see the Hyatt Regency Vancouver on the left. Pull into the front of the hotel and have your car valet parked or self-park.
• Hyatt Regency Vancouver to Whistler: (Driving time: ~2-2.5 hours) From the Hyatt Regency on Burrard, head South on Burrard and turn right (West) on Georgia and follow it through Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge. Exit west off/under the bridge and into West Vancouver. Turn right on Taylor Way at Park Royal Shopping Centre. Follow Taylor Way half-a-mile up the hill to the Highway 1 (Trans-Canada) overpass. Join Highway 1 Westbound until you reach the junction with Highway 99 (Sea-to-Sky Highway). Exit right onto Highway 99. Follow this route for just over 100 kilometers along scenic Howe Sound, past Squamish to Whistler.
• International Airport to Whistler: (Driving time: ~2.5 hours) Take Grant McConnachie Way (the main route out of the Vancouver International Airport) and over the Arthur Laing Bridge. Continue straight over the bridge, stay in the right hand lane, which connects to SW Marine Drive/Granville Street. Granville Street is a North-South connector leading to the heart of downtown. Once across the Granville Street Bridge, turn left onto Drake at the first set of lights. Turn right on Hornby Street and continue on Hornby until you reach Georgia Street. Turn left (West) on Georgia and follow it through Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge. Exit West off/under the bridge and into West Vancouver. Turn right on Taylor Way at Park Royal Shopping Centre. Follow Taylor Way half-a-mile up the hill to Highway 1 (Trans-Canada) overpass. Join Highway 1 Westbound until you reach the junction with Highway 99 (Sea-to-Sky Highway). Exit right on to Highway 99. Follow this route for just over 100 kilometers along scenic Howe Sound, past Squamish to Whistler.

• General Chair: Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University tgd@cs.orst.edu
• Program Chair: Sue Becker, McMaster University becker@mcmaster.ca
• Publications Chair: Zoubin Ghahramani, University College London zoubin@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk
• Tutorials Chair: Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal bengioy@IRO.UMontreal.CA
• Workshops Co-Chairs: Virginia de Sa, UC San Francisco desa@phy.ucsf.edu, Barak Pearlmutter, University of New Mexico bap@cs.unm.edu
• Publicity Chair: Richard Zemel, University of Toronto zemel@cs.toronto.edu
• Treasurer: Bartlett Mel, University of Southern California mel@lnc.usc.edu
• Volunteers Director: Sidney Fels, University of British Columbia ssfels@ece.ubc.ca
• Co-Webmasters: Alexander Gray, Carnegie Mellon University agray+nips@cs.cmu.edu, Xin Wang, Oregon State University wangxi@cs.orst.edu
• Government Liaison: Gary Blasdel, Harvard Medical School
• Contracts: Steve Hanson, Rutgers University, Scott Kirkpatrick, IBM, Gerry Tesauro, IBM

Sue Becker, McMaster University (chair); Gert Cauwenberghs, Johns Hopkins University; Bill Freeman, Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab; Thomas Hofmann, Brown University; Dan Lee, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies; Sridhar Mahadevan, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Marina Meila, University of Washington; Klaus Mueller, GMD First, Berlin; Klaus Obermeyer, TU Berlin; Sam Roweis, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL; John Shawe-Taylor, Royal Holloway, University of London; Josh Tenenbaum, Stanford University; Volker Tresp, Siemens, Munich; Richard Zemel, University of Toronto