Welcome to the 17th International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems (ISMIS'08)

ISMIS is an established and prestigious conference for exchanging the latest research results in building intelligent systems. Held twice every three years, the conference provides a medium for exchanging scientific research and technological achievements accomplished by the international community. In May 2008, ISMIS will be held for the first time in Canada and in a dynamic city, Toronto, which is home to more than 100 cultures. The previous ISMIS conferences were held in Knoxville, Tennessee (1986, 1990), Charlotte, North Carolina (1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1997, 2000), Turin (1988), Trondheim (1993), Zakopane (1996), Warsaw (1999), Lyon (2002), Maebashi (2003), Saratoga Springs (2005) and Bari (2006).

The scope of ISMIS is intended to represent a wide range of topics on applying Artificial Intelligence techniques to areas as diverse as decision support, automated deduction, reasoning, knowledge based systems, machine learning, computer vision, robotics, planning, databases, information retrieval, etc. The focus is on research in intelligent systems. The conference addresses issues involving solutions to problems that are complex to be solved through conventional approaches and that require the simulation of intelligent thought processes, heuristics and applications of knowledge. The integration of these multiple approaches in solving complex problems is of particular importance. ISMIS provides a forum and a means for exchanging information for those interested purely in theory, those interested primarily in implementation, and those interested in specific research and industrial applications.