Message from the Program Co-Chairs

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the First International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) Workshop on Cognitive Information Processing (CIP-2008) and to its magnificent site, the island of Santorini. We believe that the technical program of CIP-2008 has reached its goal, which has been to bring together researchers from various disciplines of cognitive information processing and to promote the exchange of ideas and cross-fertilization of different areas. We hope that, in the relaxing environment of Santorini, CIP-2008 will be a rewarding and memorable event for all.

We are pleased that this first CIP workshop has attracted a good number of quality contributions from all over the world. We received a total of 71 full papers (6 pages) from 27 countries, each of which was sent to three reviewers for evaluation. Based on the reviews, 41 papers were selected for oral or poster presentation, resulting in an acceptance rate of 58% (28% for oral presentations). The technical program consists of six lecture sessions and one poster session, covering a multitude of topics in cognitive information processing. In addition, there are six plenary sessions for keynote addresses. These keynote speeches are among the highlights of CIP-2008. A round-table discussion on the present and future of cognitive information processing is also included at the end of the program.

It is our great pleasure to have served as chairs of the Program Committee. We are grateful to the members of the CIP-2008 Scientific Committee for taking the time to provide quality reviews. Special thanks go to our keynote speakers: Prof. Simon Haykin (McMaster University, Canada), Prof. Timo Honkela (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland), Prof. José Príncipe (University of Florida, USA), Prof. Ali Sayed (UCLA, USA), Prof. Bernhard Schölkopf (Max Planck Institute, Germany), and Prof. Naftali Tishby (The Hebrew University, Israel). Last, but not least, we would like to thank all the authors and the attendees.

We trust that you will enjoy CIP-2008, and hope that this will be the first of a series of successful workshops on this exciting new field!

Tülay Adali
Eleftherios Kofidis