KEDRI (The Knowledge Engineering & Discovery Research Institute), is a flagship research institute of AUT, established in 2002 and led by Prof. Nikola Kasabov since its inception. The institute develops novel information methods and systems for data mining, neurocomputing, knowledge engineering and intelligent information processing with applications spanning across decision support, neuroinformatics, bioinformatics and many other disciplines.

With 12 new PhD students joining this year, KEDRI will have in 2013, a record number of 22 PhD students. The new students are: Nathan Scott (VC Scholarship Award), Elisa Capecci (from Italy, KEDRI partial scholarship), Maryam Gholami (from Iran, KEDRI partial scholarship), Reggio Hartono (from Indonesia, MFAT’s NZ-ASEAN Scholars award), Fahad Alvi (from Pakistan), Philip Carvil (from Cambridge, UK), Enrique Perez (from Mexico), Jorge Pires (from Brazil), Maria Neicu (from Romania), Nelson Chen and James Hu (scholarships from China Academy of Sciences), Maggie Buxton, from New Zealand. Four KEDRI PhD students – Linda Liang, Nuttapod Nuntalid, Kshitij Dhoble and Boris Bacic, graduated in 2013. Other PhD students at KEDRI: Muhaini Othman and Norhanifah Murli (Malaysian

government scholarships), Shoba Tegginmath, Tsung Chun Tsai, Vivienne Breen, Paul Davidson (UK, London), are progressing. Yulia Turkova is a Masters student who has plans to do her PhD studies at KEDRI. All students are supervised or co-supervised by Prof. Kasabov (one of very few Fellows in NZ of both IEEE and RSNZ, with a top international standing in his area) in collaboration with Dr Russel Pears, Dr. Dave Parry, Prof. Stephen MacDonell, Prof. Feigin and Dr Rita Krishnamurthi (NISAN, FHES), Prof. Gulyaev (Institute for Radioastronomy), Prof. Charles Walker (CoLab), Prof. Hou (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Prof. Indivery (ETH and Uni Zurich, Switzerland), Prof. Caccamo (Italy) and other experts in the field from NZ and overseas.

PhD students coming from 13

nationalities, are involved in

international projects that makes KEDRI

unique, with international,

interdisciplinary and inclusive

involvement. KEDRi still has its doors

open for new PhD students to study in a

rich research environment. Over the

years, on an average, we see 3 PhD

students receiving their doctoral

degrees at

KEDRI.

Increasing the

number and

quality of PhD

students is one

of the strategic

goals of AUT for

the next decade

or so. And

KEDRI is leading

the way! KEDRI Members

KEDRI HITS A RECORD NUMBER OF PHD STUDENTS IN 2013

I N S I D E

T H I S I S S U E :

International

Visitors

2

Visiting Stu-

dents

2

KEDRI Semi-

nars

3

Launching of

KEDRI Neu-

cube Project

3

Honors and

Awards

5

Projects 6

Publications 8

Knowledge engineering & discovery

Research institute N E W S L E T T E R 2 0 1 3

P A G E 2

Mr. Xie Chengsuo

and Prof. Nikola

Kasabov

Visiting Students

International Visitors Visit of Xie Chengsuo , (First

Secretary, Affairs of Science and

Technology, Embassy of the

People's Republic of China in New

Zealand) to KEDRI on 28th June

2013.

Prof. Jie Yang, from the Institute

of Image Processing and Pattern

Recognition School of Electronics

and Information Shanghai

Jiaotong University visited KEDRI

from 14th Nov – 17th Nov 2013 in

connection with the Tripartite project.

University of Trento, Italy, visited KEDRI from April to August 2013.

Levsa Ivars, student from University of Trento, Italy, visited KEDRI from October to November 2013.

Enmei Tu, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China visited KEDRI from November 2013 – January 2014.

Nelson Chen and James Hu, PhD students from the Chinese Academy of Sciences visited KEDRI for four months starting 4th Feb 2013. Their visit was in connection with the joint project the two institutes are involved in.

Diana Da Rugna, student from

Complex Systems and Intelligence Science, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences visited KEDRI from 4th - 20th Feb 2013.

Prof. Zeng-Guang Hou from the State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, visited KEDRI from 31st May 2013 – 15th June 2013. Prof. Hou’s visit to KEDRI was in connection with the progress of the joint project the two institutes are involved in.

Associate Professor Yan Yan from the Key Laboratory of

K N O W L E D G E E N G I N E E R I N G & D I S C O V E R Y

R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E

Nelson and

James with

Prof.

Kasabov

Mr. Xie Chengsuo and Prof. Nikola Kasabov with the KEDRI team

Prof. Hou and Prof. Kasabov with the KEDRI team

Levsa Ivars from

University of Trento

Enmei Tu from

Shanghai Jiaotong

University

KEDRI Seminars P A G E 3 2 0 1 3

Prof. Zeng-Guang Hou, State Key Laboratory of

Management and Control for Complex Systems,

Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

Beijing, gave a lecture on

‘Integration of Prediction and

Rehabilitation for the Stroke, and

Implementation with Software and

Hardware System’ on Thursday 13th

June 2013; 1 p.m. - 2 p.m. in

WY315. At the Open Lecture, Prof.

Kasabov presented him with the

KEDRI Distinguished Visiting

Researcher award.

Prof. Nikola Kasabov gave a seminar

on 'Evolving spiking neural networks for spatio-temporal data’ on 9th May 2013 at 1 p.m. in WY315.

art and design; communication; sport; medical and clinical practice. Exemplar applications are: brain-computer interfaces; neuro-rehabilitation; robotics; emotional computing; decision making; human- computer and human-to-human com-munication. In its interdisciplinary content, this is the world-first and a long-term project, involving KEDRI and other groups from AUT (NISAN, SCMS) in collaboration with Chinese Academy of Scienc-es and several European partners. It also relates to a new special topic paper 408214 offered by the SCMS this semester. The team is led by Prof.

Nik Kasabov. Both the project and the paper are open for new participants to join with their specific research topics. The seminar included presen-tations and demonstrations by the team followed by open discussions.

Machine learning, modelling and understanding of brain data with and applications across disci-plines: Date & Time: Thursday, 28th Feb. 2013 at 1 p.m., Venue: WY315

The KEDRI new project, named NeuCube, is about developing new information methods and technolo-gies for brain data analysis, modelling and under-standing, such as EEG, fMRI, MEG, genetic and other various spatio-temporal brain data, with applica-tions across disciplines, including: information and computer sciences; engineering; environmental and health sciences; cognitive science; neuroeconomics;

Prof. Nikola presenting the Knowledge Engineering & Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI)Distinguished Visiting Researcher award to Prof. Hou

Launching of KEDRI Neucube Project

NeuCube Project Launch

P A G E 4

Prof. Kasabov and

Prof. Vellasco with

some of the gradu-

ate students at the

Catholic University

of Rio de Janeiro

who attended the

Prof. Kasabov’s Distinguished Lecture in Brazil

The Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) of the IEEE has a programme called Distinguished Lectureship Programme (DLP). Prominent scientists are elected to represent the DLP as Distinguished Lecturers to promoted advanced research and development of the Society in the area of computational intelligence. In April 2013 Prof. Kasabov, Fellow of IEEE, who is a one of the IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturers, was invited to present a lecture to the Brazilian Chapter of the IEEE CIS in Rio de Janeiro, hosted by the Chair of the Chapter Prof. Marley Vellasco and funded by IEEE. The topic was ‘Advances in Neurocomputing and Computational Intelligence: Evolving Connectionist

Systems and Evolving Intelligence”. The lecture was attended by more than 60 participants and was followed by individual discussions. Along with the IEEE lecture, Prof. Kasabov gave a tutorial on ‘Spiking Neural Networks’ to the graduate students and academics from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a talk at the University of Sao Paolo in Sao Carlos. The talks were inspirational for the students and academics as many of them talked with prof. Kasabov about their own projects and how they can continue their work in a collaborative way. The University of Sao Paolo and the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro are among the top ranked Universities in Brazil. The Government of Brazil and its President Dilma Russeff announced early this year a Fund to support more than 50,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students to study or to spend part of their study abroad. Brazil is the 6th largest economy in the world (recently overpassing the UK). A New Zealand education and science delegation led by the Prime Minter John Key visited Brazil in March this year.

Keynote Speeches by Prof. Kasabov Speech on ‘Neurocomputing for Spatio-/Spectro Temporal Pattern Recognition and Early Event Prediction: Methods, Systems, Applications’

6th Balkan Conference in Informatics, 17th Panhellenic Conference in Informatics, Thessalonica, Greece, 19-21.09.2013, Keynote Speech on ‘Neurocomputation as Brain Inspired Informatics: Methods, Systems, Applications’

Invited Speaker at the 20th International Conference of the Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 13), Daegu, Korea, 3 -7.11.2013. Title of talk: ‘Spatio-temporal EEG data classification in the NeuCube 3D SNN Environment: Methodology and Examples.

Prof. Kasabov gave keynote speeches at the following conferences:

2013 International Conference on Intelligent Computing (ICIC2013), July 28-31 2013, in Nanning, China. Title of talk: 'Evolving Computational Intelligence: Methods, Systems, Applications'

ICANN 2013, Sofia, 10-13.09.2013, Keynote Speech on ‘Contemporary Developments in Neural Networks : Spiking Neural Networks for Adaptive Spatio-/Spectro Temporal Pattern Recognition’

EANN 2013, Halkidiki, Greece, 13-16.09.2013, Keynote

K N O W L E D G E E N G I N E E R I N G & D I S C O V E R Y

R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E

P A G E 5 2 0 1 3

Prof. Kasabov was awarded the ' Distinguished Visiting Fellow-ship' by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), UK. As part of his visit to the UK, scheduled for October 2013. The Fellowship is by invitation only and is fully funded by the RAE. It is offered every year to only few eminent scientists from all over the world.

During the BCI conference in Thessalonica in September 2013, the Greek Computer Society elected Prof. Kasabov as an Hon-orary Member.

AUT nominated Prof. Kasabov to attend the National Science Challenge workshop that addresses "science for technological innovation". The workshop took place on Friday 14 June 2013 in Wellington. Prof. Kasabov was required to speak on the sci-ence challenge from the perspective of the University's strengths as well as with a clear eye for the science priorities for the country as a whole.

Nathan Scott and Vivienne Breen received the Vice Chancel-lor’s Doctoral Scholarship award for their PhD studies at KEDRI.

Muhaini Othman won the best 3 Minute Thesis Competition in Doctoral Consortium held during 26th Australasian Joint Con-ference on Artificial Intelligence 2013 at University of Otago, Dunedin .

Honors and Awards

Nathan receives the VC Doctoral Scholarship award

KEDRI Team with fellow researchers from Lincoln University and Shanghai Jiaotong University

As a form of cooperation between AUT,

Xinjiang University, and Shanghai

Jiaotong University under the NZ-China

Tripartite project, a workshop was held

in Lincoln University’s Bio-Protection

Research Centre on 15th November

2013 in Christchurch.

Prof Jie Yang and PhD Student Enmei Tu

from Shanghai Jiaotong University and

Assoc Prof Russel Pears and PhD

Student Reggio Hartono from KEDRI

attended the workshop.

Everyone presented their research and

shared their knowledge to enable

Tripartite Project Workshop

Muhaini with her poster paper

collaboration between the institutes. Lincoln University PhD

student Audrey Lustig made a follow-up visit to Auckland the

week after to discuss her research with the team at KEDRI.

P A G E 6

KEDRI

and

KLACSIS

signing a

research

agree-

ment

Projects

K N O W L E D G E E N G I N E E R I N G & D I S C O V E R Y

R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E

China is the second largest economy and a strategic partner of New Zealand. The New Zealand government has initiated several cooperation activities with China that include research and tertiary education cooperation.

KEDRI responded immediately and now KEDRI has 2 research collaboration projects with partners from China that aim at research and development and the preparation of pathways for a joint commercialisation in the future:

KEDRI Strategic Research Alliances with China

applications for neuro-rehabilitation and stroke prediction and prevention. The project includes researchers from the NISAN institute and other research centres from the Faculty of Health at AUT and clinical partners from China. The International Relationship Funding Agreement between the Ministry of Science and Innovation and AUT (KEDRI) for $300,000 over 3 years has been finalised and we are into the second year of the project. The Project Leader is Prof. N. Kasabov, FIEEE, FRSNZ, and the contact person in Beijing is Prof. Zeng-Guang Hou.

The joint team integrates expertise on novel spiking neural network methods for brain data analysis (KEDRI), stroke data collection and processing (NISAN) and neuro-rehabilitation robots (KLACSIS). Other research partners are joining the project that include the China

Recognising the educational and science benefits to be gained through a co-operative program promoting scholarly activities and international understanding, AUT and Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, of Beijing, China (CASIA), entered into a Memorandum of Understanding in October 2010 that formalised the already established research contacts between KEDRI and The Key Laboratory of Complex Systems and Intelligence, Institute of Automation (KLACSIS) in Beijing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2010 KEDRI and KLACSIS signed a research agreement in the presence of the Vice President of the China Academy of Sciences and the New Zealand Minister of Science and Innovation (see the photo) to develop novel neural network information methods for advanced robotic systems and their

New Zealand – China Strategic Research Alliance Project

KEDRI - East China – West China Tripartite Project

P A G E 7 2 0 1 3

In 2005, the Ministry of Education in China initiated

a partnership programme between prestigious

eastern universities and universities in developing

western inland areas known as the ‘Two Brothers’

arrangement. The New Zealand and Chinese

Ministries of Education subsequently agreed to

formally support and promote tripartite

relationships between New Zealand and China, in

which a New Zealand university is joined as the

‘third brother’. Both the New Zealand and the

Chinese governments have agreed to commit

funding to support this bilateral initiative. The

purpose of the New-Zealand-China Tripartite Fund is

to encourage the development of strategic research

relationships between New Zealand and China

existing partnerships. KEDRI responded to this

initiative and a tripartite agreement was signed in

2008 and renewed in 2012, with AUT (KEDRI),

Shanghai Jia Tong University, SJTU (East China) and

Xinjiang University (West China – Urumqi) to

cooperate on the development of intelligent

information methods and advanced software

systems for ecological and environmental modelling

and prediction, along with developing long term

educational relationships. This also involves

researchers from the National Center for

Bioprotection at Lincoln University. The methods

and systems will be offered both in NZ and China for

commercialisation at a later stage. The project is

funded by Education NZ. Project leader is Prof. N.

Kasabov, FIEEE, FRSNZ and the contact person in

China is Prof. Jie Yang, from Shanghai Jia Tong

University. Exchange of students and academics has

become a regular activity. Prof. Kasabov has been

elected as an Honorary Guest Professor at the SJTU

– one of the top five Universities in China and also

highly ranked internationally in computer science,

engineering and technologies.

Human Brain Project (www.humanbrainproject.eu), has announced an extra call for new project proposals and new members to join. Prof. Nikola Kasabov met with the Co-Director Prof. Meier (on the computing part) who invited him to apply for such a project and for AUT to become a member. This will be the first member from Australia and New Zealand.

An expression of interest was submitted for a CoRE proposal by AUT, led by the FDCT (KEDRI and

CoLAB) - INTERACT. This is

proposed as a long-term New Zealand-based research and education program that integrates

already established collaborations between researchers from all eight NZ universities, industry partners and international partners for the development of intelligent and innovative technologies and their applications across education, social, health and industry sectors in New Zealand based on human inspired and human-oriented computational intelligence. Our vision is that New Zealand needs to develop a raft of innovative and smart technologies and to generate enlightened university graduates with innovative thinking and creative minds for the benefit of the whole society.

An Agreement for International Collaboration was signed on 10th June 2013 between KEDRI, AUT, NZ , and The Global Frontier Center for Human-Level Machine Learning, Korea, to promote mutual understanding and research activities between the two countries and between two institutes through collaboration and exchange and to contribute to the advancement and progress of machine learning, artificial intelligence and brain and cognitive sciences.

The largest ever European Union funded project, called the

Academy of Sciences Institute of Biophysics and Chinese commercial companies involved in producing hardware and software systems for neuro-rehabilitation. The project includes the development of new, joint IP based on the existing

ones at KEDRI that will be shared by the partners. Preparation is underway for a larger project proposal to the NZ MBIE and the China Academy of Sciences for the next 5 years.

P A G E 8

K N O W L E D G E E N G I N E E R I N G & D I S C O V E R Y

R E S E A R C H I N S T I T U T E

Edited Book

N.Kasabov (ed) The Springer Handbook of Bio- and Neuroinformatics, Springer, 2013. ISBN 978-3-642-30573-3.

Book Chapters

Kasabov, N. (2013). Brain, Gene, and Quantum Inspired Computational Intelligence. In N. Kasabov (Ed.), Springer Handbook of Bio-/Neuroinformatics, Springer. pp. 1083-1098

Georgieva, P., Silva, F., Milanova, M., & Kasabov, N. (2013). EEG Signal Processing for Brain-Computer Interfaces. In N. Kasabov (Ed.), Springer Handbook for Bio-/Neuroinformatics, Springer. pp. 797-812

Schliebs, S., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Computational Modeling with Spiking Neural Networks. In N. Kasabov (Ed.), Springer Handbook of Bio-/Neuroinformatics, Springer. pp. 625-646

Tegginmath, S., Pears, R., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Ontologies and Machine Learning Systems. In N. Kasabov (Ed.), Springer Handbook of Bio-/Neuroinformatics, Springer. pp. 865-872

Kasabov, N. (2013). The Evolution of the Evolving Neuro-Fuzzy Systems: From Expert Systems to Spiking-, Neurogenetic-, and Quantum Inspired. In R. Seising, E. Trillas, C. Moraga, & S. Termini (Eds.), On Fuzziness A Homage to Lotfi A Zadeh (Vol. 298, pp. 271-280). Springer.

Liang, L., Krishnamurthi, R., Kasabov, N., & Feigin, V. (2013). Information methods for pre-dicting risk and outcome of stroke. pp. 993-1001

Kasabov, N. (2013). The evolution of the evolving neuro-fuzzy systems: From expert systems to spiking-, neurogenetic-, and quantum inspired. In Unknown Book (Vol. 298, pp. 271-280).

Hu, Y., Kasabov, N., & Liang, W. (2013). Personalised Information Modelling Technologies for Personalised Medicine. In N. Kasabov (Ed.), Springer Handbook of Bio- and Neuroin-formatics (pp. 1-32). Springer.

Journals

Erogbogbo, F., May, J., Swihart, M., Prasad, P., Smart, K., Jack, S., . . . Gladding, P. (2013). Bio-engineering Silicon Quantum Dot Theranostics using a Network Analysis of Metabo-lomic and Proteomic Data in Cardiac Ischemia. Theranostics, 3(9), pp. 719-728. doi:10.7150/thno.5010

Kasabov, N., Liang, L., Krishnamurthi, R., Feigin, V., Othman, M., Hou, Z.,. Parmar, P. (2013). Evolving Spiking Neural Networks for Personalised Modelling of Spatio-Temporal Data and Early Prediction of Events: A Case Study on Stroke. Neurocomputing

Publications

P A G E 9 2 0 1 3

Kageyama, Y., Momose, A., Takahashi, T., Ishii, M., Nishida, M., Mohemmed, A., . Kasabov, N. (2013). Analysis of Lip Motion Change Arising due to Amusement Feeling. IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 8(5), pp. 538-539. doi:10.1002/tee.21892

Pears, R., Widiputra, H., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Evolving integrated multi-model framework for on line multiple time series prediction. Evolving Systems, 4(2), pp. 99-117. doi:10.1007/s12530-012-9069-y

Liang., Hu., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Evolving Personalized Modeling System for Integrated Feature, Neigh-borhood and Parameter Optimization utilizing Gravitational Search Algorithm. Evolving Systems, pp. 1-14. doi:10.1007/s12530-013-9081-x

Schliebs, S., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Evolving spiking neural network-a survey. Evolving Systems, 4(2), pp. 87-98. doi:10.1007/s12530-013-9074-9

Kasabov, N., Dhoble, K., Nuntalid, N., & Indiveri, G. (2013). Dynamic evolving spiking neural networks for on-line spatio- and spectro-temporal pattern recognition. Neural Networks, 41, pp. 188-201.

Tu, E., Yang, J., Fang, J., Jia, Z., & Kasabov, N. (2013). An experimental comparison of semi-supervised learning algorithms for multispectral image classification. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 79(4), pp. 347-357.

Mohemmed, A., Schliebs, S., Matsuda, S., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Training spiking neural networks to as-sociate spatio-temporal input-output spike patterns. Neurocomputing, 107, pp. 3-10. doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2012.08.034

Jordanov, I., Apolloni, B., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Special Issue: Contemporary development of neural computation and applications. Neural Computing and Applications, 22(1), pp. 1-2. doi:10.1007/s00521-012-0903-8

Conference Papers

Schliebs, S., Capecci, E., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Spiking Neural Network for On-line Cognitive Activity Classification Based on EEG Data. In ICONIP 13. Daegu, Korea. pp. 55-62.

Scott, N., Kasabov, N., & Indiveri, G. (2013). NeuCube Neuromorphic Framework for Spatio-Temporal Brain Data and Its Python Implementation. In ICONIP 13. Daegu, Korea. pp. 78-84

Chen, Y., Hu, J., Kasabov, N., Hou, Z., & Cheng, L. (2013). NeuroCubeRehab: A Pilot Study for EEG Classi-fication in Rehabilitation Practice Based on Spiking Neural Networks. In ICONIP 13. Daegu, Ko-rea. pp. 70-77.

Kasabov, N., Hu, J., Chen, Y., Scott, N., & Turkova, Y. (2013). Spatio-temporal EEG data classification in the NeuCube 3D SNN Environment: Methodology and Examples. In ICONIP 13. Daegu, Korea. pp. 63-69.

Zhou, L., Gong, C., Li, Y., Qiao, Y., Yang, J., & Kasabov, N. (2013). Salient Object Segmentation Based on Automatic Labeling. In ICONIP 13. Daegu, Korea. pp. 584-591.

Physical Address

Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute

Auckland University of Technology

Level 3, Duthie Whyte Building

120 Mayoral Drive

Auckland 1010

New Zealand

Postal Address

Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute

Auckland University of Technology

Private Bag 92006

Auckland 1142

New Zealand

http://www.kedri.aut.ac.nz/