Serious Data, Serious Mining - February 24, 2015

It is our pleasure to host this distinguished lecture by Prof. Bart De Moor, ESAT-STADIUS KU Leuven. The lecture will be followed by a reception. Please feel free to forward this invitation.

Date: February 24, 2015
Time: 14:30
Venue: Weicker Building -Room B001 Ground floor, 4 rue Alphonse Weicker, L-2721 Luxembourg

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Abstract: Big data, data mining, machine learning, predictive analytics, etc.: All of these have become buzzwords in today’s information driven world, that is overwhelmed by a tsunami of data. For sure, in many applications, the mere size of the database is a real challenge, with of course Google as a most prominent example.

But not only size matters. In many applications, the data are ‘technical’ and ‘complicated’, and the objectives of the mining exercise are also technical and/or economical, with a clear return-on-investment. In this presentation, we will talk about ‘serious data’, by which we basically mean those data for which an in depth know-how and understanding of the field and application is mandatory.  Examples are biomedical and health data (think of genomics, decision support tools), industrial data (process industry monitoring and control), environmental (micro-climate simulations), financial (fraud detection, bank customer modeling), smart city applications (energy grid monitoring), etc.

We will also talk about‘serious mining’, by which we mean that we use a full toolbox of advanced machine learning algorithms, including system identification methodologies for dynamical systems and time series, clustering, classification, ranking algorithms, etc.

In our lecture, we will first give a broad overview of the general trends that explain the tsunami of data in technical applications. Then we will briefly elaborate on the necessary ingredients for data mining (compute infrastructure, storage, analytics, visualization, security). Of utmost importance before the mining exercise can even start, is a clear enunciation of the objectives. We will show examples in ICT, Finance, Education, Smart Cities, Health and then enumerate the mining tasks that one can formulate.

We will briefly dwell into the typical work package partitioning of a data-mining project, elaborate on advanced algorithms we use, and finish with use cases from load forecasting on the national electricity grid in Belgium, industrial process monitoring, social network clustering, financial fraud detection and finally several health and genomics related projects. 

Bart De Moor obtained his Master Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1983 and a PhD in Engineering in 1988 at the KU Leuven. For 2 years, he was a Visiting Research Associate at Stanford University (1988-1990) at the departments of EE (ISL, Prof. Kailath) and CS (Prof. Golub). Currently, he is a full professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering in the research group STADIUS and the Scientific Director of the iMinds Future Health Department. His research interests are in numerical linear algebra, algebraic geometry and optimization, system theory and system identification, quantum information theory, control theory, datamining, information retrieval and bio-informatics (see publications on http://www.bartdemoor.be). He is or has been the coordinator of numerous research projects and networks funded by regional, federal and European funding agencies. Currently, he is leading a research group of 10 PhD students and 4 postdocs and in the recent past, about 80 PhDs were obtained under his guidance. He has been teaching at several universities in Europe and the US. He is/was a member of several scientific and professional organizations, jury member of several scientific and industrial awards, and chairman or member of international conferences and educational and scientific review and selection committees, including the European Research Council. He is/was an associate editor of and reviewer for several scientific journals. His work has won him several scientific awards (Leybold-Heraeus Prize (1986), Leslie Fox Prize (1989), Guillemin-Cauer best paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems (1990), Laureate of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences (1992), bi-annual Siemens Award (1994), best paper award of Automatica (IFAC, 1996), IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award (1999)). In November 2010, he received the 5-annual FWO Excellence Award out of the hands of King Albert II of Belgium. Since 2004, he is a fellow of the IEEE (www.ieee.org). Since 2000 he is member of the Royal
Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts. From 1991-1999 he was the Head of Cabinet and/or Main Advisor on Science and Technology of several ministers of the Belgian Federal Government (Demeester, Martens) and the Flanders Regional Governments (Demeester, Van den Brande). From December 2005 to July 2007, he was the Head of Cabinet on socio-economic policy of the minister-president of Flanders, Yves Leterme, capacity in which he was the coordinator of the socio-economic business plan for the Flemish region.
He co-founded 6 spinoff companies, 4 of which are still active (www.ipcos.be, www.tmleuven.be, www.dsquare.be, www.cartagenia.com). He was or is in the Board of the Flemish Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, the Study Center for Nuclear Energy, the Institute for Broad Band Technology, the Flemish Children Science Center Technopolis, the Alamire Foundation, the Belgian AstraZeneca Foundation and several other scientific and cultural organizations. He is co-founder of the philosophical think tank Worldviews.
He is the Chairman of the Industrial Research Fund of the KU Leuven, Chairman of the Hercules Foundation (scientific infrastructure funding) and member of the Board of the Danish National
Research Foundation. As a vice-rector for International Policy (2009-2013), he was a member of the Executive Committee and the Academic Council of the KU Leuven and of the Board of Directors of the Association KU Leuven. He also was the Chairman of the Committee on Internationalisation and Development Cooperation of the VLUHR (www.vluhr.be). He is a co-founder of and in the Board of the International School of Leuven.

Full details on his CV can be found at www.bartdemoor.be