*******************************************************
** Workshop: Kernel methods in computational biology **
**      Harnack-Haus, Berlin, April 14, 2003         **
**         http://cg.ensmp.fr/~vert/kmb03            **
*******************************************************

** Presentation **
Computational biology aims at processing, analyzing and making sense out of huge amount of data produced by high-throughput technologies such as DNA sequencing technologies, DNA and protein microarrays, mass spectrometry or yeast two-hybrid systems. These data are heterogeneous by nature (vectors, strings, graphs...), and often noisy and high-dimensionnal. Kernel methods, such as support vector machines, are promising tools in this context, combining good performances with the ability to manipulate virtually any type of objects thanks to the kernel trick. A number or kernel functions for biological objects have been proposed recently, with encouraging results on several classification issues.

The goal of this one-day workshop (which follows the Research in Computational Molecular Biology RECOMB 2003 conference) is to review the state-of-the-art in the application of kernel methods to biology in order to highlight promising research directions, and to foster communication between the computational biology and machine learning communities.

No prior knowledge in kernel methods is expected: we explicitly encourage participation of researchers in computational biology interested in new algorithms and tools to process post-genomics data. The workshop will begin with a tutorial on kernel methods.

Invited speakers include Nello Cristianini, William S. Noble, Yann Guermeur, Tommi Jaakkola, Imre Kondor, Christina Leslie, Alex Smola, Chris Watkins.

** Organizers **
Bernhard Schoelkopf <bernhard.schoelkopf@tuebingen.mpg.de>
Koji Tsuda <koji.tsuda@aist.go.jp>
Jean-Philippe Vert<Jean-Philippe.Vert@mines.org>

** Call for paper **
We are accepting submissions for oral and/or poster presentation. The presentation should be related to the development of kernel methods for problems in biology or computational biology. Please submit a 2-pages abstract to koji.tsuda@aist.go.jp , in PS or PDF format.

Submission deadline is March 14th, 2003.

** For more information, please check the workshop homepage **
http://cg.ensmp.fr/~vert/kmb03/