Professor Cercone is an internationally-renowned researcher in several fields of Computer Science, and a recognized world leader. His research interests include natural language processing, knowledge-based systems, knowledge-discovery in databases, data mining, and design and human interfaces. He is the author of over 200 refereed publications and has graduated 60 graduate students. Professor Cercone co-founded the Computational Intelligence journal and currently serves on the editorial boards of six journals. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a past president of the CSCSI/SCEIO (Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence), of the Canadian Society for Fifth Generation Research, and of the Canadian Association for Computer Science (CACS/AIC). In 1996, he won the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Society's Distinguished Service Award.
Prior to his current dean position at Dalhousie, Professor Cercone was Chair of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. From 1993 until 1997 he was Associate Vice President (Research) and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Regina. Formerly he was Director of the Center for Systems Science at Simon Fraser University (1987-1992) and Chairman of the School of Computing Science (1980-1985) at Simon Fraser. He received the BS degree in Engineering Science from the University of Steubenville in 1968, the MS degree in Computer and Information Science from Ohio State University in 1970, and a PhD degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta in 1975. Professor Cercone has an active home page on the Web at http://www.cs.dal.ca/cspeople/n_cercone.shtml with detailed information for his research and leadership activities.
Springer and I are very grateful for Professor Cercone's agreement to serve in the KAIS Editor-in-Chief position. We believe that his research expertise and leadership experience will bring the journal to a new era of recognition in knowledge and information systems.
I have been in the KAIS Executive Editor position for six years. It has been a wonderful experience to start a journal with a distinguished collection of established researchers from various research areas in knowledge systems and advanced information systems. KAIS has now established itself as a major journal in data mining, knowledge systems, and advanced information systems. It has been recognized as "one of the main journals for publishing data mining related research" (see http://www.kdnuggets.com/news/2004/n14/2i.html). The journal publishes the best papers (in their expanded and revised versions) every year from IEEE ICDM (http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~icdm/) and ACM CIKM (http://www.cikm.org/), each of which is one of the most selective conferences in their respective research areas. Given the large number and high quality of our regular paper submissions, as well as these conference arrangements, KAIS will publish two volumes each of 4 issues every year from 2005 on.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our Editorial Board members, reviewers, authors, and readers, for their continued support. I would like to express my deep appreciation for Benjamin Wah (the Honorary Editor-in-Chief), John Barnden (the Regional Editor for Europe), and Ning Zhong (the Regional Editor for Asia and Australasia), who have worked hard to establish various documents and policies for this journal, including the journal's scope, policy documents for editors, and reviewing procedures, particularly in the beginning years.
I wish the KAIS journal, its Editorial Board, and especially Professor Cercone the best of success. I have promised to Springer and Professor Cercone that I will come back after my tour of duty with the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.