Achim Hoffmann

Dr.-Ing. habil. (TU Berlin) Dr.phil. (TU Berlin)

[PHOTO: Achim Hoffmann]

I am Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Consultation during session 2/2001 (in Rm 406, K17):

Tuesday	2-3pm
Wednesday	2-4pm

Research Interests:

Artificial Intelligence.
Knowledge-Based Systems.
Intelligent Data Analysis.
Machine Learning.
Knowledge Acquisition.
Theory of Neural Networks.
Philosophical Foundations of AI.

Teaching Areas:

Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Digital Systems

Administrative Activities:

Computer Science Program Director.

Chair of the Postgraduate Student Progress Review Comittee for the Department of Artificial Intelligence. (See here for more infos and for forms).

Some of my professional involvements:

Member of the Editorial Board of Intelligent Data Analysis published in print and electronically.
Program Committee member of the Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis (AIDA 2001) Conference ,
Co-Chair of the Pacific Knowledge Acquisition Workshop 2000,
Tutorial Speaker at International Conference on Neural Information Processing 1999 on Vapnik's Learning Theory. (Slides available online) ,
Organising Committee Member of the 6th Pacific Rim Conference on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) 2000 ,
Chair of the IJCAI-99 Workshop on Empirical Artificial Intelligence ,
Program Committee member of the 6th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) 1999 ,
Program Committee member of the Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis (AIDA 1999) Conference ,
Program Committee member of the International Workshop on Statistical Techniques in Pattern Recognition 1998,
Program Committee member of the Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition Workshop 1996,
Organising Committee Member of the Algorithmic Learning Theory Workshop 1996.

Background:

I studied Computer Science and Philosophy at University of Technology Berlin (Technische Universitaet Berlin), Germany. In 1985, I received the Master of Science in Computer Science (Diplom-Informatiker), in 1992 a PhD in Computer Science with a thesis on Computer Aided Design of integrated circuits and in 1993 a PhD in Philosophy with a thesis on the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence. In 1997, I earned a Habilitation in Computer Science from the same institution.

Research Students:

Graduated PhD Students:

Selected Publications:

Monographs

Journal Papers

Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Theoretical basis for hierarchical incremental knowledge acquisition'', International Journal of Human Computer Studies, 2001, Vol. 54, to appear.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Incremental Acquisition of Search Knowledge'', International Journal of Human Computer Studies, March 2000, Vol. 52, Issue 3, pp. 493-530,
Hoffmann AG, ``On computational limitations of self-organization'', Neurocomputing, 15, pp. 69-87, 1997. Elsevier Science.
Hoffmann AG, ``Connectionist Dynamics and the Limited Complexity of the Network Function'', Connection Science, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 201-215, 1997.
Hoffmann AG, ``Auf der Suche nach den Prinzipien kuenstlicher Intelligenz'', Kuenstliche Intelligenz, Vol. 6, 35-41, 1995.
Freivalds R and Hoffmann AG, ``An Inductive Inference Approach to Classification'', Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, No 1, Vol 6, 1994, 63-72.
Hoffmann AG, ``Connectionist Functionality and the Emergent Network Behavior'', Neurocomputing, No 2, Vol 2, 1991, 161-172.
Hoffmann AG, ``Die Theorie des Lernbaren - ein Ueberblick'', Kuenstliche Intelligenz, Vol. 1, 7-11, 1991.

Conference Papers

Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Monitoring Knowledge Acquisition Instead of Evaluating Knowledge Bases'', Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop 2000, Springer-Verlag.
Khan, AS and Hoffmann AG, ``A new Approach for the Incremental Development of Adaptation Functions for CBR'', Advances in Case-Based Reasoning, 5th European Workshop, EWCBR 2000, pp. 260-272, Springer-Verlag.
Beydoun, G, Hoffmann, AG, Hierarchical Incremental Knowledge Acquisition, Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management, Banff, Canada 1999.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Holism and Knowledge Acquisition'', Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop 1999, Springer-Verlag.
Beydoun, G and Hoffmann AG, ``Building Problem Solvers Based on Search Control Knowledge'', Proceedings of 11th Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modeling and Management, Banff, Canada 1998.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Simultaneous Modelling and Knowledge Acquisition Using NRDR'', Proceedings of the 5th Pacific Rim International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Singapore 1998, Springer-Verlag.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Building Search Heuristics at the Knowledge Level '', Proceedings of the Pacific Rim Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Singapore 1998.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, `` NRDR for the Acquisition of Search Knowledge , Proceedings of Tenth Australian Joint Conference On Artificial Intelligence, Australia, 1997.
Matsushima, S and Hoffmann AG, ``An Instance-Based Framework for Integrating Domain Knowledge with a Reinforcement Learner'', Proceedings of the International Conference on Neural Information Processing, New Zealand, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
Beydoun G and Hoffmann AG, ``Acquisition of Search Knowledge'', Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Spain, pp. 1-16, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
Kaspar S and Hoffmann AG, ``Using knowledge acquisition to build spoken language systems'', Proceedings of the European Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Spain, Springer-Verlag, 1997.
Hoffmann AG and Freier B, ``On Integrating Domain Knowledge into Reinforcement Learning'', Proceedings of the International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Hong Kong, Springer-Verlag, pp. 954-959, 1996. (292kB)
Amin A, Bemford M, Hoffmann A, and Mahidadia A, and Compton, P, ``A knowledge acquisition technique for recognizing hand-printed Chinese characters'', Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Vienna, Austria, 1996.
Amin A, Bemford M, Hoffmann A, Mahidadia A, and Compton, P. ``Recognition of Hand-printed Chinese Characters using Ripple-Down Rules'', Proceedings of the 7th Intenational Workshop on Structural and Statistical Pattern Recognition, Leipzig, Germany, 1996, pp. 371-380, Springer-Verlag.
Pendrith M, Ryan M, and Hoffmann AG, ``Reinforcement Learning for Cybernetic Control'', Proceedings of the 13th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research, Vienna, Austria, pp. 1020-1025, 1996.
Hoffmann AG, ``A Greedy Learning Approach for Multi-Layer Perceptrons'', Proceedings of the International Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks , Tainan, Taiwan, pp. 19-25, December 1994. (359kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``Using algorithmic information theory to cope with the dynamics of self-organization'', Proceedings of the International Symposium Information Theory and its Applications '94 Sydney, Australia, November 1994, pp. 383-388.
Hoffmann AG, ``Exploiting Causal Domain Knowledge for Learning to Control Dynamic Systems'', Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 1994, pp. 433-437. (156kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``The dynamic locking heuristic - a new graph partitioning algorithm'', Proceedings of the International Symposium of Circuits and Systems '94, London, UK, May 1994, 175-178. (152kB)
Hoffmann AG, Thakar S, ``Supporting sales consultation through case-based reasoning'', Proceedings of the European Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, Vol 1, Otzenhausen, Germany, November, 1993, 187-192.
Hoffmann AG, ``Complexity bounds of emerging structures in self-organizing networks'', Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks '93, Nagoya, Japan, October, 1993, 475-478. (133kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``A new strategy for library-independent layout design'', Proceedings of the International Symposium of Circuits and Systems '93, Chicago, USA, May 1993. (657kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``Phenomenology, Representations and Complexity'', Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence Vienna, Austria, August 1992, 610-614. (115kB)
Hoffmann AG and Thakar S, ``Acquiring Knowledge by Efficient Query Learning'', Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Sydney, Australia, pp. 783-788, August 1991. (163kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``On the Principles of Intelligence'', Proceedings of the World Conference on the Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, Paris, France, pp. 257-266, July 1991.
Hoffmann AG, ``Asymptotic Performance of Learning Algorithms'', Proceedings of the World Conference on the Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, Paris, France, pp. 247-256, July 1991.
Hoffmann AG, ``GGADS: A General Gate-Array Design System for Optimizing Gate Array Master Structures'', Proceedings of the 5th CompEuro, Bologna, Italy, pp. 680-684, May 1991, IEEE.
Hoffmann AG, ``Towards Optimizing Global MinCut Partitioning'', Proceedings of the 2nd European Design Automation Conference, Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 167-171, February 1991, IEEE. (360kB)
Hoffmann AG, ``On Computational Limitations of Neural Network Architectures'', Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, Dallas, Texas, USA, pp. 818-825, December 1990, IEEE.
Hoffmann AG, ``Types of Efficient Query Learning'', Proceedings of the 14th German Workshop on Artificial Intelligence, Eringerfeld, Germany, pp. 257-266, September 1990, Springer-Verlag.
Hoffmann AG, ``The Computational Complexity of Occam's Razor'', Proceedings of the 14th German Workshop on Artificial Intelligence, Eringerfeld, Germany, pp. 277-281, September 1990, Springer-Verlag.
Hoffmann AG, ``General Limitations on Machine Learning'', Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 345-347, August 1990. (258kB)

Achim Hoffmann
School of Computer Science and Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 2052, AUSTRALIA
Email:  Achim@cse.unsw.edu.au
Phone:  +61 2 9385 3937
Fax:    +61 2 9385 1814