Blaz Zupan

Department of Intelligent Systems
Jozef Stefan Institute
Jamova 39
SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

E-mail: blaz.zupan@ijs.si
Phone: +386 61 177 3380
Fax: +386 61 125 1038

I am a researcher in Department of Intelligent Systems at the Jozef Stefan Institute. My PhD (1997) is from University of Ljubljana, Faculty for Computer and Information Sciences. My MSc (1993) in Computer Science is from University of Houston, Texas, and BS (1991) in Electrical Engineering from University of Ljubljana.

• Research interests
• Current research
• Current Activities
• Information for students (UISP - Umetna inteligenca in simbolicno programiranje)
• Publications

Research interests

• Machine learning
• Machine discovery by function decomposition
• Data mining, intelligent data analysis, and knowledge discovery in databases
• Medical informatics
• Real-time expert systems

Current research

My current research work is focused on function decomposition and application of machine learning methods for intelligent data analysis in medicine. Function decomposition is a new machine learning and machine discovery paradigm inspired by the Boolean function decomposition approach to the design of digital circuits. The most important characteristics of this approach in respect to machine learning and knowledge discovery are:

• discovery of intermediate concepts,
• discovery of example sets that relate existing attributes to a newly discovered intermediate concept,
• discovery of hierarchical concept structure,
• decomposition of original dataset to equivalent smaller and more managable example sets.

The problems we have focused on recently are:

• handling multi-valued (non_binary) attributes and classes by decomposition (Zupan et al., ICML-97),
• decomposition as a KDD tool (Zupan et al., KDD-97),
• noise handling and handling of uncertainties (Zupan, PhD Thesis),
• decomposition of real-valued functions (Demsar et al., ECML-97)

Current Activities

• AIM Journal special issue on Data Mining Techniques and Applications in Medicine (editors Blaz Zupan, Nada Lavrac, and Elpida Keravnou)
• IDAMAP-98 A Workshop on Intelligent Data Anlysis in Medicine and Pharmacology (co-chair), see IDAMAP-97 and IDAMAP-96 for previous Workshops
• AIME-99 Symposium (organizing committee, workshop coordinator)

In Medical Informatics and KDD in Medicine, I'm also collaborating with Robert J. Beck, John A. Halter, and Michael W. Kattan from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, and with Dobrivoje S. Stokic from Mississippi Methodist Rehabilitation Center, Jackson, Mississippi.

Publications

Click here for a list of selectied publications.