FLAIRS 2002 Conference Report

Originally founded in 1987 as a conference to promote and advance AI within the state of Florida, over the years, FLAIRS has attracted national and international participation--56 percent of this year's papers had international authors. After a period of eight years, the Fifteenth International Conference of the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS 2002) returned to the emerald coast of Pensacola Beach, Florida. John Kolen (UWF-IHMC) was the conference general chair, and Susan Haller (University of Wisconsin at Parkside) and Gene Simmons (University of South Alabama) were the program cochairs. FLAIRS is a general conference for reporting AI research, and the 104 papers presented at FLAIRS-2002 covered a broad spectrum of research areas. The conference consisted of 3 parallel sessions of 21 tracks, including 14 special tracks highlighting specific themes.