Scientist discusses database discovery

Members of the public are invited to attend a lecture delivered by leading BT scientist and BU Visiting Professor, Detlaf Nauck.

BU’s School of Design, Engineering & Computing (DEC) welcomes Visiting Professor Detlef Nauck, a chief scientist at British Telecom (BT), who will deliver his inaugural lecture on 12 May 2009.

Dr Nauck is Chief Research Scientist at BT’s Intelligent Systems Research Centre. An academic of world-class pedigree, he is leading a group of international scientists working on business and computational intelligence research.

He has close ties with BU and is currently working with colleagues in the University’s Smart Technology Research Centre on a PhD research project which aims to improve service delivery for BT customers. He will also act as judge for DEC’s Research Student Poster Conference on 13 May 2009.

In his inaugural lecture, entitled ‘Pro-active Knowledge Discovery’, Dr Nauck will discuss a concept known as KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases).

KDD is often described as a method to identify valid, useful, meaningful, unknown and unexpected relationships in large databases.

Dr Nauck said: “Data mining – the main technique employed in KDD – concentrates typically on building statistical models which covers only the ‘useful’ and ‘meaningful’ relationships. Techniques for discovering the ‘unknown’ and ‘unexpected’ are much less common and certainly have not yet made their way from the research laboratories into commercial software platforms.

“Large organisations like BT, that collect large data about its internal processes and interactions with customers, are facing a challenge. How do we detect relevant patterns across our distributed data that point to important future events or developments? How can we do this pro-actively?”

The lecture will be delivered in the Shelley Lecture Theatre on BU’s Talbot Campus at 6pm. Pre-lecture refreshments (from 5.15pm) and admission to the lecture are both free of charge.

Where: Shelley Lecture Theatre, Talbot Campus, Bournemouth University.
When: Tuesday 12 May 2009, 6pm.
Further information and bookings: Please email the BU Lecture booking service