Jean-Gabriel GANASCIA

Team ACASA, LIP6-CNRS 

University Pierre et Marie Curie 
4, place Jussieu, mail box 169 
75252 Paris CEDEX 05, France
Telephone: +33 (0) 1 44 27 37 27, 
Fax: +33 (0) 1 44 27 70 00 

"Cognitive Science"
Scientific Interest Group
1, place Aristide Briand
92195, Meudon CEDEX France 
Telephone: +33 (0) 1 45 07 56 66, 
Fax: +33 (0) 1 45 07 55 60

email: Jean-Gabriel.Ganascia@lip6.fr
www: http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~ganascia/

Summary

Present position
Research
"Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group
Teaching
Publications
Curriculum Vitae
Books
Administrative responsabilities in research

Present position

I am currently a full professor at the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) where my main teaching is in computer studies, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. My research activities are based in the LIP6 laboratory, working in the field of Artificial Intelligence, where I am head of the ACASA research team, one of the meanings of ACASA being 'house' in Portuguese. I am also in charge of the "Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group, whose beautiful logo, inspired by Ramon Lull's combinatorial arts wheel, can be seen below thephotograph of the building where ACASA is housed.

Summary

Research

Today the ACASA research team is working on data mining, scientific discovery and creativity. But to begin with, ACASA, the small research team I gradually built up at the University Paris VI, worked on machine learning (how to get a machine to learn from itself) and knowledge acquisition (how to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from people to machines during the building of expert systems). Hence the name of the research team in French: Acquisition des Connaissances et Apprentissage Symbolique Automatique (Knowledge Acquisition and Automatic Machine Learning). Since our beginnings, however, our research has taken different paths and now focuses more and more on knowledge discovery in data bases, on scientific discovery and on creativity. For further details of my research activities, click this link.
Summary

"Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group

The "Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group (SIG) was set up in April 1995 and resulted from the merger of two existing and totally separate projects, one under the aegis of the CNRS since 1990, the other under the aegis of the Ministry since 1989. Three other partners, the CEA and INRIA, followed by INRETS, have since joined the Scientific Interest Group.

The aims of the "Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group are many and varied: to bring French research groups to the highest international standards in the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science or to maintain these standards, to facilitate contacts between research teams and laboratories working in different disciplines, and to examine possible contributions of cognitive science to the field of socio-economics. To reach these aims, the "Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group has five kinds of activity:

  1. prospective analysis,
  2. financing scientific projects,
  3. organization of events for the scientific community,
  4. communication activities,
  5. assessment of research grants.

For a rapid review of the adventures of the "Cognitive Science" Scientific Interest Group (in french), consult this link.
Summary

Teaching

Throughout my teaching career I have covered most aspects of computer science, from machine architecture to programming, from logic to algorithms to languages. As part of this activity I have written and published a number of lecture notes (logic programming, artificial intelligence, etc.) and books.

Today my teaching centers on artificial intelligence, logic programming, machine learning and cognitive science. To be more precise, I teach the following courses:

I am also in charge of the Master of science (DEA) in Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition and Applications (IARFA, in French), co-organized with the University Paris V, ENPC (Ecole Nationale Supèrieure des Ponts et Chaussées), ENST (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications) and ENSTA (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Techniques Avancées).
Summary

Publications

Use this list of publications link to get the full list of everything I have published throughout my research and teaching career, over 180 items in all, including articles, papers, chapters in books, complete books, organized under different headings and presented in detail, with year of publication, library and page references, conference proceedings, publishers, etc.
Summary

Curriculum Vitae

After my initial background training in engineering and philosophy I was awarded a research grant by the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in order to pursue my research at the Computer Science Research Laboratory (LRI) at Orsay. I worked in collaboration with the company Schlumberger on the design of an expert system in sedimentary geology, LITHO. I was appointed as a teaching assistant at the University Paris-Sud in 1982 and defended my doctoral degree in engineering in March 1983.
I then started working on machine learning and in particular on structural matching and the algebraic formalization of learning algorithms using boolean lattices. This research gave rise to two systems, AGAPE and CHARADE, and culminated in a PhD in 1987.
In October 1988 I was appointed full professor at the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6 University), where I pursued my research activities first in the LAFORIA laboratory and then the Computer Science Research Laboratory of Paris 6 University (LIP6). It is here that I gradually put together a research team, ACASA, whose initial work focused on machine learning and knowledge acquisition.

In the last few years the ACASA research team has developed a large number of applications in the fields of scientific discovery, musical composition, automatic indexing of multi-media documentation, the phonology of Chinese, etc. and they are now turning more and more towards themes related to scientific discovery, discovery in data bases and creativity.
Summary

Books

I have plans to write a number of books that would not be too academic and, who knows, might even be fun, but in the meantime I have already published five of a more academic nature on computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.


In addition to these books that I authored alone there are two collective works of which I was general editor.

Collective work Proceedings of EKAW 89

Summary

Administrative responsabilities in research

In addition to teaching and research, I have also been very much involved in the administration and running of various research activities:

Summary