Welcome to Paths Ahead 2009

LIDS is pleased to host the Paths Ahead in the Science of Information and Decision Systems symposium, a symposium aimed at articulating a picture of the challenges and ideas that will shape the future directions of research in the science of information and decision systems. This meeting will bring together leading researchers from all around the world who have been influential in shaping the vision of and leading this field.

The meeting will consist of several panel-oriented sessions which will focus on core disciplines, including Systems and Control; Networks and Networked Systems; Estimation, Inference and Learning; and Optimization and Decision Sciences, with considerable attention placed on challenges that cut across these disciplines.

In addition, we will take this opportunity to honor one of the major intellectual leaders of our field, Prof. Sanjoy Mitter, who is officially retiring in 2009.

The Paths Ahead symposium will take a fresh look into old and new research directions, address the relevance, timing and interdisciplinary nature of such directions, and stimulate the preparation of position papers that highlight emerging paradigms in these research directions. We hope that these position papers will be the starting point for more systematic interactions between different researchers and institutions that can help our broad community focus its activities and disseminate its research in an efficient manner.