Research organisations
Research in artificial intelligence (AI) in Slovenia started in 1972 at the Computer Science Department of the Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI) in Ljubljana, and later also at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science (FRI), University of Ljubljana. At JSI, the AI Group was formally founded in 1979 and reorganised into the AI Laboratory in 1985. In 1995, the Department of Intelligent Systems was established by merging Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Language and Speech Technology Laboratory. At FRI, the AI Laboratory was founded in 1981. Both research groups (at JSI and FRI) were lead by Professor Ivan Bratko and closely cooperated.
Both groups were successful and grew in terms of achievements, employed and newly trained researchers, international collaborations and projects. This required further reorganisations. In 2004, the former JSI Department of Intelligent Systems and Computer Technologies Laboratory were reorganised into two new departments: Department of Knowledge Technologies (head: Nada Lavrač) and Department of Intelligent Systems (head: Matjaž Gams). At FRI, in addition to the former Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (head: Ivan Bratko), two new laboratories were formed: Laboratory for Cognitive Modeling in 2001 (head: Igor Kononenko) and Bioinformatics Laboratory in 2010 (head: Blaž Zupan). In 2011, a new research group was formed at JSI: AI Laboratory (head: Dunja Mladenić), which was constituted as a Department for Artificial Intelligence in 2020 (head: Dunja Mladenić). In 2021, the leadership of the
Department of Knowledge Technologies at JSI was transferred from Nada Lavrač to Sašo Džeroski.
In addition to the work done at JSI and FRI, AI research is also carried out at some other institutions, most notably the National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maribor.
According to SICRIS (SlovenIan Current Research Information System), there are now more than 30 research groups in Slovenia whose research is related to AI.
Slovenian AI researchers and practitioners are associated in SLAIS (SLovenian Artificial Intelligence Society). SLAIS was founded in 1992 and is a member society of ECCAI (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence). Currently, SLAIS has about 120 members.
Research areas
Initially, AI research in Slovenia was concerned with heuristic search, including knowledge-based approaches to computer chess. The emphasis then gradually shifted and expanded to the areas of machine learning, knowledge representation, computer-aided multi-attribute decision making, qualitative reasoning and modelling, and combinatorial optimisation. This provided a solid basis for later application projects. In 1982, the development and implementation of AI tools started and soon resulted in practical applications in a number of domains including: financial, management, project/enterprise assessment, metallurgy, geology, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, medicine and health-care. Most of these applications were based on Assistant Professional, an inductive learning system, and DEX, a computer-aided decision making system. Later, several other systems were devolped including GINESYS, RETIS, LINUS, m-FOIL. These systems implement various approaches to machine learning: attribute-based learning, regression tree learning and inductive logic programming.
In the 1990’s, the Slovenian AI research further expanded and diversified, addressing the main research areas:
- Machine learning
- Inductive logic programming
- Evolutionary computing, genetic algorithms
- Expert systems
- Decision support
- Human language technologies
- Speech synthesis
- Behavioral cloning
- Cognitive modelling
- Explorative data analysis
- Data mining
- Text, web and multimedia mining
- Semantic web technologies
- Knowledge management
A notable aspect of much of this research is its application to problems in many areas, including: mechanical engineering, telecommunication, management, economy, ecology, biology, medicine, health care, agriculture, digital libraries, cultural heritage, e-government, e-business and e-learning.
Also, a considerable part of the Slovenian AI research takes place in the international context and involves numerous collaborations with international organisations and projects. First official Slovenian collaborations occured in the context of European ESPRIT projects: ESPRIT II (1990) and ESPRIT III (1993). Some other early projects include ILPNET and Multext-East (1995-1998). In 2000, the JSI Department of Intelligent Systems succeeded with the proposal of Sol-EU-Net, a European 5th Framework Programme project, which JSI coordinated 2000-2003. Since then, the Slovenian activity in projects financed by the European Union has increased considerably, so that Slovenian research organisations have become regular partners in European 6th (2002-2006) and 7th (2007-2013) Framework Programmes, as well as Horizon 2020 (2014-2020).
Achievements
Books
Slovenian AI researchers have authored and edited numerous scientific books:
- Ivan Bratko: Prolog Programming for Artificial Intelligence, Addison-Wesley, 1986; second edition 1990; third edition Addison-Wesley/Pearson Education 2001
- Ivan Bratko, Nada Lavrač (eds.): Progress in Machine Learning: Proc. 2nd European Working Session on Learning (EWSL 87), Bled 1987, Sigma, 1987
- Igor Kononenko, Nada Lavrač: Prolog Through Examples: A Practical Programming Guide, Sigma, 1988
- Ivan Bratko, Igor Mozetič, Nada Lavrač: KARDIO – A Study in Deep and Qualitative Knowledge for Expert Systems, MIT Press, 1989
- Sašo Džeroski, Nada Lavrač: Inductive Logic Programming:Techniques and Applications, Ellis Horwood, 1994
- Nada Lavrač, Stefan Wrobel (eds.): Machine Learning: Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Machine Learning, Heraclion, Crete, Springer, 1995
- Nada Lavrač (ed.): Računalniska analiza medicinskih podatkov, Zbornik, Bled 1995, IJS Scientific Publishing, 1995
- Nada Lavrač, Elpida Keravnou, Blaž Zupan (eds.): Proc. of the First Int. Workshop on Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology (IDAMAP-96), Budapest, 1996
- Nada Lavrač, Sašo Džeroski (eds.): Inductive Logic Programming: Proc. of the 7th Int. Workshop, Prague, Springer, 1997
- Nada Lavrač, Elpida Keravnou, Blaž Zupan: Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997
- Ryszard S. Michalski, Ivan Bratko, Miroslav Kubat (eds.): Machine Learning and Data Mining: Methods and Applications, Wiley, 1998
- Ivan Bratko, Sašo Džeroski (eds.): Machine Learning: Proc. 16th Int. Conference, Bled 1999, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999
- Sašo Džeroski, Peter Flach (eds.): Inductive Logic Programming: Proc. 9th Int. Workshop ILP-99, Bled 1999, Springer, 1999
- James Cussens, Sašo Džeroski (eds.): Learning Language in Logic, Springer, 2000
- Nada Lavrač, Silvia Miksch, Branko Kavšek (eds.): Proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine and Pharmacology (IDAMAP-2000), 2000
- Sašo Džeroski, Nada Lavrač (eds.): Relational Data Mining, Springer, 2001
- Matjaž Gams: Weak intelligence: Through the principle and paradox of multiple knowledge, Nova Science, 2001
- Eva Jereb, Marko Bohanec, Vladislav Rajkovič: DEXi – Računalniški program za večparametrsko odločanje (DEXi A Computer Program for Multi-Attribute Decision Making), Založba Moderna organizacija, 2003
- Nada Lavrač, Dragan Gamberger, Hendrik Blockeel, Ljupčo Todorovski (eds.): Machine Learning: Proceedings of the 14th European Conference on Machine Learning, Springer, 2003
- Nada Lavrač, Dragan Gamberger, Hendrik Blockeel, Ljupčo Todorovski (eds.): Knowledge Discovery in Databases: Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, Springer, 2003
- Dunja Mladenić, Nada Lavrač, Marko Bohanec, Stephen Moyle (eds.): Data Mining and Decision Support: Integration and Collaboration, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003
- Igor Kononenko: Strojno učenje, Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za računalništvo in informatiko, 2005
- Craig Saunders, Marko Grobelnik, Steve Gunn, John Shawe-Taylor (eds.): Subspace, Latent Structure and Feature Selection: Statistical and Optimization Perspectives Workshop, SLSFS 2005 Bohinj, Springer 2005, Springer, 2006
- Ljupčo Todorovski, Nada Lavrač, Klaus P. Jantke (eds.): Discovery Science (Proc. 9th Int. Conf. DS 2006, Barcelona, Spain), Springer, 2006
- Markus Ackermann, Bettina Berendt, Marko Grobelnik, Dunja Mladenić et al. (eds.): Semantics, Web and Mining: Joint Int. Workshop, EWMF 2005 / KDO 2005, Porto, Portugal Springer, 2007
- Michael R. Berthold, John Shawe-Taylor, Nada Lavrač (eds.): Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis VII (Proc. 7th Int. Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis, IDA 2007, Ljubljana, Slovenia), Springer, 2007
- Marko Bohanec: Odločanje in modeli, DMFA založništvo, 2007
- Sašo Džeroski, Ljupčo Todorovski (eds.): Computational Discovery of Scientific Knowledge, Springer, 2007
- Sašo Džeroski, Jam Struyf (eds.): Knowledge Discovery in Inductive Databases: 5th Int. Workshop KDID 2006, Berlin, Springer, 2007
- Nikola Guid, Damjan Strnad: Umetna inteligenca, Univerza v Mariboru, Fakulteta za elektrotehniko, računalništvo in informatiko, 2007
- Igor Kononenko, Matjaž Kukar: Machine learning and data mining: Introduction to principles and algorithms, Horwood Publishing, 2007
- John Davies, Marko Grobelnik, Dunja Mladenić (eds.): Semantic Knowledge Management: Integrating Ontology Management, Knowledge Discovery, and Human Language Technologies, Springer, 2008
- Andrej Ule, Olga Markič, Urban Kordeš (ur.): Konteksti odločanja, Aristej, 2010
- Johannes Fuernkranz, Dragan Gamberger, Nada Lavrač: Foundations of Rule Learning, Springer, 2012
- Nada Lavrač, Vid Podpečan, Marko Robnik-Šikonja: Representation Learning: Propositionalization and Embeddings, Springer, 2021
Software
The Slovenian AI research has also produced a number software programs, spanning from research prototypes to application programs and general software tools:
| Year | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Asistent 86 | Learning of decision trees |
| 1986 | PROLIB | Library of Prolog predicates |
| 1986 | EXPRO | Expert system shell |
| 1987 | Assistant Professional | Learning of decision trees |
| 1987 | GINESYS | Machine learning |
| 1989 | REFLOG | Reflective Prolog |
| 1989 | DEX | Multi-attribute decision modelling |
| 1994 | LINUS (LAI) | Constrained inductive logic programming |
| 1991 | RETIS | Induction of regression trees |
| 1991 | mFOIL | Inductive logic programming |
| 1992 | MARKUS | Inductive logic programming |
| 1993 | LAGRANGE | Equation discovery |
| 1993 | GOLDHORN | Equation discovery |
| 1994 | GPDD | Evolutionary algorithm |
| 1994 | GOLDING, CIOP | Multistrategy learning |
| 1994 | DYSYS | Behavioural cloning |
| 1995 | FORS | First order regression system |
| 1996 | Ptah | Bacterial resistance analysis |
| 1996 | EMA | Intelligent employment agent |
| 1997 | HINT | Hierarchy induction tool |
| 1997 | LAGRAMGE | Equation discovery |
| 2000 | Govorec | “Speaker”, Slovene speech synthesis |
| 2000 | DEXi | Multi-attribute decision modelling |
| 2000 | PADLES | Discovery of partial differential equations |
| 2001 | ShinA | Shopping assistant |
| 2003 | RSD | Relational subgroup discovery |
| 2003 | GenePath | Intelligent assistant to genetic analysis |
| 2004 | Orange | Data mining suite |
| 2004 | CIPER | Constrained induction of polynomial equation for regression |
| 2004 | Text-Garden | Text-mining software tools |
| 2005 | OntoGen | Ontology editor |
| 2005 | Document Atlas | Visualization of text corpora |
| 2005 | proDEX | Qualitative multi-attribute modelling |
| 2005 | SearchPoint | Search and organise web documents |
| 2007 | SEGS | Search for enriched gene sets |
| 2009 | Enrycher | Service oriented text enrichmen |
| 2009 | AnswerArt | Contextualized question answering |
| 2009 | dictyExpress | Gene expression analysis |
| 2010 | LemmaGen | Multilingual Lemmatisation with Induced Ripple-Down Rules |
| 2012 | ClowdFlows | A Data Mining Workflow Platform |
| 2016 | TextFlows | A Visual Programming platform for Text Mining and natural language processing |
Web portals
Organised events
The following AI-related international events were organised with the support of SLAIS:
- ISSEK – International School for the Synthesis of Expert Knowledge Workshops, Bled, Slovenia, 1984, 1986 and 1992
- EWSL 1987 – European Working Session on Learning, Bled, Slovenia, 1987
- COST-13 Workshop on Qualitative Modelling, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1987
- ILP 1993 – Third Inductive Logic Programming Workshop, Bled, Slovenia, 1993
- CADAM 95 – Računalniška analiza medicinskih podatkov, Bled, Slovenia, 1995
- AIRTC 1995 – IFAC International Workshop on Artificial intelligence in Real-Time Control, Bled, Slovenia, 1995
- ICML 1999 – International Conference on Machine Learning, Bled, Slovenia, 1999
- ACAI 2005 – Advanced Course on Knowledge Technologies, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2005
- IDA 2007 – The 7th Inernational Symposium on Intelligent Data Analysis, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007
- Analysis of environmental data with machine learning methods, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2008
- QR 2009 – 23rd Annual Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009
- MLSB 2009 – Third International Workshop on Machine Learning in Systems Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009
- ACTIVE 2009 – 1st ACTIVE Summer School on Advanced Technologies for a Knowledge-Powered Enterprise, Bled, Slovenia, 2009
- ECML/PKDD 2009 – European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, Bled, Slovenia, 2009
- ACTIVE 2010 – Summer School on Advanced Technologies for Knowledge Intensive Networked Organisations, Aachen, Germany, 2010
- PPSN 2014 – 13th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2014
