Jude W. Shavlik

Professor

Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin
1210 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53706-1685

telephone: (608) 262-1204
fax: (608) 262-9777
email: shavlik@cs.wisc.edu
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~shavlik/
Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana, 1988
Interests: Machine learning, neural networks, artificial intelligence, software agents, information retrieval, computational biology, intrusion detection, intelligent user interfaces


Research Summary

We are primarily developing machine learning systems that combine the strengths of symbolic approaches to artificial intelligence with those of connectionist AI. A major focus is improving the dialog between human teachers and machine learners. Traditionally, this interaction is limited to the teacher providing labelled training examples to the machine. Toward the goal of widening the `communication pipeline' between human and machine, we have been developing a language for providing, in a natural manner and at any time, general-purpose advice to a machine learner. In our approach, the human advice-giver observes the behavior of the learner and occasionally makes suggestions, expressed in a simple language. Based on techniques developed in our work on knowledge-based neural networks, these instructions are inserted directly into the learner. Subsequent connectionist (neural network) learning further integrates and refines the advice.

Currently, we are extending the language used to advise our learning algorithms, studying new ways of incorporating this advice into neural networks, devising heuristics for indirectly inferring users' interests by observing their normal interactions with their Web browsers, and developing methods for choosing good representations for training examples. Our application areas include finding information on the World-Wide Web, in our Wisconsin Adaptive Web Assistant project, interpreting DNA-sequencing data, and intrusion detection.

Sample Recent Publications

An instructable, adaptive interface for discovering and monitoring information on the World-Wide Web (with S. Calcari, T. Eliassi-Rad, and J. Solock), Proceedings of the of the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 1999.

Using neural networks for data mining (with M. Craven), Future Generation Computer Systems, 1997.

Increasing consensus accuracy in DNA fragment assemblies by incorporating fluorescent trace representations (with C. Allex, S. Baldwin, and F. Blattner), Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology, 1997.


This page was automatically created December 30, 1998.
Email pubs@cs.wisc.edu to report errors.