EUFIT '99

Welcome by the General Chairman

Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann
Aachen Institute of Technology, ELITE-Foundation, Germany

As the General Chairman of EUFIT '99 and its related events it is a pleasure for me to welcome you to this last EUFIT congress in this millenium in Aachen where the charm of 1200 years of history merges with the most advanced technological research and application.

To an increasing degree Fuzzy Technology, Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computation and Machine Learning are merged in the area of "Intelligent Techniques" or "Computational Intelligence (CI)", which will be covered in this congress.

The last two decades have witnessed a very strong growth of Intelligent Techniques. Since the beginning of the seventies these techniques have also been applied to a large variety of problems to deliver efficient solutions and benefits to the users. There are certainly strong relationships between CI and other fields such as Expert System Technology, Data Analysis and Control Engineering. Numerous disciplines have contributed to this area such as Artificial Intelligence, Control Engineering, Operations Research, Decision Theory, Psychology, Computer Science and, of course, Mathematics. Therefore, it seems to be of particular importance in Europe to facilitate and strengthen communication and co-operation between scientists and practitioners in various disciplines and in different European countries.

During the week of EUFIT '99 we shall again accommodate newcomers to the area as well as experts, researchers and practitioners from East and West, North and South. I am most thankful to all the colleagues that have agreed to offer tutorials, to the RWTH, Technical University of Aachen for hosting this conference, to all speakers at the congress, and of course, to all participants that will come to Aachen to make this congress as successful as its predecessors. I hope that all of you will benefit from the scientific programme as well as from the social events and the exhibition. I am sure you will enjoy Aachen and will hopefully return often in the future.

H.-J. Zimmermann
General Chairman of EUFIT '99

- EUFIT '99 -