In occasion of the 18° workshop and 20° anniversary of its activity, the Italian Society for Neural Networks (SIREN) calls to a common discussion two generations of researchers, those who started recently their activity in the field and those who have cultivated the neural paradigm since long time. The challenge is to understand what remains of the revolutionary ideas from which neural networks stemmed in the eighties, in which way they evolved and influenced other research fields and, ultimately, the new conceptual and methodological frontiers that must me trespassed for better exploitation of the information carried by data. We expect either surveys or original results as a concrete answer to the above questions. Without any exhaustiveness pretence, contributions could cover themes like the following:

 1. The connectionist bias in Artificial Intelligence, Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
 2. Data representation versus data processing, the new trends in factor analysis
 3. Is still learning a keen facility?
 4. Single large neural networks versus large ensembles of small neural connectionist devices
 5. Breaking the border between symbolic and subsymbolic processing
 6. Something you couldn’t do without neural networks
 7. Granular computing, fuzzy logic and other Neural Paradigm cousins
 8. New insights from and to biological neural networks, immune systems and other natural systems
 9. Is it only a matter of new software or is it time for new hardware?
10. The common life of neural networks beside usual tools of mathematical packages
11. Hardware Neural Network: from the illusion of the artificial brain to which hw can be suitable today and/or tomorrow?
12. Neural applications: are ANN suitable as common tools for industrial applications? Can be still considered research topics or common tools for everyday products?

The contributions will be gathered in the traditional sessions: Architectures, Models, and Applications. Three special workshops will be held on: i) Methabolic Networks, within the Architectures session, ii) Economics and Complexity, within the Applications session, and iii) Neural Networks for Remote Sensing, as a Post-Conference Workshop.

The team chairs who will manage the papers’ refereeing process are constituted by:

• Architectures: C. Morabito, F. Palmieri and F. Sorbello
• Models: A. Bertoni, R. Tagliaferri and A. Uncini
• Applications: A.M. Colla, R. Serra and E. Pasero
• Methabolic Networks: F. Sorbello and S. Vitabile
• Economics and Complexity: S. Giove and M. Corazza
• Neural Networks for Remote Sensing: M. Marinaro

All contributions will be published in a proceeding volume by an international publisher. The committee will select the papers to propose for a special issue of an international journal. More detailed instructions and the On-Line Submission Form can be found from the WIRN homepage. Important dates

• Papers Due: March 23, 2008
• Replies to Authors: April 26, 2008
• Revised Papers Due: May 15, 2008

During the Workshop the "Premio E.R. Caianiello" will be assigned to the best Italian Ph.D. thesis in the area of Neural Nets and related fields. The prize will include a diploma and 1.000 Euros. Interested applicants (with the Ph.D. degree obtained after January 1, 2006 and before March 31, 2008) must send 3 copies of their c.v. and of their thesis to "Premio Caianiello" WIRN 2008 c/o IIASS before April 15,2008. A candidate can submit his Ph. D. thesis at most twice. Only SIREN associates are admitted (subscription forms can be downloaded from the SIREN site).

For more information, contact the conference Secretary at I.I.A.S.S. "E.R. Caianiello", Via G.Pellegrino, 19, 84019 Vietri Sul Mare (SA), ITALY. For any information concerning electronic submission, please contact Simone Bassis