Editorial: Introducing the New Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

I have been appointed as the next Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and will step down from my current Executive Editor position for Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS) at the end of 2004. Nick Cercone, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University in Canada, will take the responsibility of Editor-in-Chief for Knowledge and Information Systems (KAIS), starting January 1, 2005. Professor Cercone is an internationally renowned researcher in several fields of computer science and a recognized world leader. His research interests include natural language processing, knowledge-based systems, knowledge-discovery in databases, data mining and design and human interfaces. He is the author of over 200 refereed publications and has graduated 60 graduate students. Professor Cercone cofounded the Computational Intelligence journal and currently serves on the editorial boards of six journals. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a past president of the CSCSI/SCEIO (Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence), of the Canadian Society for Fifth Generation Research, and of the Canadian Association for Computer Science (CACS/AIC). In 1996, he won the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Society’s Distinguished Service Award. Prior to his current dean position at Dalhousie, Professor Cercone was Chair of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. From 1993 until 1997, he was Associate Vice President (Research) and Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Regina. Formerly, he was Director of the Center for Systems Science at Simon Fraser University (1987–1992) and Chairman of the School of Computing Science (1980–1985) at Simon Fraser. He received the BS degree in engineering science from the University of Steubenville in 1968, the MS degree in computer and information science from Ohio State University in 1970, and a PhD degree in computing science from the University of Alberta in 1975. Professor Cercone has an active home page on the Web at with detailed information for his research and leadership activities. Springer and I are very grateful for Professor Cercone’s agreement to serve in the KAIS Editor-in-Chief position. We believe that his research expertise and leadership