No. 5July, 2020

APNNS NEWSICONIP 2020 Venue - Bangkok, Thailand

APNNS NEWSNo. 5 (July, 2020)

APNNS NEWSNo. 5 (July 2020)

CONTENTS
1. President’s Message ....................................................................................................................... 1
2. Society Membership ....................................................................................................................... 3
2.1 Membership Information and Update ..........................................................................................................3
2.2 Membership Online System ........................................................................................................................3

3. Education ........................................................................................................................................ 4
3.1 Upcoming Events .......................................................................................................................................4

4. The 11th International Cybersecurity Data Mining Competition (CDMC 2020)..................... 5
4.1 Competition Tasks ......................................................................................................................................5
4.2 Prizes and Award ........................................................................................................................................6
4.3 Important Dates ..........................................................................................................................................6

5. Call for Bids – ICONIP 2022 and/or 2023 ................................................................................... 7
6. A new policy between APNNS and ICONIP ............................................................................... 87 ICONIP 2020 Information ............................................................................................................. 9
7.1 Overview ....................................................................................................................................................9
7.2 Organizing Committee .............................................................................................................................. 10
7.3 History ..................................................................................................................................................... 12

APNNS NEWSNo. 5 (July, 2020)

1. President’s Message

Prof. Tingwen Huang, President
Today and into the future, Artificial Intelligence (AI) are omnipresent: Siri, face recognition,
speech recognition, robots, intelligent agents, smart control, natural language processing, drones,
self-driving cars, and the like. AI has immersed itself into large parts of our daily life. Artificial
neural networks are the critical tool for machine learning. Deep learning (DL) is part of a broadfamily of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation
learning. DL is gaining much popularity due to its superiority in terms of accuracy when trainedwith a large amount of data. In particular, AI and DL-based technologies are currently playing animportant role in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, being applied to study the virus, diagnose
individuals, test potential treatments, analyze the public health impacts, and even search for
vaccines and medicine.
The Asia Pacific Neural Networks Society (APNNS) has committed ourselves to promoting
scientific, technological, and educational advancements for our members and the larger technicalcommunity in the related fields of neural networks, by various activities, especially through its
annual flagship conference: the International Conference on Neural Information Processing(ICONIP). ICONIP has become a high-level international forum for scientists, engineers, andeducators to share the state of the art of research and applications in neural networks, neuroscienceand related fields. This year (2020), ICONIP will be held in Bangkok. I wish you to be part of thisimportant event. Also, the Society has launched the Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Winter/Summer School to serve the interested students and researchers, industry professionals
since 2018. This program has been successfully held for three editions now. The program offeredthis year is outstanding in that it included 17 renowned scholars, as well as an industry speaker
and additional panelists, from all over the world to give enlightening lectures on various topics inDL and AI, which is also free to all academics!
APNNS has become one of the three premier international neural networks societies. For this, I
must pay tribute to the past presidents and the Board of Governors (BoG) whose diligent work has
made APNNS a dynamic and congenial body. I am well aware of my responsibility in leading thissociety to charge forward. I can assure you that I will closely collaborate with all the colleagues
from the Executive Committee (ExCom), the BoG, and all of our members.
I cordially invite you to network with the ExCom and myself with any thoughts, ideas, or proposals
that can help promote the activities of APNNS.
I wish you all a productive and healthy 2020 and I am looking forward to seeing you at
ICONIP2020, whether physically, virtually, or both!

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No. 5 (July, 2020)

APNNS has a strong leadership provided by the Board of Governors:
Tingwen Huang
President
Faculty of Science
Texas A&M University at Qatar
Email: tingwen.huang [at] qatar.tamu.edu

APNNS NEWS

Seiichi Ozawa
President Elect

Nikola Kasabov
Immediate Past President

Center for Mathematical andData Sciences
Kobe University
Email: ozawasei [at] kobe-u.ac.jp

KEDRI
Auckland University of Technology
Email: nkasabov [at] aut.ac.nz

Zeng-Guang HouVice-President for Administration

Kazushi Ikeda
Vice-President for FiananceInstitute of Automation
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
Email: zengguang.hou [at] ia.ac.cn

Mathematics Informatics Laboratory
Nara Institute of Science andTechnology
Email: kazushi [at] is.naist.jp

Kevin Wong
Vice-President for Membership

Minho Lee
Vice-President for Conferences

School of Engineering and Information
Technology
Murdoch University
Email: k.wong [at] murdoch.edu.au

School of Electronics Engineering,
Department of AI
Kyungpook National University

Sung-Bae Cho
Vice-President for Industry
Relationship

Jonathan H. Chan
Vice-President for Education

Email: mholee [at] knu.ac.kr

Department of Computer Science
Yonsei University
Email: sbcho [at] cs.yonsei.ac.kr

School of Information Technology
King Mongkut’s University ofTechnology Thonburi
Email: jonathan [at] sit.kmutt.ac.thPaul Pang
Vice-President for Competitions

James Kwok
Vice-President for Publications

School of Science, Engineering andInformation Technology
Federal University Australia
Email: p.pang [at] federation.edu.au

Department of Computer Science andEngineering
Hong Kong University of Science andTechnology
Email: jamesk [at] cse.ust.hk

2No. 5 (July, 2020)

2. Society Membership

Kevin Wong, VP Membership
2.1 Membership Information and Update
Asia Pacific Neural Network Society (APNNS) was formally established in November 2015.
APNNS was evolved from the original Asia Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA) which
was founded in 1993. Our active members are distributed from regions like Australia, China, Hong
Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan,Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and UAE. We also have members from countries in other regions of theworld.

2.2 Membership Online SystemRecently, the society has moved the management of the membership information online, andavailable at https://www.apnns.org/member/
For all current and active member of 2020, you should have received an email requesting you tocheck and update your information online. For some reason if you did not receive it, you arerequested to log into your account by using following the steps to check or update your information.
1) Go to https://www.apnns.org/member/membership-login/ page.
2) Reset your password by clicking "Forgot Password?".
3) Login with the initial password sent by email. Then, you can see your name on top of thepage.
4) Click your name, and you can see your membership information.
5) Click "Update Information" at the right-hand side.
6) Fill-in/update information (don't forget to change your password).
7) Recheck your membership information by clicking your name on top.
You can also find your membership number online, as well as the function to print a membership
card.
However, if your membership is current and active for 2020, please do not renew your membershipfor 2021 by making payment first, as a renewal notice will be sent out by the end of the year.
If your membership has expired and you would like to renew it, you can use the online system tomake payment for your membership for 2020.
If you require any assistant, please email to membership@apnns.org
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3. Education

Jonathan H. Chan, VP Education
APNNS organizes educational seminars and workshops. Please contact the VP Education forsponsorship of your education events.

3.1 Upcoming Events
APNNS/IEEE Education Forum Series: Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence Summer School2020 (DLAI3)
Date: 29 June - 3 July 2020
Venue: Bangkok, Thailand + AoE (Virtual Event)
The APNNS/IEEE Education Forum series on Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence Summer
School 2020 (DLAI3) is catered to all interested students, engineers, researchers, executives andadministrators who may have some basic knowledge of machine learning and AI. The venue isonline due to the current pandemic and it will be held from June 29 to July 3, 2020. DLAI3 willfeature two NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute (DLI) Workshops on the first two days. As DLAI3 isa virtual event, it is offered free-of-charge to all academics. Non-academics can attend the NVIDIA
DLI Workshops for certification at a deeply-discounted nominal cost that is payable to NVIDIA
DLI. All other sessions are also free-of-charge to non-academics.

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No. 5 (July, 2020)

4. The 11th International Cybersecurity
Data Mining Competition (CDMC 2020)

Paul Pang, VP Competitions
http://www.csmining.org/
The CDMC2020 is a challenging, multi-month research and practice competition, focusing on
application of knowledge discovery techniques to address cyber security challenges in real world
applications. The competition is open to multi-person teams or individuals worldwide, particularly
welcome university students, undergraduate or postgraduate in the field of data science, network
engineering, cyber security, and artificial intelligence.
The competition will be coupled with the 13th International workshop on Artificial Intelligence andCybersecurity (AICS 2020), which is an associated event to the 27th International Conference on
Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2019), Bangkok, Thailand.

4.1 Competition Tasks
Task 1: AndMal2020-CDMC: Android Malware Detection
The unrivalled threat of Android malware is the root cause of various security problems. Despite oftremendous research work, it is still menacing the cyber world. AndMal2020 is the collection ofhuge android malware samples that contains 12 malware categories and 191 malware families. The
part of dataset presented here has a shape (119696x2497). The purpose of this dataset is to help
evaluate models to early detect and characterize android malware. It is divided into training (70%)
and testing set (30%) with following shape.
Task 2: IoTMal2020-CDMC: IOT Malware Detection
Based on the byte sequences collected at the entry points of ELF files as discriminant features andthe malware families of the programs as training labels, the participants are required to perform aclassification task to predict the malware families of the test samples. The dataset consists of 72,638
samples generated following the procedure below: First, a collection of malicious and benign Linux
programs in ELF format were collected from various sources. Then, from each of these programs,
the first 2K bytes (0-padded if the file is not long enough) starting at the entry point of the file wereextracted. These ASCII strings were then encoded by a simple encryption cipher to remove thesensitive information and fed to a base64 encoder to yield readable radix-64 representations. Label(family type of malware) of the binary files are determined by the state-of-art anti-virus engines.

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5No. 5 (July, 2020)

4.2 Prizes and Award
We have set cash prizes for the competition. The top ranking team of all competition tasks will beeligible to win a cash prize of NZD $3000 (subject to the sponsorship fund received in 2020).
Additional prizes may be available as travel grants for deserving participants to help them attend theICONIP 2020 conference and the AICS 2020 workshop.

4.3 Important Dates
Competition starts: Jul 1, 2020
Competition closes: Sep 30, 2020
Winner Announcement and Award: Nov 21, 2020

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6No. 5 (July, 2020)

5. Call for Bids – ICONIP 2022 and/or 2023

Minho Lee, VP Conferences
28th and/or 29th International Conference on Neural Information Processing
The International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP) hereby invites proposals
to host the conference in the Asia-Pacific region in October, November or December, 2022 and/or
2023. We seek draft proposals from prospective bidders in the Asia-Pacific region. The APNNS(Asia-Pacific Neural Network Society) GB members will select the General Chair by voting.
Bid Highlights: Draft proposals include information on the following:• Location (accessibility; conference venue, e.g., convention center, hotel or university;accommodation; dining options)• Proposed dates. Religious and local national holidays should be avoided, as much aspossible. - Local arrangements team (chair/co-chair, committee, volunteer labor, registration
handling; describing any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences
and the number of participants at those conferences)• Meeting venues (space for sessions, tutorials, workshops, posters, exhibits, demos, small
meetings and registration)• High-speed, all-ports-open, easy-to-use internet access• Audiovisual equipment• Catering, including breaks, receptions, poster sessions, banquet and entertainment(traditionally, dancing for participants at the banquet)• Local sponsorships• Local expenses estimates spreadsheet (using template provided, link above)
Important Dates:• End of October, 2020: Final draft due day for bidders• End of November 2020 (APNNS GB meeting): Bid selected by voting
The selected location for ICONIP2022 and/or 2023 will be announced at the ICONIP2020
conference (Bangkok, November 18 ~ November 22, 2020).
For any queries please contact Minho Lee, the Vice President (VP) for conference.
Please send your draft proposals (ppt slides and/or document) toemail: mholee@gmail.com
Prof. Minho Lee
Graduate School of AI, School of Electronics Engineering
Kyungpook National University, Korea (South)
1370 Sankyuk-Dong, Puk-Gu,Taegu 702-701, Korea (South)
APNNS NEWS7No. 5 (July, 2020)

6. A new policy between APNNS and ICONIP

Minho Lee, VP Conferences
From year 2020, we will apply a new financial policy to ICONIP conferences.
1. Conference budget – income & outcome (expenditure)
A. Budget Plan: The candidate of general chair for future ICONIPs should prepare abudget plan including the venue, number of expected number of submitted papers aswell as registration fee. He or she must prepare a several budget plan options
depending on the expectation of number of submitted papers. If it is necessary tochange the original proposal including the venue and registration fee, the host should
get an approval from APNNS EXCO. [We may use INNS package for hosting aconference]
B. Income : The registration fee is collected by APNNS through a registration site thatis set up by APNNS. APNNS is responsible to collect ICONIP registration fee using
credit card and/or Paypal services.
C. Outcome : After the conference, the general chair and financial chair should reportall of expense with receipts to APNNS auditors within 3 months after the conference.
The VP for finance should check with audit report prepared by APNNS auditors, andthen GBCon approve it.
2. Profit sharing
A. Profit should be shared by local organizer and APNNS as 50/50 split.
3. Insurance and seed money issue
A. The APNNS should provide a seed money. If the host has a surplus, the host for the
conference should return the seed money to APNNS. The financial VP shouldsuggest a certain amount of seed money. EXCO can decide it with approval in theGB meeting. If the host has a deficit after paying the society fee, the host should
return the seed money after deducting a certain amount of deficit from the seedmoney. We need to discuss the certain amount of deficit (for example, 50%percentage responsibility) between the host and APNNS.
4. PC members
A. PC members should review a certain number of papers.
B. APNNS prepare a list of PC members, and provide to conference PC chairs.
C. After the conference, the PC chairs should update the list and report with reviewers’
evaluation to VP for conference

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8No. 5 (July, 2020)

7 ICONIP 2020 Information

Andrew Leung and James Kwok, General Co-Chairs of ICONIP 2020
7.1 Overview
The 27th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP2020) aims toprovide a leading international forum for researchers, scientists, and industry professionals who
are working in neuroscience, neural networks, deep learning, and related fields to share their newideas, progresses and achievements.

ICONIP2020 will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, during November 18 - November 22, 2020 andwill be collocated with several events, including ACML, iSAI-NLP, AIoT, CSBio, and DLAI4.
ICONIP2020 will deliver keynote speeches, invited talks, full paper presentations, posters,tutorials, workshops, and social events. We are still planning to have a physical meeting at thistime. The conference will not be postponed and will take place on 18-22 November as planned.
However, we continue to monitor the situation vigilantly and will revise the mode to safeguard
the safety of the participants. Thus all accepted contributions will be published, presented as
normal, although presentations might take a different form.

APNNS NEWS9No. 5 (July, 2020)

7.2 Organizing Committee
Honorary Co-Chairs
Jonathan Chan,
Irwin King,ThailandHong Kong

General Co-Chairs
Andrew Leung,
James Kwok,

Hong Kong
Hong Kong

Program Co-Chairs
Haiqin Yang,
Kitsuchart Pasupa,

China
Thailand

Local Arrangements Co-Chairs
Vithida Chongsuphajaisiddhi, Thailand

Finance Co-Chairs
Vajirasak Vanijja,
Seiichi Ozawa,

ThailandJapan

Special Sessions Co-Chairs
Kaizhu Huang,
China
Raymond Chi-Wing Wong, Hong Kong

Tutorial Co-Chairs
Zenglin Xu,
Jing Li,

China
Hong Kong

Proceedings Co-Chairs
Xinyi Le,
Jinchang Ren,

China
United Kingdom

Publicity Co-Chairs
Zeng-Guang Hou,
Ricky Ka-Chun Wong,

APNNS NEWS

China
Hong Kong

10No. 5 (July, 2020)

Regional Liaison
Yiu-ming Cheung,Hong Kong
Junqiu Wei,
Hong Kong
Jianke Zhu,
China
Jiefeng Cheng,
China
Kun Zhang,
USAZhirong Yang,
NorwayBo Zhang,FrancePaul S Pang,
New ZealandSomnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk, Brunei

Sponsors:

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No. 5 (July, 2020)

7.3 History
26th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Sydney, Australia, 2019
25th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Siem Reap, Cambodia, 2018
24th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Guangzhou, China, 2017
23rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kyoto, Japan, 2016
22nd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Istanbul, Turkey, 2015
21st International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia,
2014
20th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Daegu, Korea, 2013
19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Doha, Qatar, 2012
18th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Shanghai, China, 2011
17th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Sydney, Australia, 2010
16th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Bangkok, Thailand, 2009
15th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Auckland, New Zealand, 2008
14th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kitakyushu, Japan, 2007
13th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Hong Kong, 2006
12th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Taipei, 2005
11th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Calcutta, India, 2004
10th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Istanbul, Turkey, 2003
9th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Singapore, 2002
8th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Shanghai, China, 2001
7th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Taejon, Korea, 2000
6th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Perth, Australia, 1999
5th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Kitakyushu, Japan, 1998
4th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1997

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No. 5 (July, 2020)

3rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Hong Kong, 1996
2nd International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Beijing, China, 1995
1st International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Seoul, Korea, 1994

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