Jose Mira

José M. Ferrández

Jose-Ramon Alvarez Sanchez

Felix Paz

Javier Toledo

Continuing Professor Mira's Scienti?c Navigation Professor Jos´ e Mira passed away during the preparation of this edition of the International Work-Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Arti?cial Computation. As a pioneer in the ?eld of cybernetics, he enthusiastically p- moted interdisciplinary research. The term cybernetics stems from the Greek K?? ???? ´ ?? (kybernetes), which means steersman, governor,or pilot, the same root as government. Cybernetics is a broad ?eld of study, but the essential goal ofcybernetics is to understandandde?ne the functions andprocessesofsystems that have goals, and promote circular, causal chains that move from action to sensing to comparison with a desired goal, and again to action. These de?- tions can be applied to Prof. Mira. He was a leader, a pilot, with a visionary and extraordinary capacity to guide his students and colleagues to the desired objective. In this way he promoted the study and understanding of biological functions for creating new computational paradigms able to solve known pr- lems in a more e?cient way than classical approaches. But he also impressed his magni?cent and generous character on all the researchers and friends that workedwith him, imprinting in all ofus high requirementsof excellence not only as scientists, but also as human beings. Weallrememberhisenthusiasticexplanationaboutthedomainsandlevelsin the computational paradigm(CP).

Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2009, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 22-26, 2009, Proceedings

Methods and Models in Artificial and Natural Computation. A Homage to Professor Mira's Scientific Legacy

The two-volume set LNCS 5601 and LNCS 5602 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2009, held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in June 2009. The 108 revised papers presented are thematically divided into two volumes. The first volume includes papers relating the most recent collaborations with Professor Mira and contributions mainly related with theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects linking AI and knowledge engineering with neurophysiology, clinics and cognition. The second volume contains all the contributions connected with biologically inspired methods and techniques for solving AI and knowledge engineering problems in different application domains.

Third International Work-Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2009, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, June 22-26, 2009, Proceedings, Part I

Jose-Ramon Alvarez Sanchez

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