TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The world’s largest data mining conference will be held later this month in Las Vegas and The University of Alabama’s Institute of Business Intelligence will play a major role in the event.

Dr. Michael Hardin, professor of statistics and director of the institute which is housed at UA’s Culverhouse College of Commerce, is co-chair of the conference, along with Jerry Oglesby, director of software giant SAS’ Higher Education Consulting group. Dr. Brian Gray, professor of statistics at UA, will make a presentation, as will Sreelatha Meleth, who obtained her doctorate in applied statistics from UA.

SAS, a leader in business intelligence and data mining technologies, will host the seventh annual data mining conference, M2004, Oct. 18-19 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

“The M-series of conferences has grown significantly each year both in attendance figures and in the quality and prestige of our speakers, presenters and practitioners. We're pleased that this event has blossomed into the premier, hands-on data mining conference addressing the best practices in the field today as well as the latest technological advances,” said Oglesby of SAS. “We will continue the tradition of blending practical areas of groundbreaking applications for data mining with academic advances and promising research findings. M2004 offers something for everyone.”

“This is a very popular and prestigious conference,” Hardin said. “We expect more than 800 participants -- about 30 percent more than last year's 610 attendees. More than 40 different U.S. states and more than 20 nations will be represented, marking the sixth straight year of growth.”

Hardin said attendees have lauded the conference as a venue for introducing not only new theoretical concepts and models but the latest data mining applications and creative techniques. These applications include bioinformatics, financial services, emerging technologies and data mining in education.

“This is the information age and business intelligence is taking an increasingly important role in today’s business environment,” said Dr. J. Barry Mason, dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce. “Mike Hardin has taken a leadership role in this important initiative and the partnership between our business school and SAS is a vital link in making the best use of data mining.”

SAS and the Culverhouse College of Commerce have established a partnership whereby students in any graduate program within the college can obtain a joint UA/SAS Data Mining certificate along with their degree. The demand for individuals with skills in business intelligence is seen in a recent Information Week National Salary Survey, for example, in which data mining expertise ranked as the most sought after skill among information technology professionals.

With four keynote speakers, 10 session track topics and more than 45 speakers representing the corporate, government and academic worlds, M2004 will address the latest advances and best practices in the industry, offering a wide variety of sessions for those interested in staying at the forefront of the rapidly changing field of data mining.

This year's conference features as keynote speakers:

• William DuMouchel, formerly a senior statistician at AT&T Labs-Research
  and currently director and senior adviser with Lincoln Technologies Inc.
• Trevor Hastie, distinguished professor in statistics and biostatistics
  at Stanford University
• Bill Kahn, chief scoring officer for Capital One Financial
• Andreas Weigend, formerly Amazon.com’s chief scientist and an encore keynote presenter from last year’s conference

In addition to an expanded set of afternoon sessions and presenters, M2004 for the first time will offer a pre-conference workshop on Sunday, Oct. 17, as well as two new midday keynote presentations during the show. Professors Jay Coleman of the University of North Florida and Allen Lynch of Mercer University will discuss how they have captured the attention of the media by using the power of SAS predictive analytics to pinpoint with remarkable accuracy which NCAA basketball teams will be selected for their annual tournaments. David Duling of SAS will offer a perspective on computational performance in data mining.

Immediately following the conference, on Oct. 20-22, M2004 will offer three days of post-conference training courses. Participants will be able to choose from several courses, such as Advanced Data Mining Techniques, Advanced Predictive Modeling, Mining Textual Data Using SAS Text Miner for SAS(R)9, and Predictive Modeling Using SAS Enterprise Miner 5.

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 40,000 sites -- including 96 of the top 100 companies on the FORTUNE Global 500(R) -- to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data.