STAIRS 2014

Book excerpt: Artificial Intelligence is a field which continues to expand and develop rapidly, and so it is also one in which original ideas and fresh perspectives are of particular interest. The Starting AI Researcher Symposium (STAIRS) is an international meeting which supports Ph.D. students and those who have held a Ph.D. for less than one year, from all over the world, at the start of their career. The symposium offers doctoral students and young postdoctoral AI fellows the chance to experience delivering a presentation of their work in a supportive environment. This book presents papers from the Seventh STAIRS, a satellite event of the 21st European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) held in Prague, Czech Republic, in August 2014. The book includes 30 papers accepted for presentation at the conference, out of 45 submissions. 16 papers were selected for an oral presentation at the symposium, while the other 14 were presented at a poster session. Together these papers cover the field of AI; knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, planning and scheduling being the areas which have attracted the largest number of submissions. The book provides a fascinating preview of the current work of future AI researchers, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves the use of artificial intelligence and intelligent systems.