The 1st International Joint Conference on Learning & Reasoning (IJCLR 2020) will take place from September 9 to 11, in Athens, Greece, right before KR 2020. IJCLR 2020 will be hosted by the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications of the National Center for Scientific Research (NCSR) "Demokritos".

The rapid progress in machine learning has been the primary reason for a fresh look in the transormative potential of AI as a whole during the past decade. A crucial milestone for taking full advantage of this potential is the endowment of algorithms that learn from experience with the ability to consult existing knowledge and reason with what has already been learned. Integrating learning and reasoning constitutes one of the key open questions in AI, and holds the potential of addressing many of the shortcomings of contemporary AI approaches, including the black-box nature and the brittleness of deep learning, and the difficulty to adapt knowledge representation models in the light of new data. Integrating learning and reasoning calls for approaches that combine knowledge representation and machine reasoning techniques with learning algorithms from the fields of neural, statistical and relational learning.

In 2020, four international conferences and workshops addressing such research topics join forces in the 1st International Conference on Learning & Reasoning (IJCLR):

    The 30th International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming (ILP).
    The ILP conference series has been the premier forum for work on logic-based approaches to learning for three decades. Originally focusing on the induction of logic programs, over the years it has expanded its research horizon to other forms of relational learning and to probabilistic approaches.
    The 15th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning & Reasoning (NeSy).
    The NeSy workshop series is a major venue for the presentation and discussion of key topics related to neural-symbolic computing, i.e. combinations of neural and logic-based approaches to learning & reasoning.
    The 10th International Workshop on Statistical Relational Artificial Inteligence (StarAI).
    The StarAI workshop series studies combinations of logic with probability theory and focuses on statistical inference and learning with relational and first-order logical representations.
    The 10th International Workshop on Approaches and Applications of Inductive Programming (AAIP).
    The AAIP workshop series focuses on learning executable programs in arbitrary programming languages, from incomplete specifications. e.g. from examples of their input/output behaviour.

IJCLR 2020 aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners working on various aspects of learning & reasoning, via presentation of cutting-edge research on topics of special interest to the participating conferences/workshops. In addition to each of the four events' individual programs, which will be held in parallel, IJCLR 2020 aims to promote collaboration and cross-fertilization between different approaches and methodologies to integrating learning & reasoning, via joint keynotes, panel discussions and poster sessions.