Arti cial Intelligence is at the forefront of science and technology, especially in the Republic of Ireland. It is an exciting time to be a scholar in this fascinating discipline of research. This is re ected in the record number of articles (71) submitted to this year's Irish Conference on Arti cial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AICS 2020), in its 28th edition. These proceedings collect the best scienti c contributions and exciting research taking place in the Republic of Ireland in 2020. We are in a delicate and uncertain time, living during the COVID-19 pandemic that sometimes seems will never end and prevents us from meeting in person. However, this has not stopped scholars to work on a disparate range of theoretical topics such as deep, transfer, and reinforcement learning, explainability, ethics, and transparency of arti cial intelligence as well as many applications in various domains such as in health care, stock market, online news, social media, and biology. While we cannot meet in person this year, the AICS community has proved to be adaptable making this edition the rst ever virtual AICS conference, allowing everyone to participate while not having to leave their own homes.
The technical programme of the conference was built with scienti c contributions that went through a rigorous peer-review process. The programme committee, composed of doctorates and professors working in Irish institutions from academia and industry, did a thorough and professional job in reviewing all the submitted manuscripts, providing authors with rich and constructive feedback. Each article has received at least 2 reviews with multi-section rates and avenues of improvement. Reviewers had a bidding phase in which they could select preferred manuscripts. Con ict of interests of reviewers and authors, as well as their institutional a liations, were taken into account. Submitted work was divided into 3 tracks: full papers, student papers, and nectar papers. Full papers were mainly empirical-based researchers, original contributions describing either basic research, interesting applications, or in-use experiences. Student papers were emerging works where the rst author was a university student either at the masters or doctoral level. Nectar papers described signi cant results previously presented at other international conferences and authors were given the possibility to verbally present their work.
Prof. Francesca Toni, from Imperial College London, was the keynote speaker of this year's conference with an exciting talk on computational argumentation and explanations. The incessant progress in machine learning has led to the automatic formation of computational models, trained from data, that are highly explainable but su er from a lack of inferential transparency, explainability, and interpretability. Therefore, explainable arti cial intelligence, probably one of the fastest growing sub-disciplines of arti cial intelligence, is aimed at tackling the above issues and either wrap computational models with explanations or learn self-explainable models, for example, by using neuro-symbolic reasoning approaches.
The end results of the AICS 2020 programme were of outstanding quality. We wish to express our gratitude and deepest appreciation to the 54 professional programme committee members, the many authors who submitted their contributions, as well as all the Irish institutions who supported us in delivering and running a successful national conference. With your high-quality involvement and devotion, AICS continues its tradition of excellence in the Republic of Ireland and active role in advancing the disciplines of arti cial intelligence and cognitive science, informing the industry sector with original contributions, as well as the public with novel applications. 2
We are thankful for the support of the conference programme committee and our sponsors. 2.1
{ Antonio Bevilacqua (University College Dublin) { Declan O'Sullivan (Trinity College Dublin) { Matthias Nickles (National University of Ireland) { Ivana Dusparic (Trinity College Dublin) { Frank Glavin (National University of Ireland) { Niladri Sett (University College Dublin) { Ali Naeem (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { Luis Miralles (Technological University Dublin) { Sara Perez (University College Dublin) { Conor Hayes (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { Dympna O'Sullivan (Technological University Dublin) { Suzanne Little (Dublin City University) { Susan Mckeever (Technological University Dublin) { Aonghus Lawlor (University College Dublin) { Deirdre Desmond (Maynooth University) { Bojan Bozic (Technological University Dublin) { Derek Greene (University College Dublin) { Brian Mac Namee (University College Dublin) { Bianca Schoen-Phelan (Technological University Dublin) { Sean O'Leary (Technological University Dublin) { Severin Gsponer (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { Rob Brennan (Dublin City University) { Gareth Jones (Dublin City University) { Svetlana Hensman (Technological University Dublin) { Fiona Newell (Trinity College Dublin) { Paul Buitelaar (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { Ken Brown (University College Cork) { Fred Cummins (University College Dublin) { Alan Smeaton (Dublin City University) { Thi Nguyet Que Nguyen (Technological University Dublin) { Colm O'Riordan (National University of Ireland, Galway) { Mihael Arcan (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { Tiziana Margaria (Lero centre) { Paul Mckevitt (University of Ulster) { Diarmuid O'Donoghue (Maynooth University) { Emma Murphy (Technological University Dublin) { Ruairi O'Reilly (Cork Institute of Technology) { Duncan Wallace (Insight Centre for Data Analytics) { John P. McCrae (National University of Ireland, Galway) { Mathieu D'Aquin (Data Science Institute) { Eoghan Furey (Letterkenny Institute of Technology) { Sarah Jane Delany (Technological University Dublin) { Lorraine McGinty (University College Dublin) { Enda Barrett (National University of Ireland, Galway) { Mark Keane (University College Dublin) { Barry Smyth (University College Dublin) { Suzanne Egan (Mary Immaculate College) { Michael Schukat (National University of Ireland, Galway) { Ken Du y (Maynooth University) { Fintan Costello (University College Dublin) { Katryna Cisek (Technological University Dublin) { James McDermott (National University of Ireland, Galway) { Cathy Ennis (Technological University Dublin) { Derek Bridge (University College Cork)
Longo et al.
The 28th Irish conference on Arti cial Intelligence and Cognitive Science is grateful for the support received by the Technological University Dublin and The University College Dublin, as well as the Arti cial Intelligence Association of Ireland (AIAI).