Dr. Lutz Hamel teaches at the University of Rhode Island. His major research interests are machine learning, computational statistics, logic, logic programming, programming language semantics and implementation. He founded the machine learning and data mining group at the University of Rhode Island. Current projects include improved visualizations and convergence tests of self-organizing maps as well as the investigation of rewriting logic with dependent type theory.

Before becoming an academic Dr. Hamel has led and contributed to the design and implementation of numerous high-tech software projects over the course of a 15-year industrial career. Projects included parallel high-performance programming environments and languages, object-oriented databases, as well as data mining tools and applications. In addition, as Director of Software Development Dr. Hamel led software development teams at Thinking Machine Corporation responsible for building and delivering the company's data mining software suite. As Vice President of R&D for Bluestreak, Dr. Hamel oversaw the development of advanced technologies for online ad delivery and optimization; as well as building the foundation for next generation data warehouse-driven campaign analysis and design tools.

Dr. Hamel holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Oxford University, UK, an MS in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island. He recently published the book "Knowledge Discovery with Support Vector Machines", Wiley, 2009.