Why Workshops Matter: Insights from ICDM 2025

Every big conference has a heart - a space where ideas are tested, networks are built and new research directions take shape. At the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM) 2025, that heart is its lineup of 42 workshops. Scheduled for 12 to 15 November 2025 in Washington, DC, ICDM is a flagship conference in data mining and machine learning. Its workshops, typically on the opening day, span everything from computational social science to spatial data mining. Whether you are a researcher, practitioner or student, workshops can turn a good conference trip into a transformative experience. See our conference page: ICDM.

Why attend workshops?

Workshops differ from the main conference in three important ways:

1. Focused learning. Main conference sessions are broad and fast paced. Workshops dive deep into specialized domains. Topics like food science, healthcare and finance reflect the diversity of modern data mining. A half day in a workshop lets you learn the state of the art and ask questions that might not fit into a regular keynote or paper session.

2. Direct interaction with experts. Workshops are smaller and more interactive than plenaries. Talks often come with roundtables or panels, so you can meet thought leaders, ask questions and even help shape a nascent research area.

3. Exploring emerging fields. Because workshops are proposal driven, organizers can respond quickly to new developments. ICDM 2025 includes sessions on large language models for cybersecurity, sentiment analysis, multimodal AI and even gastronomy. A good workshop exposes you to ideas and collaborators before the rest of the community catches on.

Below are three ICDM 2025 workshops that showcase the range of opportunities.

Taste meets technology: Computational gastronomy (CoGamy)

Food is not just taste; it is also data. The 1st Workshop on Computational Gastronomy: Data Science for Food and Cooking (CoGamy) explores how data science and machine learning can transform the culinary arts. Computational gastronomy blends food, data and computation to drive food innovation. The field asks questions like: Why do we eat what we eat? What is the molecular basis of flavor? Can we quantify the taste of a recipe? Topics include nutritional profiling, generative AI for recipes, food‑chemical graphs and graph neural networks for food pairing.

If you are excited about combining culinary creativity with data, CoGamy is a great place to find collaborators. See our workshop page: cogamy.

Mining the clinic: Biomedical informatics and healthcare (DMBIH)

Healthcare is data rich, and mining it responsibly can change patient outcomes. The 13th Workshop on Data Mining in Biomedical Informatics and Healthcare (DMBIH) brings together data miners, informaticists, AI experts and clinicians. It focuses on advanced models for large, complex biomedical and healthcare datasets. Topics include EHR classification and clustering, machine learning and deep learning for clinical data, and visualization for clinical analysis.

DMBIH is also a forum for regulatory and practical issues, including HIPAA-aware workflows and mining of medical images and signals. Learn more on our page: DMBIH.

Financial insights: Data mining in finance (DMF)

Finance generates massive, fast moving datasets. The 3rd International Workshop on Data Mining in Finance (DMF 2025) connects academia and industry to tackle real problems. DMF features three main themes - effective and efficient financial data mining, trustworthy data mining and LLM‑based financial data mining. Trustworthy data mining includes fairness, explainability and privacy preservation. The LLM track looks at building financial large language models and operating under compliance constraints. A special track on agentic workflows explores agent‑based modelling, automated trading, predictive analytics and risk assessment.

If you work at the intersection of finance and AI, DMF is a natural stop. Details: DMF.

Making the most of your workshop day

• Plan ahead. Read the program and pick must see talks. At ICDM you could spend a morning on culinary data science and an afternoon exploring fairness in financial models.
• Engage actively. Ask questions, join discussions and meet speakers during breaks. Workshops are built for interaction.
• Network intentionally. Bring a short introduction and be ready to share what you are working on. Workshops gather people who care deeply about the same topic.
• Integrate what you learn. Take notes and map ideas back to your projects. Follow up with new contacts after the event.

Final thoughts

Workshops are incubators of innovation. At ICDM 2025 they stretch from analyzing flavour chemistry to building trustworthy financial models to mining health records. Attending gives you focused access to cutting edge research, a strong network and ideas you can use right away. Browse the full list on our ICDM page and start planning your agenda. Quick link: All Workshops.