Book excerpt: These proceedings present technical papers selected from the 2012 International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Knowledge Engineering (ISKE 2012), held on December 15-17 in Beijing. The aim of this conference is to bring together experts from different fields of expertise to discuss the state-of-the-art in Intelligent Systems and Knowledge Engineering, and to present new findings and perspectives on future developments. The proceedings introduce current scientific and technical advances in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition, data mining, knowledge engineering, information retrieval, information theory, knowledge-based systems, knowledge representation and reasoning, multi-agent systems, and natural-language processing, etc. Furthermore they include papers on new intelligent computing paradigms, which combine new computing methodologies, e.g., cloud computing, service computing and pervasive computing with traditional intelligent methods. By presenting new methodologies and practices, the proceedings will benefit both researchers and practitioners who want to utilize intelligent methods in their specific fields. Dr. Fuchun Sun is a professor at the Department of Computer Science & Technology, Tsinghua University, China. Dr. Tianrui Li is a professor at the School of Information Science & Technology, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China. Dr. Hongbo Li also works at the Department of Computer Science & Technology, Tsinghua University, China.