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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear Colleagues,<BR><BR>Could you, please,
distribute the enclosed information on the EUROLAN-2003 Summer School on
"Semantic Web and Language Technology" to persons that can be potentially
interested (students, graduate students, young faculty, researchers, etc.).
Please excuse multiple copies of this message.<BR><BR>Thank you,<BR>Dan
Cristea</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>EUROLAN-2003</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Summer School on</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>"The Semantic Web and Language Technology - Its
Potential and Practicalities"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>28 July - 8 August 2003<BR>Bucharest -
Romania</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://www.infoiasi.ro/~eurolan/eurolan2003">http://www.infoiasi.ro/~eurolan/eurolan2003</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>- First Call For Participation -</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The Eurolan series of summer schools was
established in 1993 and has been held every other year, with the goal of
stimulating young researchers from all over the world to pursue high-level
research in natural language processing and language technology.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Theme</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The fifth EUROLAN in the series will have as topic
all aspects of the developing Semantic Web technology and consider its potential
and the practicalities of applying it to enhance language processing
applications.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The promise of the Semantic Web has evoked enormous
interest within the community developing language technologies. On the one hand,
it offers the potential to exploit ontological descriptions of language data in
order to enable inferencing capabilities, which may not only drastically enhance
semantic processing, but also alter our conceptions of the ways in which
knowledge is represented and exploited in language processing applications. On
the other hand, to take full advantage of this evolving technology, researchers
and developers will need to understand the potential as well as the limitations
of the Semantic Web and master a range of new technologies that have been
designed to enable it. Finally, the language technology community must be ready
to contribute to Semantic Web development in order to ensure that it meets the
requirements for language processing applications.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The so-called "Semantic Web community" encompasses
several research communities that have previously worked independently of one
another, including researchers in knowledge representation, ontology
development, and "knowledge exploitation"; web developers (including developers
of standards such as XML, RDF, OWL, etc.); and those who directly need to
exploit knowledge in applications. Linguistic knowledge used in language
processing at its various levels (morphological, syntactic, lexical, discourse,
etc.) includes a substantial part of general knowledge and poses a significant
challenge to Semantic Web developers in order to handle the precision and
complexity required for language processing applications. Whatever the Semantic
Web may evolve to be, researchers and developers in language technology clearly
need to learn what it is and how it can be exploited for language processing,
and at the same time, work with semantic web developers to ensure that the
semantic web infrastructure is maximally usable for language processing
applications.<BR>EUROLAN-2003 will provide two weeks of intensive study of
semantic web technology and its application to natural language processing.
Internationally known scholars and researchers involved in leading-edge work in
relevant areas will serve as professors at the school, providing half- and
full-day seminars and hands-on labs to provide students with in-depth
understanding and experience. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Topics to be covered in the school include the
following:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>* What is the Semantic Web?<BR>* Potential and
limitations of the semantic web<BR>* Supporting web technologies (XML, RDF)<BR>*
Ontologies, ontology design and development<BR>* Ontology exploitation via
inferencing<BR>* Description logics and other approaches to inferencing<BR>*
Lexical semantics and the semantic web<BR>* Use of the semantic web and related
technologies in language processing applications</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The list of invited personalities is as follows:
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>* Dan Cristea, "Al. I. Cuza" University of Iasi,
Romania<BR>* Thierry Declerck, DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany<BR>* James Hendler,
University of Maryland at College Park, USA<BR>* Jerry Hobbs, University of
Southern California, Marina del Rey, USA<BR>* Nancy Ide, Vassar College,
USA<BR>* Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa, Italy<BR>* Robert Meersman, Vrije
Universiteit, Brussel, Belgium<BR>* Srini Narayanan, SRI-International, Menlo
Park, SUA<BR>* Sergei Nirenburg, New Mexico University, USA<BR>* Dan Tufis,
Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania<BR>* Hans Uszkoreit, DFKI and University of
Saarbruecken, Germany<BR>* Wolfgang Wahlster, DFKI and University of
Saarbruecken, Germany<BR>* Yorick Wilks, University of Sheffield,
England</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Program</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Eurolan-2003 will take place between 28 July and 8
August 2003 in Bucharest - Romania.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The summer school will be organized to allow for
both lectures and hands-on experience for each of the areas covered. Morning
sessions will be devoted to tutorials, followed by afternoon sessions at which
students will work in collaboration with professors on practical applications.
The school will also include one workshop as well as round tables and work
meetings on topics of particular interest related to the school’s theme. They
will be announced at a later date.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>On Sunday, 3 August, a trip to significant Romanian
landmarks will be organized.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Registration and Fees</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Information about registration and fees will be
posted at a later date.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Program Committee</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dan Cristea<BR>Nancy Ide<BR>Jerry Hobbs<BR>Dan
Tufis<BR>Hans Uszkoreit</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Information on previous Eurolan events can be
consulted at the address: <A
href="http://www.infoiasi.ro/fcs/en/events.html">http://www.infoiasi.ro/fcs/en/events.html</A>.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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