[DL] PostDoctoral research in KR & Ontologies for the Semantic Web

[Ian Horrocks]

UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER, DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION & ONTOLOGIES FOR THE SEMANTIC WEB
(REF 548/03)

See: http://www.man.ac.uk/news/vacancies/research.html#548

A postdoctoral researcher is required to take a leadership role in an
internationally outstanding research team developing tools and
technologies for the Semantic Web and E-Science Programmes. The post
is available immediately for a period up to three years.

The HyOntUse project aims to develop tools and methodologies to make
the new Web Ontology Language (OWL) easier for end users to understand
and use. The goal is to produce tools that can be used directly by
domain experts in cooperative distributed environments -
e.g. biologists, doctors, librarians, astronomers, etc. indeed by any
group of users needing to formalise and catalogue their knowledge. The
initial approaches will include debugging aids, visualisation and
explanation tools, and mechanisms for maintaining multiple views.

The project is one of a pair funded jointly by the EPSRC and JISC and
forms part of a collaboration with Stanford and Southampton
Universities to develop environments integrating OWL and frames by
integrating OilEd developed at Manchester with Protégé developed at
Stanford. It will link closely with existing E-Science projects. The
combined projects are designed to have a critical mass of both
developers and users to produce and disseminate major advances.

The successful candidate will lead the development of the underlying
methodologies and work with the team to extend the combined
OilEd-Protégé framework. The candidate should be capable of innovative
research in a new area and carrying it through into practical
software. His or her background should ideally include some
combination of knowledge representation, object oriented design and/or
HCI and tools development. Knowledge of OWL, its predecessor languages
DAML+Oil, or the underlying description logic framework would be a
distinct advantage. The candidate should have practical experience of
developing systems in Java, and software engineering skills and a
working familiarity with web technologies (XML, XSLT, XML Schema, RDF,
etc) would be an advantage. The post will involve some travel to
collaborators at Stanford and both academic and commercial users'
centres in the UK, US and possibly continental Europe. The ability to
work in a team and be sensitive to the controversies that inevitably
arise in collaborations is essential. Although the post is offered at
the post-doctoral level, candidates with other appropriate experience
will be considered. Salary in the range: £25,451 - £33,679 per annum.

Informal enquiries may be made to Dr. Jeremy Rogers or Prof. Alan
Rector, Medical Informatics Group, Department of Computer Science,
Kilburn Building, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL
tel: +44 (0)161 275 6133/6239/6188; fax: +44 (0)161 275 6204; email:
arector at cs.man.ac.uk or jrogers at cs.man.ac.uk or Karon Mee tel +44
(0)161 275 6248; email: kmee at cs.man.ac.uk

The following are available in pdf format: Further particulars
Application form (also in RTF format) Equal opportunities monitoring
form For further information on the University see www.man.ac.uk/

Application forms and further particulars are also available from the
Office of the Director of Personnel, The University of Manchester,
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL tel: +44 (0)161 275 2028; fax: +44
(0)161 275 2471; Minicom (for the hearing impaired): +44 (0)161 275
7889; e-mail: personnel at man.ac.uk Quote ref 548/03. Closing date 11
August 2003. Interviews will probably be held during the week
beginning 23 August 2003.