[DL] CFP - WORKSHOP ON ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS - Sept 28 - Sao Luis, Brasil

[Fred Freitas]

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Deadline approaching: Due date is May 22!
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CALL FOR PAPERS

WORKSHOP ON ONTOLOGIES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS
*********************************************

28 September 2004
Sao Luis, Maranhao – Brazil
www.ws.onto.ufal.br

held in conjunction with
XVII Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (SBIA)
Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (SBRN)
IEEE Machine Learning and Signal Processing (IEEE MLSP)
www.sbc.org.br/sbia


*** NEW: Prof. Enrico Franconi, from the Free University of 
Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, one of the XVII SBIA’s keynote speaker, will give 
a tutorial on "Logic-based approaches for Conceptual Design, Information 
Access, and Ontology Integration: Research Trends", which includes 
Description Logic and OWL. Check details at the Tutorial Section below.


In the early 90’s, efforts to promote integration and massive reuse of 
knowledge bases written in different knowledge formalisms and 
representation languages from existing expert systems and agents brought 
the field of ontologies into the research agenda of artificial 
intelligence again. New tools and techniques were generated to tackle 
these tasks since then, and the field matured over the years.

The success of the Semantic Web has led to a wide interest in ontologies 
and their applications from communities outside AI, such as software 
engineering and databases. Their expressivity to define terminologies 
used in a domain or in an application makes them a key technology for 
information sharing and integration in many areas, such as knowledge 
management and electronic commerce. More recently, ontologies have also 
been discussed as a key technology for non-commercial areas such as 
e-science, e-learning and e-government.

The wide application of ontologies in these new scenarios comes with new 
challenges with respect to providing supporting technologies that help 
users in different communities to create, maintain and use ontologies at 
a large scale: Engineering methodologies that guide the process of 
creating of ontologies, learning techniques that help generating 
ontologies from repositories of data or text and user-friendly tools for 
managing and maintaining ontologies in a distributed setting. Besides 
these new challenges, the problem of semantic interoperability between 
different ontologies is still largely unsolved. There is a need for new 
approaches on ontology mapping, merging and alignment to leverage this 
problem.

This workshop addresses the application of ontologies in the different 
areas mentioned above, as well as the theoretical and practical 
challenges arising from these applications. We invite contributions to 
enhance the state-of-the-art of creating, managing and using ontologies.

Topics of Interest:
===================

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Ontology Engineering
- methodologies
- capture and learning
- evaluation
- management

Semantic Interoperability
- composition and modularity
- merging, mapping and alignment
- ontology language interoperability

Ontologies for Information Sharing
- ontology-based Information integration
- mediators and brokers
- agents and ontologies

Ontology Applications
- Semantic Web
- Knowledge Management
- e-commerce, e-government
- e-learning and e-science
- Information retrieval

Workshop format and attendance:
===============================

We intend to avoid the usual conference format, where papers are 
presented and the audience plays a rather passive role. Therefore, the 
emphasis for this one-day workshop is on working groups. In order to 
foster lively and fruitful discussion, the workshop sessions will be 
defined according to groups of topics formed from accepted papers. In 
each group of topics, we plan to allocate around one-third of the time 
for debates.

Attendance will be limited to 45 registrations, formed by the workshop 
papers authors and interested members of the community. Workshop 
attendees are required to register at the main SBIA 2004 conference. For 
more information, please consult the conference website at 
http://www.sbc.org.br/sbia or http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/sbiarn04.

Submission procedure:
=====================

We encourage the submission of high-quality papers based on entirely new 
work or surveys, both meeting the foci of the workshop. Papers must be 
written in English and may have a length of up to 12 pages, including 
tables, figures, and references. Like the main conference, papers must 
conform to the Springer LNCC/LNAI style. It is recommended that authors 
use Springer-Verlag template files (see 
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html, section "Proceedings and 
Other Multi-author Volumes" for formatting instructions) to minimize 
possible conflicts of paper length when preparing the camera ready.

Papers should be submitted electronically only, formatted in PDF 
(preferred) or PostScript to the following address: fred.freitas at tci.ufal.br

Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by at least two program committee 
members and/or additional reviewers/referees. Accepted papers will be 
published in the workshop proceedings in the CDROM with the SBIA 
technical papers.

At least one of the authors of accepted papers has to register for the 
SBIA ‘2004, otherwise the paper will not be included in the proceedings.

Any other questions regarding papers submission may be directed to one 
of the organizers.

Special Issue
=============

Authors of best papers will be recommended to submit expanded versions 
for a Special Issue on Ontology Issues and Applications of The Journal 
of Brazilian Computer Society (JBCS). A Web page describing this Special 
Issue will be available soon at the JBCS site 
(http://www.icmc.usp.br/~jbcs/).

The Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society (JCBS) is the formal 
quarterly publication of the Brazilian Computer Society. Its aim is to 
publish original research papers, serving as a forum for disseminating 
innovative research in all aspects of computer science. The priorities 
of the journal are quality and timeliness. The journal also has an 
electronic version with free access through the Scielo Portal 
(http://www.scielo.br/revistas/jbcos/iaboutj.htm).

Tutorial
========

In the main event, the XVII SBIA, a tutorial will be given by our 
honored guest and keynote speaker, prof. Enrico Franconi from the Free 
University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, on "Logic-based approaches for 
Conceptual Design, Information Access, and Ontology Integration: 
Research Trends", which includes DLs and OWL. You can check the current 
version of the tutorial at 
http://www.inf.unibz.it/~franconi/dl/course/phd-course/.

Note, however, that this workshop and the tutorial are separate events; 
thus, the workshop chairs are not in charge of tutorial registration, 
which must be accomplished during the main event registration, and is 
subject to availability.

Important dates:
================

May 22 2004 - Deadline for workshop papers
July 22 2004 - Notification of workshop paper acceptance
August 22 2004 - Deadline for workshop camera-ready papers
September 28 2004 - Ontologies & their Applications workshop

29 Sep – Oct 1 2004 - Conference main technical program

Program Committee:
==================

Troels Andreasen, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Danmark
Richard Benjamins, iSOCO, Spain
Guilherme Bittencourt, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
Stefano Borgo, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology, Italy
Joost Breuker, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
Ronald Cornet, Amsterdam Medical Center, Netherlands
Monica Crubezy, SMI, Stanford University, USA
Henrik Eriksson, Linköping University, Sweden
Fred Freitas, UniSantos and UFAL, Brazil
Vipul Kashyap, National Library of Medicine, USA
Michel Klein, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Konstantinos Kotis, University of the Aegean, Greece
Eduardo Mean, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain
Boris Motik, FZI, Karlsruhe, Germany
Natasha Noy, SMI, Stanford University, USA
Leo Obrst, Mitre Corporation, USA
Dan O’Leary, University of Southern California, USA
Helena Sofia Pinto, INESC-ID Lisboa, Portugal
Jorge Santos, Instituto Politecnico de Porto, Portugal
Stefan Schlobach, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Steffen Staab, AIFB, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany
Gerd Stumme, Universitaet Kaiserslautern, Germany
Sergio Tessaris, Free University of Bozen – Bolzano, Italy
Ingo Timm, Universitaet Bremen, Germany
Andre Valente, Knowledge Systems Venture, USA
Ubbo Visser, Universitaet Bremen, Germany
Raphael Volz, AIFB, Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany
Holger Wache, Universitaet Bremen, Germany

Organizing Committee:
=====================

Fred Freitas, Universidade Catolica de Santos and Universidade Federal 
de Alagoas, Brazil
fred.freitas at tci.ufal.br (contact person)
Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
heiner at cs.vu.nl
Raphael Volz, AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
volz at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de

Context of the workshop and the collocated conferences:
=======================================================

SBIA, the Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, is a biannual 
event intended to be the main forum of the AI community in Brazil. 
However since the 1990's it has also attracted researchers from all over 
the world, when it started to have an international program committee 
and also keynote invited speakers.

The SBIA 2004 is the 17th event of the series. Since 1995, SBIA has been 
accepting papers written and presented only in English, with proceedings 
being published in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series 
of Springer-Verlag (SBIA'95:991, SBIA'96:1159, SBIA'98:1515, 
SBIA'00:1952, SBIA'02:2507).

The SBIA 2004 is sponsored by the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC). It 
will be held in Sao Luis, the capital of the state of Maranhao in the 
northeast of Brazil, together with the Brazilian Symposium on Neural 
Networks, and with the IEEE NNSP 2004 (IEEE Neural Network and Signal 
Processing). The proceedings of these latter events will be published by 
the IEEE Computer Society. For more information on these events, please 
check http://www.sbc.org.br/sbia or http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/sbiarn04 .

This way, we expected you and both the AI and ANN communities to join us 
and make this event a very exciting one. Last but not least, besides the 
dense scientific program we are preparing (technical papers, tutorials, 
invited talks, and student sections), there are still the cultural 
highlights of Sao Luis, as well as the natural beauties of one of the 
most wonderful places in Brazil: beaches, sun, and pristine water.

Hope to meet you there!

About the city:
===============

Sao Luis, capital of the Brazilian state of Maranhao is considered a 
place blessed by nature. Located in a transition area between the 
Northeast and the northern regions of Brazil, the state displays a wide 
variety of ecosystems. A mix of beaches, forests, cerrados, lakes, and 
rivers are just a few of the attractions that differentiate Maranhao 
from all other Brazilian States. Add to that rich and unique history, 
music, traditions, popular culture, and many other facets and it is 
clear that Maranhao is well worth a visit.

Sao Luis is located on the northeast coast, and is a World Heritage 
island. It is the only capital in Brazil founded by French. However, it 
has a wonderful Portuguese Historical Center, along with an exquisite 
local sea food, and is close to one of the most beautiful desert in the 
Word: Lençóis Maranhenses, where pristine water is laying lazily, 
distributed on several dunes.

Venue:
======

The conference will take place at Rio Poty Hotel 
(http://www.riopoty.com.br/grupopoty/rpsl.htm, site in Portuguese). More 
information can be found at the main conference web site.

Fred Freitas
************
Associate Professor
Departamento de Tecnologia de Informacao - TCI
Universidade Federal de Alagoas - UFAL - Brazil
Phone: +55 82 214 1363

Research interests: Ontologies, semantic web, ontology-based text processing