[DL] Call for Papers: Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Workshop

[Susie M Stephens]

SEMANTIC WEB FOR HEALTH CARE AND LIFE SCIENCES WORKSHOP
                           held in conjunction with
               The 17th International World Wide Web Conference
                              April 21-25, 2008
                                Beijing, China

                        http://ccnt.zju.edu.cn/hcls2008/

   Biomedical  researchers  need to be able to ask questions that span many
   heterogeneous data sources in order to make well-informed decisions. For
   this  to  be  achieved,  data  about  drugs,  patients, diseases, genes,
   proteins,   and   pathways  must  be  effectively  integrated.  Yet  the
   integration  of disparate biomedical data continues to be a challenge to
   achieve.

   Many   organizations   are   now  exploring  the  use  of  Semantic  Web
   technologies  in  the hope of easing the effort of data integration. The
   benefits   promised   by   the   Semantic  Web  include  aggregation  of
   heterogeneous  data  using explicit semantics, simplified annotation and
   sharing  of findings, the expression of rich and well-defined models for
   data aggregation and search, easier reuse of data in unanticipated ways,
   and the application of logic to infer additional insights.

   W3C  has  established the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences
   (HCLSIG)  Interest  Group to help organizations in their adoption of the
   Semantic  Web. The HCLSIG is chartered to develop and support the use of
   Semantic   Web  technologies  to  improve  collaboration,  research  and
   development,  and  innovation adoption in the domains of Health Care and
   Life  Sciences.  As a part of realizing this vision, we are organizing a
   workshop  on  the  Semantic  Web  for  Health  Care and Life Sciences in
   conjunction with WWW2008.

   Audience:
   The workshop encourages participation from industry and academia with an
   emphasis on the practical aspects of applying Semantic Web technologies
   to the challenges of Health Care and the Life Sciences. We encourage
   participation from Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies, Health Care
   Organizations, Universities and Research Institutes, IT Vendors, and
   Government Agencies.

   Topics of Interest:
   Authors are invited to submit papers in any of the areas listed below.
   - Semantic integration
   - Knowledge representation and reasoning
   - Semantic Web applications
   - Semantic Web Services
   - Querying RDF/OWL
   - Query mediation and translation
   - Semantic mashups

   Papers should follow the general format of refereed papers for WWW2008
   as described at: http://www2008.org/submissions/index.html

   The possibility of having select papers published in a special edition
   of BMC Bioinformatics is also being explored.

   Important Dates:
   Paper submission:                             January 25, 2008
   Notification of acceptance:                   February 22, 2008
   Final version of accepted papers              March 21, 2008
   Date of workshop:                             TBD

   Organizing Committee:
   Huajun Chen, Zhejiang University, China
   Kei Cheung, Yale University, USA
   Michel Dumontier, Carleton University, Canada
   Eric Prud'hommeaux, W3C, USA
   Alan Ruttenberg, Science Commons, USA
   Susie Stephens, Eli Lilly, USA
   Yimin Wang, University of Karlsruhe, Germany