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ONTOLOGY FOR THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY

OIC 2009 TUTORIAL
Ontologies and the Semantic Web

When: 20 October 2009 09:00 - 16:30     
Where: Dewberry Hall, Johnson Center, George Mason University
Fee: $50.00 addition to the OIC registration (OIC registration required)
register now

This tutorial introduces the core topics of Semantics, Ontologies, Knowledge Representation, and the Semantic Web. It presents the essential concepts of formal semantic models and ontologies, knowledge representation languages, automated reasoning methods, principled ontology development, technologies and tools, and describes the Semantic Web languages (RDF/S, OWL, SWRL, RIF) and emerging standards. The outline for the tutorial is described below.

A version of this tutorial was taught previously at the University of Virginia's Accelerated Masters Degree Program in Systems Engineering, and for many years at the MITRE Institute. In addition, portions of this were merged into a joint tutorial by Michael Uschold and Leo Obrst at SemTech 2007.

This tutorial includes a general introduction to these concepts and attempts to answer the following questions:
1. What is Semantics?
   • The Meaning of Meaning
   • Syntax vs. Semantics vs. Pragmatics
   • Concepts and Properties
2. What is Knowledge Representation?
   • Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Knowledge Bases
   • Logic Programming, Theorem Proving
   • Ontological Engineering
3. What are Ontologies?
   • The Ontology Spectrum: from Taxonomy to Thesaurus to Conceptual Model to Logical Theory
   • Encoding Semantically Sound, Consistent, Modular and Reusable Knowledge
   • Machine-interpretable Semantics: How does it know what I mean?
   • Upper (foundational) Ontologies
4. What is Logic and What are the Logics Underlying Knowledge Representation Languages?
5. What is the Semantic Web, RDF/S, OWL, SWRL and Other Rule Languages?
6. How do You Develop and Use an Ontology?

tutorial references       tutorial slides

Tutorial objectives:
• Understanding semantics and the range of semantic models, ontologies, knowledge representation, the logical underpinnings of these technologies, the Semantic Web, rules and automated reasoning over ontologies and knowledge bases
• Employing common ontology development tools and languages to move toward intelligent applications
• Creating ontologies and knowledge bases, rules, and applications that use efficient automated reasoning.

Tutorial Leader:

Dr. Leo Obrst, MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LeoObrst.

Leo Obrst is principal artificial intelligence scientist at MITRE's Command and Control Center, where he created and led, but now advises the Information Semantics group (semantics and Semantic Web, ontological engineering, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, controlled vocabularies). His research interests and applications addressed include: semantic interoperability and information integration, knowledge management, semantic search, community knowledge sharing, natural language processing, ontology and automated reasoning for decision support, situational awareness, command and control, and intelligence analysis. From 1999-2001, he was director of ontological engineering at VerticalNet.com, a department he formed to create ontologies in the business product and service space. Leo's PhD is in theoretical linguistics with a concentration in formal semantics from the University of Texas-Austin. He has worked over 25 years in computational linguistics, knowledge representation, and for the past 14 years in ontological engineering and more recently in Semantic Web technologies.

Leo is on the Executive Council of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) and the Executive Committee of the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR), and was a member of the W3C Web Ontology Working Group (OWL). Along with Peter Yim and Kurt Conrad, he co-founded the Ontolog Forum in 2002, an open community of practice which focuses on the promotion of ontological engineering and semantic technologies, and is also one of the co-champions of the Open Ontology Repository effort, with Peter Yim and Mike Dean. Leo is on the editorial board of the journal of Applied Ontology. He is co-author (with Mike Daconta and Kevin Smith) of the book The Semantic Web: The Future of XML, Web Services, and Knowledge Management. John Wiley, Inc., June, 2003. He has helped organize the Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) and Ontology for the Intelligence Community (OIC) conferences. Along with Steve Ray and Peter Yim, Leo founded and convened the Ontology Summit conference series, which NIST, Ontolog, and others have organized since 2006. Along with Mike Dean (BBN), Leo is the local organizer for the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2009, which will take place October 25-29, 2009, in Chantilly, VA.