Invited Speakers

Renata Vieira: Ontologies for NLP, NLP for ontologies

In this talk I will say a few words about the relation of ontologies and natural language processing, considering this relation in two directions. I will show some examples of how some natural language applications use ontologies as a resource, and how we can build and maintain ontologies with the help of natural language processing. All this will be seen from a perspective of the Portuguese language, as it has been an essencial part of my work.

Short bio

Renata Vieira works in the area of artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, ontologies, semantic web and natural processing, with special interests in the Portuguese language, but also considering multi- lingual questions. In this area she has a leading role in Brazil, for she worked in the creation of a special interest group for the area in the Brazilian Computing Society. She has been a member of the Executive Committe of the International Association for Computational Linguistcs, the main international scientific organization in this subject. Her publication records are among the top ones in the country for this area.

Edward Hermann Haeusler: Kelsenian Jurisprudence, legal ontologies and intuitionistic logic

Description Logic has been frequently used in representing knowledge. Sometimes we use the term "ontology" for denoting a specific domain knowledge representation. When representing legal knowledge a jurisprudence (theory of law) must be used as a basis for legal ontologies. In this talk we discuss how Kelsenian jurisprudence, apparently the most adequate jurisprudence choice for (practical) knowledge representation, asks for an intuitionistic logical basis for legal ontologies construction. We show how the use of an intuitionistic description logic can be successfully used in representing legal ontologies circumventing apparent conflicts in law. A case of conflict of laws in space in formally detailed and solved using our approach.

Short bio

Hermann is Associate Professor of Informatics at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). He received his D.Sc. in Informatics from PUC-Rio. His recent works are in Logic and Proof Theory, with applications to Computer Science.

Vinay Chaudhri: Challenges in Commercializing Expert Knowledge Authoring

Formal knowledge representation is a powerful tool for better understanding and communication of knowledge. Natural language interfaces to formal knowledge bases enable users unfamiliar with the intricacies of the representation to access the encoded knowledge. AURA is a software system aimed at domain experts to ease knowledge authoring. To support access to this knowledge, it also supports a natural language front end for posing questions. With the goal of commercializing this technology, we built an electronic textbook application aimed at students studying from a biology textbook. I will discuss the challenges we have faced in deploying this technology in a commercially viable manner and some of the open problems that still need to be solved.

Short bio

Dr. Vinay K. Chaudhri is a program director in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Center at SRI International. His research focuses on the science and engineering of large knowledge base systems and spans knowledge representation and reasoning, question answering, knowledge acquisition, and innovative applications. His most recent work has been on creating an intelligent textbook in biology that answers a student's questions and leads to significant learning gains. He has co-edited a volume on the Theory and Application of conceptual modeling, and two special issues of AI Magazine - one on Question Answering Systems, and another on Application of AI to Contemporary and Emerging Education Challenges. He has taught a course on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning at Stanford University.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Toronto where he was a Connaught Scholar and a Fellow of Massey College. He also holds a Masters in Industrial and Management Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, and a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra . He is a senior member of AAAI.