Ontology-Driven Information Systems: Past, Present and Future
From STLab
- TITLE: Ontology-Driven Information Systems: Past, Present and Future
- SPEAKER: Michael Uschold
- DATE: Monday the 12th of October, 2009 at 15:00
- LOCATION: ISTC-CNR, Via S. Martino della Battaglia 44, Aula Piaget
- CONTACT: Alfio Massimiliano Gliozzo (alfio.gliozzo@istc.cnr.it)
ABSTRACT:
We trace the roots of ontology-driven information systems (ODIS) back to early work in artificial intelligence and software engineering. We examine the lofty goals of the Knowledge-Based Software Assistant project from the 80s, and pose some questions. Why didn't it work? What do we have today instead? What is on the horizon?
We examine two critical ideas in software engineering: raising the level of abstraction, and the use of formal methods. We examine several other key technologies and show how they paved the way for today's ODIS. We identify two companies with surprising capabilities that are on the bleeding edge of today's ODIS, and are pointing the way to a bright future.
In that future, application development will be opened up to the masses, who will require no computer science background. People will create models in visual environments and the models will be the applications, self-documenting and executing as they are being built. Neither humans nor computers will be writing application code. Most functionality will be created by reusing and combining pre-coded functionality. All application software will be ontology-driven.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Michael Uschold has 25 years of experience in the field concerned with the development and application of ontologies, especially in the context of the semantic web, semantic integration and semantic wikis. Activities in these areas include research, applications and teaching. Michael has served on the industrial advisory boards of various projects and initiatives, and has given a number of invited talks at conferences, workshops, and Universities.
Most recently, Michael worked as senior ontologist at Reinvent Inc. There, he worked on a team that applied large scale ontologies, open linked data, natural language and machine learning technologies to create a commercial grade contextual advertising system.
From 1997 to early 2008, Michael worked as a research scientist at The Boeing Company. Before that he, he was a senior member of technical staff in the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) at the University of Edinburgh. He has also been a lecturer and a research associate at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh.
He received his B.S. in mathematics and physics at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y in 1977, a Masters in computer science from Rutgers University in 1982, and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from The University of Edinburgh in 1991.
CONTACT: Alfio Massimiliano Gliozzo
