Re: Introductions

"Principle/Alternate" (Four interested Mitre folks still sorting out
roles)

"Attending F2F"

-BIO

I began life as a philosopher (PhD from Rutgers in 1983). Although my
research and thesis focused on the "interpretation problem" in Quantum
Mechanics, I also studied formal logic and computability theory
intensively as a graduate student in Philosophy. So intensively, in
fact, that I awoke one morning to discover that I had been transformed
into a Computer Scientist. Actually the "metamorphosis" took a little
longer than that (PhD in Computer Science from Rutgers in 1986). My CS
doctoral dissertation was later published as a book ("Automatic
Refinement of Expert System Knowledge Bases"). 

I joined Bell Labs as a researcher in 1986 and stayed there through its
various metamorphoses until 2002 (I include a couple of years at Avaya
Research Labs towards the end). From 1986 to about 1993 my research
dealt mainly with algorithms for detecting inconsistency, redundancy,
and vicious cycles in sets of rules, as well the machine learning
problem I originally explored in my thesis, but which I came to call
the problem of Theory Revision. This part of my career included
implementation of a system called KBReducer which was used in the
verification of an AT&T Trunk Operations Center expert system. 

I returned to research involving rule-sets when I transferred to
Avaya's research lab in 2000. The focus of that research was on
problems arising from interactions among networks of independent
rule-enabled devices/processes. In particular, consider a customer
relationship management system that allows agents to set up
call-forwarding rules like "If x is an incoming call from customer C
then automatically transfer it to Agent B." Clearly there is potential
for problems in that sort of system (vicious cycles being an obvious
one). 

Ironically, the last project I worked on in the descendent of the old
Bell system was an expert system development/porting project. I was the
lead in helping to redesign the architecture of a data communications
expert system originally written mainly in Prolog. As part of that work
I was involved in evaluating commercial rule-based products for that
application and conducted comparisons and benchmarks of a number of
them, including JRules, OPSJ, and CLIPS. 

I recently joined the Mitre Corporation where I am a member of the
Information Semantics group. Mitre representatives from this group and
other groups have been active in the ontology working groups and are
keenly interested in the relative merits of various proposed rule
standards and the whole question of how rules and ontologies should
work together in a system or application. Currently I am working on a
Mitre sponsored research project dealing with the use of semantic
technologies in the rapidly growing area of dynamic electromagnetic
spectrum access. The vision of dynamic spectrum access has gathered
steam due to the confluence of several events and technologies
including the FCC notice of proposed rule making concerning secondary
use of unused but allocated TV spectrum, the phenomenal growth of
wireless devices, and the effort to develop software-defined-radio
architectures. 

-CONTACT INFO

aginsberg@mitre.org

-WHAT YOU EXPECT TO GET OUT OF THIS WG

I expect to be able to participate effectively in formulating a
standard that fulfills the WG charter and is compatible with the
requirements of Mitre and its sponsors.

-WHAT YOU HOPE/EXPECT TO CONTRIBUTE

A perspective that is attuned to the kinds of issues that arise for the
communities of interest that come to Mitre for technical advice and
solutions. 

_______________________________________________________________

Dr. Allen Ginsberg The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics 

aginsberg@mitre.org Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics 

Voice: 703-983-1604 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305 

Fax: 703-983-1379 McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA