CFP: WORKSHOP ON HEALTH CARE AND LIFE SCIENCES DATA INTEGRATION FOR THE SEMANTIC WEB

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

WORKSHOP ON HEALTH CARE AND LIFE SCIENCES DATA INTEGRATION FOR THE SEMANTIC WEB

 

held in conjunction with


THE 16th INTERNATIONAL WORLD WIDE WEB CONFERENCE 

MAY 8-12, 2007

BANFF, ALBERTA, CANADA 

 

Biomedical researchers need to be able to access all relevant data in order to
make well-informed decisions. In order for this objective to be reached, data
about genes, proteins, pathways, diseases, and chemical compounds must be
effectively integrated and available to the scientist. Yet the integration of
disparate biomedical data continues to be a challenge to achieve. Difficulties
with data integration stem from the fact that many biomedical research
disciplines require the integration of data sets that have been produced by
using different experimental/clinical protocols, across many groups, that are
using heterogeneous data formats, and are referring to the data at different
levels of abstraction. Further challenges include inconsistent use of
terminology and identifiers, rapidly increasing data volumes, and the growing
diversity in data types and formats. 

 

In the hope of easing the effort of data integration many life science
researchers are exploring the use of the Semantic Web. 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.

 

To help realize the vision of the Semantic Web, W3C has established the Semantic
Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG), which is chartered to
develop and support the use of Semantic Web technologies to improve
collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the of
health care and life science domains. As a part of realizing this vision, we are
organizing the first workshop on the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life
Sciences Data Integration for the Semantic Web in conjunction with WWW 2007. 

 

The workshop will foster discussion and exchange of ideas relating to the use of
the Semantic Web for data integration in health care and life sciences. 

 

Audience: 

The workshop encourages participation from both academia and industry with an
emphasis on the theoretical and practical aspects of applying Semantic Web
technologies to the challenges of health care and the life sciences. We
encourage participation from: 

* Universities, Research Institutes and Centers 
* Health Care, Clinical, and Life Science Consortia 
* Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Companies 
* IT Solution Vendors 
* Government Agencies 

We invite papers that focus on the application of the Semantic Web to health
care and/or life sciences. 


Topics of Interest: 

*   Integration of health care and/or life science data using Semantic Web
technologies. 

*   Semantics of health care and/or life science data 

*   Semantic Web applications for health care and/or life science data

*   Semantic Web Services 

*   Ontology-based data integration

*   RDF/OWL data querying languages 

*   Experience using triple stores

Submissions: 

Prospective authors are invited to submit research or demo papers in any of the
areas listed above. Research papers should be 8-10 pages in length and demo
papers 1-2 pages in length. Instructions for preparing the papers (in Word and
Latex format) are available at the following Web site:
http://www2007.org/submission.php. All papers must be written in English and
submitted in PDF format in the same style as the main WWW2007 conference papers
via the EasyChair system (details to be announced).
 
E-mail any one of workshop organizers for questions relating to the submission
of papers. 

 

Important Dates: 
Paper submission:                                February 7, 2007.
Notification of acceptance:                 February 21, 2007 

Final version of accepted papers:        February 28, 2007
Workshop date:                                   May 9, 2007 (this may change)



Organizing Committee: 
Kei Cheung, Yale Center for Medical Informatics, Yale University 

(kei.cheung@yale.edu)

Huajun Chen, College of Computer Science, Zhejiang University

(huajunsir@zju.edu.cn)

Yimin Wang, Institute AIFB <http://www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/> , University of
Karlsruhe <http://www.uni-karlsruhe.de/> 

(ywa@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de)

Joanne Luciano, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School

(jluciano@genetics.med.harvard.edu)

Susie Stephens, Oracle

(susie.stephens@oracle.com)

Vipul Kashyap, Partners HealthCare System 

(vkashyap1@partners.org)

 

For more information on the workshop, the following workshop link at the
conference Web page at http://www2007.org/