Introduction: Sean Bechhofer

Guus asked for short introductions to the list, so here goes...

I'm Sean Bechhofer, lecturer in the School of Computer Science at the
University of Manchester [1]. I've been interested in, and involved
with, the development of Semantic Web technologies for a while --
including development of infrastructure to support deployment of
Description Logic reasoners (DIG); building editors for SW languages
(OilEd); and building conceptual hypermedia systems (COHSE). I was a
member of WebOnt, contributing primarily to implementation experience
and the OWL test suites. Despite that experience I'm back for another
shot :-).

With respect to the work of the SWD WG, I'm interested in how one
might provide access to SKOS information sources for
applications. When working with OWL, we found it useful to provide an
API for access to OWL ontologies rather than working at the RDF level
[2]. The API has been used in a number of different tools such as
Protege and SWOOP and helps to provide standardised access to the
content of the ontologies -- OWL ontologies are not just static, but
can be seen as objects that offer services. I believe a similar
approach to providing access to SKOS sources would be beneficial.

Another hat I wear is as Research Area Manager for the EU Network of
Excellence KnowledgeWeb [3]. Along with Guus (who is Scientific
Director) I would be interested in exploring opportunities for
collaboration between the WG and KWeb.

Looking forward to working with you all.

Cheers,

	Sean

[1] http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk
[2] http://owl.man.ac.uk/api.shtml
[3] http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org

--
Sean Bechhofer
School of Computer Science
University of Manchester
sean.bechhofer@manchester.ac.uk
http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/people/bechhofer

Received on Tuesday, 10 October 2006 15:41:52 UTC