IVOA and Semantic Web Re: JOB: semantic data models, Glasgow, UK

Norman

I'm happy to see VO coming in the SW list, even if only in the form of  
a job announcement.
I've been lurking for quite a while to the progress of IVOA [1] towards 
adoption of semantic technologies, and once in a while jumped into 
discussions about it.
The Semantic Web community at large, IMO, is not aware enough of this 
field, which is a very exciting opportunity to test efficiency and 
scalability of semantic tools in "Big Science". So I take the 
opportunity to hit this nail. There is currently a proposed 
recommendation on IVOA  identifiers at [2]. Although this concerns only 
the "closed world" of astronomical data and not the WWW at large, this 
universe is big enough, and solutions proposed there should be of 
interest to the community at large.

[1] http://www.ivoa.net
[2] http://www.ivoa.net/Documents/latest/IDs.html

Norman Gray a écrit :
>
> Greetings.
>
> Initial expressions of interest are invited for two positions at the
> Department of Computing Science of the University of Glasgow, UK,
> for the EPSRC funded project:
>
> Explicator: Intelligent access to foreign data models
>
> The Virtual Observatory (VO) project within astronomy has two
> core problems: how to find data from scattered, and often
> under-resourced, archives, and once it is found how to make
> use of it, given that different archives will generally have
> significantly different models of how their data is
> structured.  The High-Energy Physics (HEP) community doesn't
> really have the first problem -- there are rather fewer
> important accelerators and detectors, and so fewer data
> sources -- but does have the second, since different
> facilities have different, and necessarily inflexible, ideas
> about how to structure the data they produce.
>
> An obvious approach is to define a consensus model, but
> this can fall victim to the usual social problems of
> standardisation.  This project will explore a radically different
> peer-to-peer approach, making it possible for software to
> extract the information it needs from a network of
> explanations.  This approach recognises that partial and
> indirect understanding of a dataset's structure can, in
> important cases, be enough for the software to do its work.
>
> This approach builds on both well-established Artificial
> Intelligence (AI) and Knowledge Engineering (KE) work, as
> well as on the emerging technologies from the Semantic Web
> community.  It separately builds on work from the Information
> Retrieval (IR) community on how to work with distributed,
> heterogeneous and uncertain data. The work will extend the
> successful TERRIER information retrieval platform
> (http://ir.dcs.gla.ac.uk/terrier) and its corresponding
> tools, developed at the University of Glasgow, with semantic
> web tools and techniques.
>
> This project is a collaboration between the Information
> Retrieval group in Glasgow's department of Computing Science,
> the X-Ray and Observational Astronomy group within
> Leicester's department of Physics and Astronomy, and the
> Experimental Particle Physics group in Glasgow's department
> of Physics and Astronomy.
>
> Applicants should have a good first degree in Computer
> Science or Physical Science, and preferably a PhD and
> research experience in fields related to the project topic
> such as Artificial Intelligence, Information Extraction,
> Information Retrieval, Semantic Web/Mapping/Technologies or
> related subjects.
>
> Informal enquiries to:
> Dr Iadh Ounis (CS, Glasgow)
>     tel: +44 (0)141 330 5652 or ounis@dcs.gla.ac.uk,
> Dr Norman Gray (VOTech, and P&A Leicester)
>     norman@astro.gla.ac.uk
> Dr Paul Millar (GridPP, and P&A Glasgow)
>     p.millar@physics.gla.ac.uk
>
> Starting date: early January 2007 or soon thereafter.
>
> Salary and duration details, and the formal job advertisement,
> are yet to be confirmed, but we anticipate employing successful
> candidates on grade 7 of the University's salary scales:
> £25,633 -£34,488 per annum
>
>
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>
> Norman Gray  /  http://nxg.me.uk
> eurovotech.org  /  University of Leicester, UK
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Tuesday, 24 October 2006 08:50:11 UTC