Ph.D. position - Semantic web/distributed systems - University of Nantes/LINA

Ph.D. position : Man-machine collaboration processes for continuous 
knowledge extraction using distributed semantic wikis. LINA/University 
of Nantes


This Ph.D. is part of Kolflow, a research project funded by the the 
French national research agency,  starting in 2011 and ending in July 2014.

Kolflow aims at building a social semantic space where humans 
collaborate with smart agents in order to produce knowledge 
understandable by humans and machines. Humans are able to understand the 
actions of smart agents. Smart agents are able to understand actions of 
humans. Kolflow targets the co-evolution of content and knowledge as the 
result of interactions of humans and machines. If human-machine 
collaboration can be the key to ensure co-evolution of content and 
knowledge, such collaboration can fail if not managed.

This PhD subject focuses on two aspects of distributed semantic social 
spaces:

   1. on the representation and enactment of knowledge extraction
      processes in the context of man-machine collaboration in a social
      semantic space. The PhD will investigate how to extend a
      distributed semantic wiki in order to support declarative
      collaborative processes. These processes will handle the
      continuous integration of contributions of knowledge extraction by
      smart agents and humans. These processes have to ensure the
      non regression of the system and consequently, makes the
      man-machine collaboration stable and sustainable.
   2. on the management of consistency of distributed semantic spaces
      relying on Commutative Replicated Data Types (CRDTs). The PhD will
      investigate the development of specific CRDTs for replicating
      semantic data  across an network of semantic peers. This data type
      must be evaluated on real semantic web data in order to measure
      the overhead of this new datatype.

The candidate should have a background in semantic web and distributed 
systems.

Application are open until end of Spring 2011.

http://atlas.lina.univ-nantes.fr/gdd/members/molli/kolflow-2011

Contacts :

    * Pascal.Molli@univ-nantes.fr , http://member.acm.org/~pascal.molli
      <http://member.acm.org/%7Epascal.molli>,  Full Professor,
      University Of Nantes, Head of GDD Team
    * Hala.Skaf@univ-nantes.fr, Associate Professor, University of Nantes