News Release: W3C Workshop on Semantic Web for Life Sciences Draws Broad International Support

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) hosts a Workshop on Semantic Web 
for Life Sciences on October 27-28 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 
that will bring together for the first time a diverse and international 
group of scientists, technologists, and health industry experts to 
discuss the ways in which Semantic Web technology can help meet the 
challenge of publishing and sharing complex scientific data. The 
workshop will address the growing need for biological data networks 
that help advance human and machine understanding about diseases, 
therapies, and drug development.

For more information, please contact Karen Myers, W3C Media Relations 
Officer, at +1.617.253.5884 or +1.978.502.6218 (karen@w3.org) or 
contact the W3C Communications representative in your region, listed at 
the bottom of this email.

Editors' Note: A telephone briefing for the news media is scheduled for 
Monday, 1 November at 1:00 p.m. EST. Please contact Karen Myers for 
more information.

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W3C Workshop on Semantic Web for Life Sciences Draws Broad 
International Support

Participants to Explore Current and Potential Applications and Identify 
Future Coordination Efforts Needed

Web Resources:

This press release:
      In English: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/swls-pressrelease.html.en
      In French: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/swls-pressrelease.html.fr
      In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2004/10/swls-pressrelease.html.ja

W3C Workshop on Semantic Web for Life Sciences
      http://www.w3.org/2004/07/swls-ws.html

Semantic Web home page:
      http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 26 October 2004 -- The World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C) will host a Workshop on Semantic Web for Life Sciences October 
27-28 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA that will bring together for the 
first time a diverse and international group of scientists, 
technologists, and health industry experts to discuss the ways in which 
Semantic Web technology can help meet the challenge of publishing and 
sharing complex scientific data. The workshop will address the growing 
need for biological data networks that help advance human and machine 
understanding about diseases, therapies, and drug development. Through 
the use of new Web technologies that allow computers to do more useful 
work with complex biological data, researchers can more quickly advance 
human knowledge.

"The challenges posed by drug discovery can only be solved if we can 
integrate data across the many fields of life sciences," explained Tim 
Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium. "As we have 
seen in other industries, when one field adopts standard technologies 
for data, the impact is that its data becomes accessible to those in 
other fields, and barriers to sharing information crumble. It's at the 
heart of the Semantic Web."

"There is already a significant body of work in mapping life sciences 
knowledge into interconnected data networks based on the W3C's Semantic 
Web technologies," continued John Wilbanks, W3C Fellow. "With 
significant participation of the life sciences community, we're hoping 
that this workshop will bring more opportunities for information 
sharing to light, and to encourage work based on leading work in 
research and industry today."

Approximately 30 position papers will be presented that address how 
Semantic Web foundation technologies such as Resource Description 
Framework (RDF) and Web Ontology Language (OWL) are being used as an 
interoperable approach to reduce the barriers and costs associated with 
effective data integration, analysis, and collaboration. Following the 
opening keynote by Tim Berners-Lee, experts from the National Cancer 
Institute Center for Bioinformatics, the Swiss Institute of 
Bioinformatics/UniProt, Jackson Laboratories, and the University of 
Michigan School of Medicine will explain their use of Semantic Web 
technologies for public information frameworks (ontologies). 
Representatives from companies such as Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Astra 
Zeneca, Elsevier, HP, IBM, and Oracle Life Sciences will share case 
studies on topics such as knowledge management, scientific publishing, 
and the use of ontologies.

A W3C workshop is an opportunity to bring together W3C Members and the 
public to discuss possible future directions for W3C work. Position 
papers, presentations, and minutes from this workshop will be posted 
publicly on the W3C Web site after the workshop.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing 
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly 
run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory 
(CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics 
and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in 
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of 
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and 
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new 
technology. To date, nearly 400 organizations are Members of the 
Consortium. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

Contact Americas and Australia --
     Karen Myers, <karen@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5509 or +1.978.502.6218
Contact Europe, Africa and Middle East --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <yasuyuki@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

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