CFP: Semantic Intelligent Middleware for Interoperable Systems (ECAI workshop)

Please accept apologies to the multiple receptions.
-------------------------------------------
                              CALL FOR PAPERS

                                Workshop on
    Semantic Intelligent Middleware for Interoperable Systems
                                  (SIMIS)

               http://babage.dia.fi.upm.es/simis04/index.html

                                at ECAI 2004
                       http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/


                     August 22-27, 2004, Valencia, Spain

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

AI techniques and technologies are increasingly finding applications 
in the area of intelligent middleware for distributed computing 
systems. Perhaps the semantic web and multiagent systems are the most 
obvious example of this trend. In the semantic web area, languages 
such as RDF, DAML+OIL and OWL are being used to describe domain 
knowledge in semantic web applications; and semantic web services 
enrich web services with ontologies, providing the infrastructure 
that will allow more advanced and distributed reasoning capabilities 
for the web and on the web. In the multiagent systems community, 
researchers build intelligent agents, capable of reasoning about how 
to cooperate to solve complex problems.

In both scenarios knowledge is used extensively: for adding meaning 
(using ontologies), enabling service discovery and composition (using 
annotations and reasoning for service matchmaking), and coordination 
processes (using negotiation strategies).  Knowledge deployed in 
semantic web applications, semantic web services and in multiagent 
systems is pervasive, distributed, heterogeneous, and dynamic in 
nature.
One of the main issues is therefore to allow distributed systems to 
achieve a degree of interoperation that goes beyond simply acting as 
glue to link different systems. Intelligent middleware aims to 
achieve the highest degree of interoperability, where systems can 
also identify and react to the semantics of data, setting off 
pre-emptive actions in the best interests of their stakeholders. For 
this reason, many research communities are focusing their attention 
to semantic interoperability, where this is now not only restricted 
to the reconciliation of different views on a domain (ontologies), 
but it also includes reconciliation of different interaction 
mechanisms (prescribing how systems can act together) and/or 
different coordination mechanisms.

Our aim in this workshop is to bring these closely related 
communities together, with the aim of exploring the issues, problems, 
solutions, and technologies that are faced by those attempting to 
such 'semantic, intelligent middleware'

TOPICS OF INTEREST include (but not limited to):

The workshop addresses the following topics:
1. Foundational research on:
o Semantic matching,
o Ontology Alignment,
o Ontology Mapping,
o Mappings between ontologies and other resources (DB, lexicons, etc.)
o Languages for representing mappings
o Metrics for measuring semantic similarity and semantic distance
o Semantic based coordination
o Semantic-based service composition and discovery
o Semantic routing in P2P systems
o Semantic matchmaking
o Meaning negotiation

2. Methodological approaches to semantic interoperability on the 
areas of the semantic web, semantic web services and Multi-agent 
Systems.

3. Technological approaches to semantic interoperability. In particular: 
o Inference engines for reasoning with mappings
o Inferences engines reasoning with distributed knowledge
o Advanced tools for automatic mapping discovery
o Interoperability studies
o Technological solutions for all the sub-topics listed in point 1.

4. Demonstration systems for achieving semantic interoperability in 
the areas of: Semantic Web, Multi-agent systems and Semantic Web 
services


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Jérôme Euzenat (INRIA Rhône-Alpes)

Asunción Gómez-Pérez (Contact Person)
Facultad de Informática
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Campus de Montegancedo sn
28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid Spain
Phone: 34.91-3367439
Fax: 34.91.3524819
Mail: asun@fi.upm.es

Mike  Wooldridge (University of Liverpool)

SUBMISSIONS

Interested participants are requested to submit their papers in PDF 
or Postscript, no later than April 15th, 2004. Papers should not 
exceed 15 pages in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) 
format
(http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,10735,5-40209-0-0-0,00.html).

Submission will be done through the website
http://babage.dia.fi.upm.es/simis04/index.html

All submissions will be refereed by at least 3 members of the Program 
Committee.

The proceedings will be made available online (certainly, in the CEUR 
collection). We are considering the possibility of publishing the 
best papers of the WS (according to the members of the programme 
committee) in either a special issue in a journal, or in a volume.

IMPORTANT DATES

- paper submission : April 15
- notification of acceptance: May 15
- camera ready copy : June 7
- workshop : between August 22 and 24

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Joost Breuker, University of Amsterdam, NL
Richard Benjamins, iSOCO, ES
Christopher Bussler,  DERI, IE
Oscar Corcho, Politecnical University Madrid, ES
Stephan Decker, DERI, IE 
Ian Dickinson, HP Labs, UK
John Domingue, KMI, Open University, UK
Dieter Fensel, IFI, Innsbruck University, AT
Mariano Fernández-López, UPM, ES
Tim Finin, UMBC, US
Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento, IT 
Carole Goble, University of Manchester, UK
Michael Gruninger, NIST, US
Matthias Klusch, DFKI, DE
Manolis Koubarakis, TUC, GR
Manuel Lama Penin, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, ES
Michael Luck, University of Southampton, UK
Enrico Motta, KMI, Open University, UK
Mark Musen, Stanford University, US
Natasha Noy, Stanford University, US
Terry Payne, University of Southampton, UK
Omer Rana, Cardiff University, UK
Norman Sadeh, CMU/VU Amsterdam, NL
Guus Schreiber, Free University of Amsterdam, NL
Carles Sierra, IIIA, CSIC, ES
Steffen Staab, University of Karlsruhe, DE
Rudi Studer, University of Karlsruhe, DE
York Sure, University of Karlsruhe, DE
Heiner Stuckenshmidt, VUA, NL
Valentina Tamma, University of Liverpool, UK
Mike Uschold, Boeing Corporation, US
Ubbo Visser, University of Bremen, DE
Steven Willmott, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, ES

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2004 08:09:17 UTC