Final CFP: ESAS 2006, 18-21 Sept. 2006, Chicago, USA.

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Apology for Cross-Posting
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*** DEADLINE EXTENDED till 14 April ***
FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS 

International Workshop on Engineering Semantic Agent Systems (ESAS 2006)

September 18-21, 2OO6, Chicago, USA

In conjunction with 
30th IEEE Annual Int’l Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC
2006)
(http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2006/)

And co-located with IEEE CS CoSTEP Conferences
(http://conferences.computer.org/CoSTEP/) 
2006 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2006)
2006 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2006)
2006 Int. Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP 2006)


WORKSHOP THEME:

Applying Semantic Web Technologies in Research and Development of Software
Agents, Mobile Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Semantic web technologies render dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, shared
content equally accessible to human reader and software agents. Here the vision
is to achieve a synergy with multi-agent systems (MAS) technologies whereby
agents will be in the center stage. Distributed agents functioning autonomously
can utilize semantic Web content to gather and aggregate knowledge, reason and
infer new results towards achieving their goals and generating new knowledge.
Such knowledge in turn may be disseminated and used to achieve the shared goal
of the agents system.

Other workshops have so far missed to garner the synergy of both technologies by
taking up either the semantic web aspect or the agent aspect of the common
research issue. Topics of interest span a wide spectrum of both theory and
practice of agent architectures, software agents, mobile agents, autonomous
semantic agents, context-aware intelligent agents, agents as semantic web
services, multi-agent systems, agent communities, cooperation and goal seeking
through sharing policy and ontology, safety & security in systems, other QoS
issues, ... 

Mobile agent and MAS technologies are crucial in realizing multi-party
application systems. Semantic Web technologies augment MAS by enabling agents
with functioning based on the semantics of their mission and of the world around
them. Agents, implemented as Web services in developing distributed control and
processing applications, entail interesting consequences such as situation
awareness, semantic composition of services, context sensitive long-lasting
transactions, effecting service policies and quality levels, etc. Complex
applications could become realizable with novel features such as factory floor
automation for flexible production, collaborative discovery of uncharted
geography (for example, cooperative labyrinth discovery), traffic management and
info dissemination with facilitation of emergency services, financial markets
forecasting with optimization of portfolio gain, etc.

We envisage a strong undercurrent of intelligent software agents, mobile agents,
and MAS running through this workshop. Side by side with the use of semantic Web
technologies, several foci of interest are threaded:

* Software Agents, Mobile Agents, and MAS: issues relating to architecture,
implementation, coordination, service levels, etc. of semantic or otherwise
agents. 

* Agent, MAS and Semantic Web Technologies: concomitant utilization of specific
technologies in agent, MAS, and semantic Web implementations; semantic agent
communities & applications; case studies of best-practice MAS applications;
projects in the making;

* Ontologies for Agents and MAS: agent cooperation ontology; ontology of
workflow in MAS; ontologies for distributed applications; sharing and semantic
interoperability; discovery and operations on ontologies;

* Platforms for agent and MAS implementation: languages, frameworks, tools,
integrated development environments and software engineering practices
supporting semantic or otherwise software agent & MAS architectures,
coordination, trust & security mechanisms, description, discovery and
composition of agent-based services. 

* Other subjects of relevance in software agents, mobile agents, agent-based and
multi-agent systems. 


IMPORTANT DATES 

Deadline for paper submission has been extended till April 14.
May 15, 2006 notification of acceptance. 
June 16, 2006 camera-ready due. 


SUBMISSION

Original papers not being submitted to journals or other conferences will be
considered. All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee
according to its originality, significance, correctness, presentation and
relevance. We encourage authors to present position papers on practical studies
and experiments, critique of existing work, emerging issues, and novel ideas
under development. 

Papers must be submitted electronically via the ESAS 2006 Submission Page
(http://compsac.cs.iastate.edu/ESAS/). Manuscripts will be limited to 8 pages
including all figures, tables, and references. The format of submitted papers
must follow the IEEE conference proceedings guidelines (i.e., 8.5" x 11",
Two-Column Format (PDF, DOC); Layout Guide (PDF, DOC). 

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings of the 30th IEEE
Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2006). At least one of
the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant of the
workshop for the paper to be included in the proceedings.


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS 

Atilla ELCI (Chairman)
Internet Technology Research Center, and 
Dept. of Computer Engineering, 
Eastern Mediterranean University, 
Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, Turkey
Atilla.Elci at emu.edu.tr

Mamadou Tadiou KONE (Co-Chair)
Dept. of Computer Science, 
Faculty of Science and Engineering, 
Laval University, Québec, Canada
Kone.Mamadou at ift.ulaval.ca

Tharam S. DILLON (Co-Chair)
eXel Lab and Dean, 
Faculty of Information Technology, 
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
tharam at it.uts.edu.au


PROGRAM COMMITTEE

*	Asuman DOGAC,Middle East Technical University,
	Turkey
*	Michal PECHOUCEK, Czech Technical University, 
	Czech Republic 
*	Hasan DAVULCU, Arizona State University,
	U.S.A.
*	Marin DIMITROV, OntoText Lab,
	Bulgaria
*	Alex ABRAMOVICH, Gordon College,
	Israel
*	Vadim ERMOLAYEV, Zaporozhye State University, 
	Ukraine
*	M. Osman UNALIR, Egean University,
	Turkey
*	M.Adeeb GHONAIMY, Ain Shams University, 
	Egypt
*	Martin GAEDKE, University of Karlsruhe, 
	Germany
*	Aleksander PIVK, Jozef Stefan Insitute, 
	Slovenia
*	Rainer UNLAND, University of Essen, 
	Germany
*	Stephen J.H. YANG, National Central University, 
	Taiwan
*	Jan TREUR, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 
	The Netherlands
*	Michael STOLLBERG, DERI Innsbruck, 
	Austria, and
	Stanford University, USA
*	Jiming LIU, Hong Kong Baptist University,
	Hong Kong
*	John-Jules Meyer, Universiteit Utrecht,
	The Netherlands
*	Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology,
	Austria
*	Goran Zugic, Semantion, Inc.,
	Canada
*	Eyal OREN, DERI Galway,
	Ireland
*	Brahim Medjahed, University of Michigan,
	USA
*	Vijayan Sugumaran,Oakland University,
	USA
*	Elizabeth Chang, Curtin University of Technology,
	Australia
*	Ismail Khalil Ibrahim, Johannes Kepler University,
	Austria
*	Mohamed Aborizka, Arab Academy for Science and Technology,
	Egypt
*	Eui-Hyun Jung, Hanyang University,
	Korea
*	Mustafa Jarrar, STARLab, Vrije Universiteit,
        Belgium
*	Giancarlo Guizzardi, Laboratory for Applied Ontology (ISTC-CNR),
        Italy
*	Alia Abdelmoty, Cardiff University,
        UK
*	Stanislav Pokraev, Telematica Instituut,
        The Nederlands
*	Ahmad Kayed, Applied Science University, Jordan;
        SNC- Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (on leave)
*	C. Maria Keet, University of Bozen-Bolzano,
        Italy
*	Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento,
	Italy
*	Ibrahim Gokcen, General Electric Co. Global Research Center, 
        USA
*	Pieter De Leenheer, Semantics Technology & Appls Research Lab., Vrije
Universiteit, 
        Belgium
*	Paolo Giorgini, University of Trento, 
        Italy
*	Vitaliy Mezhuev, Berdyansk State University, 
        Ukraine
*	R. Rajesh, Bharathiar University, 
        India
*	Laurentiu  Vasiliu, DERI Galway
	Ireland
*	Markus Schaal, Bilkent Univ.
	Turkey
*	Khalil A. Abuosba, Arab Academy- B & F
	Jordan 

The Program Committee is being formed. Those interested in joining may contact
the workshop chairperson Atilla.Elci at EMU.edu.tr by supplying the following
information: 
* Name, position and affiliation 
* Contact numbers and mailing address 
* E-mail and Web site addresses
* Research interests and a list of relevant publications
* A brief biography. 


LIKELY PARTICIPANTS

We expect researchers and practitioners of software agents, mobile agents, MAS
and semantic Web technologies to propose papers and to attend the workshop. We
are seeking position papers addressing all aspects of agents and agent-based
systems, semantic or otherwise. Researchers working on the following and related
subjects are especially encouraged: realization of multi-agent systems through
semantic web technology, ontology-based agent applications, distributed control
and processing applications, security, interoperability, service levels and
quality issues in such systems. Enterprises and research centers developing
languages, IDEs and tools that are of use in implementing the above are
encouraged to propose demo and tutorial. Our objective is to explore unifying
software engineering paradigms used in realizing the semantic MAS applications
across domains.


POST-WORKSHOP ACTIVITY
The authors of a number of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended
version of their papers for possible publication in Multiagent and Grid Systems
- An International Journal, IOS Press: ISSN 1574-1702
http://www.iospress.nl/flyers_j/15741702.pdf. A special issue may as well be
possible.


GENERAL INQUIRIES

For updated information, please refer to
http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2006/ESAS.html or contact the workshop
chairperson Atilla.Elci at EMU.edu.tr.

Received on Sunday, 2 April 2006 16:05:15 UTC