Semantic Web Technologies course (72010) - 2009/2010


This page contains contact information, schedule, and reading material for the Semantic Web Technologies course taught by Jos de Bruijn and Maria Keet.


General Information

Aim: The aim of the course is to make the students familiar with the Semantic Web, with technologies used on the Semantic Web, and with applications using Semantic Web technologies. The course will focus on the theoretical background of various languages on the Semantic Web such as RDF, SPARQL, and OWL, and the practical use of these languages on the Semantic Web. In addition, the course will focus on ontology engineering and important application areas for Semantic Web technology, namely the Life Sciences.

Course location: the lectures will be held in Via Sarnesi 1, Room E412, from 01.10.2007 to 26.01.2008 each Monday 14.00-16.00 and Tuesday 10.30-11.30 (minus holidays; any changes can be found in the RIS calendar).

Contact information: Maria Keet
Office hours: by prior arrangement via e-mail
KRDB Research Centre
Faculty of Computer Science
University of Bozen-Bolzano
via della Mostra 4, 2nd floor
Uni: http://www.inf.unibz.it/krdb
Home: www.meteck.org
Blog: keet blog
tel (office): 0471 016 127
email: {surname}@inf.unibz.it


Lectures
Schedule and topics (subject to changes): Note: the material and reading suggestions of the first part by Jos de Bruijn are assumed to be known for this part of the course.

1. Introduction, Web Ontology Language (OWL) (Nov 16, 2009)

The first part of the lecture consists of an outline of the rationale and and scope of the topics that will pass the revue. The second part introduces OWL, the family of Web Ontology Languages.

Related blog posts: Semantic Web Technologies course part 2: start of an experiment and The Web Ontology Languages

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material



2. OWL 2 (Nov 17, 2009)

This lectures continues with the overview of the OWL languages, and OWL 2 in particular.

Related blog post: The Web Ontology Languages

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Optional reading

Reference material



3. Ontology engineering 1: Top-down (Nov 23, 2009)

We look at the "historical" development of ontology engineering since the mid 1990s, and what they are used for. One step of ontology development is the use of foundational ontologies (such as BFO, DOLCE, GFO) and their formalisations (on paper in FOL, in OWL DL, Isabelle).

Related blog post: Ontology engineering Top-down and Bottom-up

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material



4. Ontology engineering 2: Bottom-up (Nov 24, 2009)

Reusing ontologies and extracting ontology-like artifacts from legacy material.

Related blog post: Ontology engineering Top-down and Bottom-up

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material



5. Ontology engineering 3: Methodologies (Nov 30, 2009)

This lecture takes a closer look at parameters for ontology design, methods (such as OntoClean, glassbox reasoning), and more comprehensive methodologies (Methontology, MoKi, NeOn methodology).

Related blog post: Methods and methodologies

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Optional reading

Reference material



6. Ontology engineering 4: Parts and temporal aspects (Dec 1, 2009)

This lecture focuses on part-whole relations, which are deemed a core relation in subject domains such as medicine, biology, geographic information systems, and manufacturing. Some basic notions of temporal knowledge (LTL/CTL, time ontology) will also pass the revue.

Related blog post: Part-whole relations and time

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material



7. Ontology engineering 5: Dealing with uncertainty and vaguenes (Dec 14, 2009)

This lecture covers probabilistic, possibilistic, fuzzy, and rough ontologies.

Related blog post: Dealing with uncertainty and vaguenes

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Optional reading

Reference material

none yet, but there are some tools you might want to try out and there was a W3C incubator group for Uncertainty Reasoning on the WWW


8. SWT for the Life Sciences 1: Background and data integration (Dec 15, 2009)

We fist look at the kick-off by the Gene Ontology Consortium and then more recent advances that aim for data integration and the use of Semantic Web Technologies in one way or another.

Related blog post: SWT for HCLS: background and data integration

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material

none


9. SWT for the Life Sciences 2: Successes and challenges for ontologies (Dec 21, 2009)

Successes and challenges for using OWL ontologies in the life sciences, with two success stories and an overview of challenges as viewed from the ontologist's perspective.

Related blog post: Successes and challenges for ontologies in the life sciences

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Recommended reading

Reference material

none


10. SWT for the Life Sciences 3: Text processing and ontologies (Dec 22, 2009)

This lecture focuses on the contributions from natural language processing to SWT and bio-ontologies, in particular regarding the efforts in NLP-driven ontology learning, ontology population, and sorting search results.

Related blog post: SWLS and text processing and ontologies

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Optional reading (recommended for the EMLCT students)

Reference material

none


11. SWT for the Life Sciences 4: bioRDF, workflows and services (Jan 11, 2009)

There are several other topics in the SWLS arena, such as bioRDF, scientific workflows, and Semantic Web services.

Related blog post: BioRDF and Workflows

Slides - Handouts

Basic reading

Optional reading

Reference material



12. SWT for the Life Sciences 5: Social aspects and recap course content (Jan 12, 2009)

Wrap up, where we go through social aspects of realising the semantic web for the life sciences and summarise the contents of the previous lectures (part 2 of the course, that is--the recap of part 1 is on 19-1).

Related blog post: Social Aspects

Basic reading

Optional reading

Reference material



Supplementary material

- Other resources you might find of use: - If you like this course, you also may be interested in these courses: Non-classical Logics, Computational Logic, Formal Methods, and Knowledge Representation (Description Logics), among others.