KnowledgE ENgineering team
Funded projects - Recent highlights - Members and collaboratorsThe aim of the team's activities is to contribute computing theory, methods, and techniques to the knowledge society.
The scope of the KEEN team is knowledge engineering in its broad sense. This includes ontology engineering, the Semantic Web, intelligent (logic-based, ontology-driven) conceptual modelling, and natural language generation.
Research projects
- KeBoNa: Knowledge-driven bootstrapping of computational language resources for Niger-Congo B languages, CPRR grant funded by the National Research Foundation. (2024-2026)
- Exchanges in the project STormwAteR and WastewAteR networkS heterogeneous data AI-driven management (STARWARS), funded under European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the MSCA (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions)-SE (Staff Exchanges). 2023-2026.
- ALMA – Modeling of Knowledge Networks in Medieval Romance Speaking Europe Based on Linguistic Data, led by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, funded by the German Akademienprogramm. Aug 2022 - 2025.
- Various funding sources over the past years; mainly: NRF, HPI Research School (at UCT), UCT, DOT4D@UCT, ULPDO@UKZN.
- Recently completed projects:
- Partner lab in the ReproHum Project, Investigating Reproducibility of Human Evaluations in NLP, led by Anya Belz as Principal Investigator (ADAPT Research Centre, Dublin City University; University of Aberdeen). Funded by EPSRC UK. 2022-2024.
- MoRe NL: foundations of a Modular Realisation Engine for Nguni Languages, funded by the NRF (2020-2022)
- QueST: Querying Smart Text, approved for funding by SADiLaR.
- Teaching material development grant for the "An introduction to Ontology Engineering" textbook, funded by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development project at UCT. Project duration: 2019-2020 (1 year + top-up funding in 2021).
- Erasmus+ funding on ontologies and machine learning with Poznan University of Technology (2020-2022), where I was supposed to be PI with Agnieszka Lawrynowicz and do exchanges on that topic.
- ARISTOTELES: Methodology and algorithms for automatic revision of ontologies in task based scenarios. Funded by the Polish National Science Center (2015-2018) with PI Agnieszka Lawrynowicz.
- Medical Machine Translation, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, UK. Funded by the EPSRC, UK (2017-2018).
- GeNi: A Grammar Engine for Nguni natural language Interfaces. Funded by the NRF (2015-2017).
- Foundations for Nguni natural language generation systems. UCT Science Faculty Launching grant (2014-2017).
Recent highlights
- Zola Mahlaza led the work on isiZulu noun classification based on replicating the ensemble approach for Runyankore, which he will present at the First Workshop on Language Models for Low-Resource Languages (LoResLM25), co-located with COLING'25. It was in collaboration with honours students Imaan Sayed and Alexander van der Leek.
- Maria Keet presented the paper On the Roles of Competency Questions in Ontology Engineering at EKAW'24 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which was joint work with Zubeida Khan.
- Richard Taylor demo-ed TRENDy at EKAW'24 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 26-28, 2024, which was joint work with his honour project team member, Stephan Maree and supervised by Maria Keet.
- Zola Mahlaza, in collaboration with Tadiwa Magwenzi, Maria Keet, and Langa Khumalo, had a paper accepted at INLG'24, on automatically generating isiZulu words from Indo-Arabic numerals, which will be presented at the conference in Tokyo, Japan, September 23-27, 2024.
- Leighton Dawson presented the paper on ontology design pattern subsitutions emanating from his Masters dissertation, at the FOIS'24 demonstrations track, held in Enschede, the Netherlands, held from 15-19 July 2024.
- Toky Raboanary presented our reproducibility paper at ReproNLP'24 in Torino, Italy, which was led by Zola Mahlaza as main author, and with Kyle Seakgwa and Maria Keet from the KEEN team as co-authors.
- Maria presented CoSMo at SAC'24 in Avila, Spain. The research was carried out in collaboration with Pablo Fillottrani from the Universidad Nacional del Sur and Kutz Arrieta; the CRC of the paper: CoSMo: A multilingual modular language for Content Selection Modelling.
- New 3-year project funded by the NRF, which will look into knowledge-driven bootstrapping approaches of computational language resources with a focus on Niger-Congo B languages.
- Conference organisation: involvement in the organisation of International Conference on Natural Language Generation 2023 (INLG'23) and Symposium on Conceptual Modeling Education 2023 (SCME'23), Computing and Sustainable Societies 2023 (COMPASS'23), and recently also ISWC'22 resources track, IJCAI 2021 Demonstrations track, and the 22nd International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2020), and others.
Members and collaborators
Leader
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Maria Keet |
Colleagues
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Zola Mahlaza |
Postgraduate students
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Mary-Jane Antia (PhD; 2019-) area: ontology engineering, competency questions |
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Toky Raboanary (PhD; 2019-) area: ontology-based question generation |
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Tadiwa Magwenzi (MSc, 2024-) topic: event-centric knowledge graphs |
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Phuthang Makhupane (MSc, 2023-) topic: bootstrapping for ontology verbalization |
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Leighton Dawson (MSc, 2020-) topic: ODPs |
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Masixole Nkumbesi (M. IT; 2024-) topic: isiXhosa NLP |
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Crystal Yang (M. IT; 2022-) topic: knowledge management in legal IT |
BSc honours (4th-year) students
- Stephan Maree and Richard Taylor: temporal conceptual data modelling
- Jordy Kafwe and Matthew Craig: multilingual NLG
- Imaan Sayed and Imaan Salie: multilingual NLG
- Alexander van der Leek and Jonathan Mopp: isiZulu noun classification
- Sanele Dlamini
- Tadiwa Magwenzi
- Imaan Sayed
- Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina - Depto. Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación (Pablo Fillottrani)
- Poznan University of Technology, Poland - Laboratory of Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence (Agnieszka Lawrynowicz)
- South African Centre for Digital Language Resources SADiLaR (Langa Khumalo)
- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa (Zubeida Khan)
- University of Waterloo, Canada - Computer Science department (David Toman)
- Digital Libraries Lab, UCT (Hussein Suleman)
- School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK, (Kenneth Heafield, Alexandra Birch)
- Jacques de Lange (M. IT; 2021-2024); topic: NLP with SA English
- Kyle Seakgwa (M. IT; 2021-2024); topic: knowledge extraction for artificial moral agents
- Zola Mahlaza (PhD; 2019-2022); topic: data-to-text NLG for weather bulletins in isiXhosa and isiZulu
- Frances Gillis-Webber (2019-2022; PhD student); topic: multilingual ontologies
- Joan Byamugisha (PhD; 2015-2019); topic: Runyankore knowledge-to-text NLG for healthcare
- Yamiko Msosa (PhD; 2014-2018); topic: semantics-driven linincal practice guideline changes
- Zubeida Khan (PhD; 2014-2017); topic: ontology modularity
- Zola Mahlaza (MSc; 2016-2017); topic: data-to-text NLG for weather bulletins in isiXhosa and isiZulu
- Cameron Kyle (M. IT; 2017); topic: CNLs for finance
- Joseph Goldblatt (CSC2005Z undergraduate research): explainability of semantic tableaux
- George Rautenbach (CSC2005Z undergraduate research): Modelling Ethical Theories for Artificial Moral Agents
- Zahraa Hoosen (2023; BSc honours): WiNG: Wikidata support applications
- Tadiwa Magwenzi (2023; BSc honours): WiNG: Wikidata support applications
- Muhammad Hassiem (2023; BSc honours): Generating adaptive learning materials: An Automated Adaptive Learning System
- Nervesh Naidoo (2023; BSc honours): Generating adaptive learning materials: An Automated Adaptive Learning System
- Chiranjeev Nathoo (2023; BSc honours): Generating adaptive learning materials: An Automated Adaptive Learning System
- Liam Talberg (2023; BSc honours): StuQuestions - Investigating Methods for Automatic Question Generation from Lecture Transcripts
- Adam Vere (2023; BSc honours): StuQuestions - Investigating Methods for Automatic Question Generation from Lecture Transcripts
- Daniel Guttmann (2023; BSc honours): ImprovedErrMsgs - Improving Text-Based Programming Error Messages for South African Students
- Mandisa Tunzi (2023; BSc honours): ImprovedErrMsgs - Improving Text-Based Programming Error Messages for South African Students
- Ana Dauane (2021; BSc honours): SALSAEditor: Creation of a Domain Specific Modelling Language for Latin Dances
- James Kriel (2021; BSc honours): Video Annotation as a Tool to Supplement in-person DanceClasses
- Junior Moraba (2021; BSc honours): Development of a Finance Based IsiZulu NLG System that Verbalises Numbers in Context
- Amy Solomons (2021; BSc honours): A Personal Finance Management Mobile Application Incorporating NLG
- Kouthar Dollie (2020; BSc honours): Social Dance App -- MetaDance
- Carryn Joseph (2020; BSc honours): Social Dance App -- Dancebase
- Alec Badenhorst (2020; BSc honours): CASEText: A computational analysis of SA English
- Umar Khan (2020; BSc honours): CASEText: corpora for SA English
- Mandisa Baleni (2020; BSc honours): KnowDat: Materialisation of deductions (as part of KnowID)
- Bradley Malgas (2020; BSc honours): KnowDat: graphical query interface (as part of KnowID)
- Alka Baijnath (2019; BSc honous): Salsational Dance Application
- Jordy Chetty (2019; BSc honous): Salsational Dance Application
- Micara Marajh (2019; BSc honous): Salsational Dance Application
- Kyle Robbertze (2019; BSc honous): ontology-annotated smart textbooks
- Steve Wang (2019; BSc honous): ontology-based question generation
- Jarryd Dunn (2019; BSc honous): comparing end-to-end models and templates for Generating text (main supervisor: Zola Mahlaza)
- Matthew Poulter (2019; BSc honous): comparing end-to-end models and templates for Generating text (main supervisor: Zola Mahlaza)
- Nthabiseng Mashiane (2017; BSc honous); topic: spelling error detection for isiXhosa
- Frida Mjaria (2017; BSc honous); topic: spelling error correction for isiZulu
- Siseko Neti (2017; BSc honous); topic: spelling error detection for isiXhosa
- Nikhil Gilbert (2017; BSc honous); topic: Automated marker for language learning exercises
- Soham Singh (2017; BSc honous); topic: difficulty levels with the automated marker for langauge learning
- Kgotso Nkosi (2017; BSc honous)
- Ameerah Allie (2016; BSc honous); topic: Test-driven development of ontologies
- Kieren Davies (2016; BSc honours); topic: Toward Test-driven development of ontologies
- Sindiso Mkhatshwa (2021, 2022, scientific programmer): MoReNL project, ToCT tool
- Toky Raboanary (2019, 2022; scientific programmer): MoReNL project, OE tools
- Chiadika Emeruem (2021, RA/programmer): OE tools and tutorial
- Steve Wang (2021, RA/programmer): OE tools and tutorial
- Junior Moraba (2021, RA/programmer): MoReNL project, on isiZulu numbers
- Kouthar Dollie (2020; research assistant): MorReNL project
- Blessed Chitamba (2020; scientific programmer): MorReNL project
- Gerald Ngumbulu (2020; scientific programmer): MorReNL project
- Zola Mahlaza (2019; RA): OE tutorial
- Frances Gillis-Webber (2019; RA): OE tutorial
- Michael Harrison (2019; scientific programmer): OE tools
- Stephan Jamieson (2019; scientific programmer): KnowID
- Zola Mahlaza (2017; scientific programmer); on the isiZulu verb grammar and medical machine translation
- Siseko Neti (2017; scientific programmer); isiZulu grammar and spellchecker
- Norman Pilusa (2016, 2017; scientific programmer); isiZulu spellchecker
- Takunda Chirema (2016; scientific programmer); a tool for modelling with relations and roles
- Musa Xakaza (2016; scientific programmer); linking the verbaliser to Owlready