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.
Funded research projects
- Various funding sources over the past years; mainly: NRF, HPI Research School in Computer Science for Africa (CS4A) at UCT, DOT4D@UCT, ULPDO@UKZN.
- 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).
- Recently completed projects:
- ARISTOTELES: Methodology and algorithms for automatic revision of ontologies in task based scenarios. Funded by the Polish National Science Center (2015-2018) and spearheaded by 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
- Paper at COLING'18 on pluralizing nouns across agglutinating Bantu languages, with Joan Byamugisha and Maria Keet. (paper)
- Paper at FOIS'18 on part-whole relations and Zulu language and culture, with Maria Keet and Langa Khumalo. (paper)
- Paper based on Zola Mahlaza's MSc thesis on verb similarity for isiXhosa and isiZulu, which is being presented at SACISIT'18. (paper)
- Conference organisation of the 4th Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO'18), the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO'18), and 10th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS'18).
- Two papers emanating from BSc Honours projects: with Frida Mjaria on the isiZulu spelling corrector at IST-Africa'18 (paper) and with Nikhil Gilbert on language learning exercises at CNL'18 (paper).
- Graduation of three postgraduate student members in 2018: Zola Mahlaza, Cameron Kyle, and Yamiko Msosa.
Members and collaborators
LeaderMaria Keet
Postgraduate students
- Mary-Jane Antia (PhD; 2019-); area: ontology engineering, competency questions
- Toky Raboanary (PhD; 2019-); area: ontology engineering
- Zola Mahlaza (PhD; 2018-); topic: isiXhosa and isiZulu NLG
- Joan Byamugisha (PhD, 2015-submitted); topic: Runyankore knowledge-to-text NLG for healthcare
- Iman Neguib (M. IT; 2017-); topic: temporal conceptual models and databases
- Alka Baijnath: "DeDance: Encoding and Decoding Dance" project
- Jordy Chetty: "DeDance: Encoding and Decoding Dance" project
- Micara Marajh: "DeDance: Encoding and Decoding Dance" project
- Kyle Robbertze: "Quest: Querying Smart textbooks" project
- Steve Wang: "Quest: Querying Smart textbooks" project
- Jarryd Dunn: "E2ET: A comparison of end-to-end models and templates for Generating text" project (main supervisor: Zola Mahlaza)
- Matthew Poulter: "E2ET: A comparison of end-to-end models and templates for Generating text" project (main supervisor: Zola Mahlaza)
- TBA for 2019
- 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)
- University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa - Linguistics program and University Language Planning and Development Office (Langa Khumalo)
- University of Waterloo, Canada - Computer Science department (David Toman)
- Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa (Zubeida Khan)
- Digital Libraries Lab, UCT (Hussein Suleman)
- School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK, (Kenneth Heafield, Alexandra Birch)
- 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
- 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 in CS); topic: Toward Test-driven development of ontologies
- 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