Maria Keet
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
University of Cape Town
Cape Town
South Africa
Tel: (+27) 021 650 2667
Fax: (+27) 021 650 3551
Home: www.meteck.org
Blog: keet blog
email: mkeet at cs.uct.ac.za
linkedIn

CV, publications, and my Google Scholar profile


1. Research interests and projects
2. Keynotes, seminars, and other presentations, some with recordings online
3. Chairing and reviewing


 

1a. Research Interests

Knowledge Engineering -- See als the KnowledgE ENgineering (KEEN) Team webpage
   - Ontology Engineering (foundations, methods, tools)
   - Relations in ontologies, such as their foundations, parthood and other part-whole relations
   - Conceptual modelling & ontology languages (Description Logics, OWL, Object-Role Modeling, etc.)
   - Natural language generation
   - Logic-based knowledge representation

1b. Research Activities

The main thread across my research activities is ontology, ontologies, logic, and conceptual data modelling. They are divided into three paragraphs for presentation convenience, and a final paragraph on participation in funded projects.
See als the KnowledgE ENgineering (KEEN) Team webpage

Ontology engineering and logic-based ontologies
     In this strand of investigation, I consider automated reasoning for formal (FOL, DL and OWL-ized) bio-ontologies, formal properties of relations (e.g., parthood), ontology engineering, foundational ontologies, modularity. It also involves knowledge-based data access and bio-ontologies, including particpation in funded projects (among others, STARWARS, ALMA, ARISTOTELES, TONES, Net2).

Formal and ontology-driven conceptual data modeling
     This strand of research combines the logic and modelling from ontologies with conceptual data modelling (in, e.g., ER, ORM). This includes logic-based reconstructions (mainly in Description Logics) of the diagram languages, model linking and integration, and various extensions, such as formal temporal conceptual data modelling. Some related funded projects were the Ontology-driven unification of conceptual data modelling languages and an earlier projects on "Technologies for Conceptual Modelling and Intelligent Query Formulation".

Controlled Natural Languages
     This strand of research extends from the ontology engineering, by focussing first on controlled (a particualr fragment of) natural languages and natural language generation for knowledge-to-text, and for Bantu languages in particular. I was PI of several funded projects on this topic, including foundations of a Modular Realisation Engine for Nguni Languages (MoReNL), A Grammar engine for Nguni natural language interfaces (GeNi), a UCT Science Faculty grant on foundations thereof, and an earlier project looked at terminology harvesting in COMMUTERM.

 

Funded projects

Principal Investigator:
  1. KeBoNa: Knowledge-driven bootstrapping of computational language resources for NCB languages, funded by the National Research Foundation under the Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers (CPRR).
    Project duration: 2024-2026 (3 years).

  2. MoRe NL: foundations of a Modular Realisation Engine for Nguni Languages, funded by the National Research Foundation under the Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers (CPRR).
    Project duration: 2020-2022 (3 years).

  3. QueST: Querying Smart Text, funded by SADiLaR.
    Project duration: 2019-2020 (6 months).

  4. Project leader of a project to improve on the Ontology Engineering textbook, funded by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development project at UCT.
    Project duration: 2019-2020 (1 year).

  5. A Grammar engine for Nguni natural language interfaces (GeNi), funded by the National Research Foundation under the Competitive Programme for Rated Researchers (CPRR) -- Y-rated development grant.
    Project duration: 2015-2017 (3 years).

  6. Foundations for Nguni natural language generation systems, UCT Science Faculty Launching Grant.
    Project duration: 2014-2017 (3 years).

  7. Project leader of the 'Teaching with Technology' Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT)-funded project entitled LetsThink - GoAnswer, on the development of a software-based audience response system.
    Project duration: 2015 (1 year).

  8. Project leader of the 'Open Educational Resources' Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT)-funded project on the development of a Semantic Wiki for ontology engineering.
    Project duration: 2015 (1 year).

  9. COMMUTERM: Self-sustaining community-driven online terminology development, funded by the University of KwaZulu-Natal's University Language Board. The aim of the project is to crowdsource an isiZulu terminology for computer science and one other discipline.
    Project duration: 2013-2014 (1 year).

  10. Ontology-driven unification of conceptual data modelling languages of the bi-lateral "South Africa / Argentina Joint Science and Technology Research" funded by SA's Department of Science and Technology and Argentina's MINCyT, with as co-PI in Argentina Pablo Fillottrani, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
    Project duration: 2012-2015 (3 years).

Participant:
  1. Staff Exchanges in the project entitled 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, Staff Exchanges)-SE (Staff Exchanges)
    Project duration: 2023-2026 (4 years).

  2. Ontologist in the project entitled ALMA – Modeling of Knowledge Networks in Medieval Romance Speaking Europe Based on Linguistic Data, led by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW).
    Project duration: Aug 2022-2025.

  3. 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.
    Project duration: 2022-2024 (3 years).

  4. Co-Investigator (named) of the project entitled Medical Machine Translation, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, UK. Funded by the EPSRC, UK.
    Project duration: 2017-2018 (7 months).

  5. External collaborator in the project ARISTOTELES: Methodology and algorithms for automatic revision of ontologies in task based scenarios, funded by the Polish National Science Center under the SONATA program, with PI Dr. Agnieszka Lawrynowicz, Poznan University of Technology, Poland.
    Project duration: 2015-2018 (3 years).

  6. External expert as ontologist in the EU PF7 collaborative project e-LICO: An e-Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research in Data Mining and Data-Intensive Science.
    Project duration: 2009-2012.

  7. Researcher in the Marie Curie action funded by the EC under ICT Call 3 FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IRSES on a Network for Enabling Networked Knowledge (NET2).
    Project duration: 2010-2012.

  8. Researcher in the Italy-South Africa collaboration project Technologies for Conceptual Modelling and Intelligent Query Formulation, within the Executive Programme of Scientific and Technological Co-Operation between the Italian Republic and Republic of South Africa.
    Project duration: 2008-2010.

  9. Tester and report writing in the EU FP6 FET TONES Project (nr FP6-7603) concerning Ontology-Based Data Access for databases in the subject domain of people with disabilities and of horizontal gene transfer.
    Project duration: 2006-2008.

Unfunded projects
2. Keynotes, Seminars and other Presentations

Keynote talks Invited talks Other talks

Talks with videos or screen recordings 3. Chairing and reviewing

Information about the numerous admin and management tasks are listed in my CV.

Information about teaching has been moved here.

Information on earlier education has been moved to a separte page, here, and contains summaries of, and links to, the PhD, MSc, MA, and BSc(hons) theses and papers resulting from them.

In case you are wondering about the difference in given name that appears in publications, C. Maria, and my 'regular' name, Marijke: this is due to some odd naming conventions in the country I grew up (the Netherlands); Marijke is derived from Maria. I use my official name for scientific publications, and (used to use) the other one for other activities.