Ecole: EUROLAN-2003 : The Semantic Web and Language Technology - Its Potential and Practicalities

[Alexis Nasr]

EUROLAN-2003

Summer School on "The Semantic Web and Language Technology - Its Potential and Practicalities"

28 July - 8 August 2003
Bucharest - Romania
http://www.infoiasi.ro/~eurolan/eurolan2003

- First Call For Participation -

The Eurolan series of summer schools was established in 1993 and has been held every other year,
with the goal of
stimulating young researchers from all over the world to pursue high-level research in natural
language
processing and language technology.

Theme

The fifth EUROLAN in the series will have as topic all aspects of the developing Semantic Web
technology and
consider its potential and the practicalities of applying it to enhance language processing
applications.

The promise of the Semantic Web has evoked enormous interest within the community developing
language
technologies. On the one hand, it offers the potential to exploit ontological descriptions of
language data in order to
enable inferencing capabilities, which may not only drastically enhance semantic processing, but
also alter our
conceptions of the ways in which knowledge is represented and exploited in language processing
applications. On
the other hand, to take full advantage of this evolving technology, researchers and developers will
need to
understand the potential as well as the limitations of the Semantic Web and master a range of new
technologies that
have been designed to enable it. Finally, the language technology community must be ready to
contribute to
Semantic Web development in order to ensure that it meets the requirements for language processing
applications.

The so-called "Semantic Web community" encompasses several research communities that have previously
worked
independently of one another, including researchers in knowledge representation, ontology
development, and
"knowledge exploitation"; web developers (including developers of standards such as XML, RDF, OWL,
etc.); and
those who directly need to exploit knowledge in applications. Linguistic knowledge used in language
processing at
its various levels (morphological, syntactic, lexical, discourse, etc.) includes a substantial part
of general knowledge
and poses a significant challenge to Semantic Web developers in order to handle the precision and
complexity
required for language processing applications. Whatever the Semantic Web may evolve to be,
researchers and
developers in language technology clearly need to learn what it is and how it can be exploited for
language
processing, and at the same time, work with semantic web developers to ensure that the semantic web
infrastructure is maximally usable for language processing applications.
EUROLAN-2003 will provide two weeks of intensive study of semantic web technology and its
application to natural
language processing. Internationally known scholars and researchers involved in leading-edge work in
relevant
areas will serve as professors at the school, providing half- and full-day seminars and hands-on
labs to provide
students with in-depth understanding and experience.

Topics to be covered in the school include the following:

* What is the Semantic Web?
* Potential and limitations of the semantic web
* Supporting web technologies (XML, RDF)
* Ontologies, ontology design and development
* Ontology exploitation via inferencing
* Description logics and other approaches to inferencing
* Lexical semantics and the semantic web
* Use of the semantic web and related technologies in language processing applications

The list of invited personalities is as follows:

* Dan Cristea, "Al. I. Cuza" University of Iasi, Romania
* Thierry Declerck, DFKI Saarbruecken, Germany
* James Hendler, University of Maryland at College Park, USA
* Jerry Hobbs, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, USA
* Nancy Ide, Vassar College, USA
* Alessandro Lenci, University of Pisa, Italy
* Robert Meersman, Vrije Universiteit, Brussel, Belgium
* Srini Narayanan, SRI-International, Menlo Park, SUA
* Sergei Nirenburg, New Mexico University, USA
* Dan Tufis, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania
* Hans Uszkoreit, DFKI and University of Saarbruecken, Germany
* Wolfgang Wahlster, DFKI and University of Saarbruecken, Germany
* Yorick Wilks, University of Sheffield, England

Program

Eurolan-2003 will take place between 28 July and 8 August 2003 in Bucharest - Romania.

The summer school will be organized to allow for both lectures and hands-on experience for each of
the areas
covered. Morning sessions will be devoted to tutorials, followed by afternoon sessions at which
students will work in
collaboration with professors on practical applications. The school will also include one workshop
as well as round
tables and work meetings on topics of particular interest related to the school?s theme. They will
be announced at a
later date.

On Sunday, 3 August, a trip to significant Romanian landmarks will be organized.

Registration and Fees

Information about registration and fees will be posted at a later date.

Program Committee

Dan Cristea
Nancy Ide
Jerry Hobbs
Dan Tufis
Hans Uszkoreit

Information on previous Eurolan events can be consulted at the address:
http://www.infoiasi.ro/fcs/en/events.html.


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