This Week at DERI
SIOC Methodology for Lightweight Ontology Development
We are very pleased to announce that Uldis Bojars passed his PhD Viva today! Congratulations!
Abstract:
Ontologies are an important building block of the Semantic Web and, with the emergence of initiatives such as the Social Semantic Web and Linked Open Data, developers have an increasing need for lightweight ontologies for describing and integrating various kinds of information.
Most existing ontology development methodologies are aimed at the development of heavyweight ontologies. They also do not consider activities for publishing and disseminating the resulting ontologies on the Web. In this thesis we present the SIOC MEthodology for the development of lightweight ontologies aimed at use on the Web. The methodology consists of two parts. The first part presents activities for ontology design, complete with guidelines for the development and publishing of lightweight ontologies. The second part describes ontology dissemination activities which aim to facilitate the use and adoption of the resulting ontologies at Web scale.
The thesis includes a case study of the development and dissemination of the SIOC Core Ontology and its modules. We applied the SIOC MEthodology in developing this ontology and improved the methodology based on feedback from this work. As a part of the case study we validate the impact of the ontology dissemination activities by measuring the use of the SIOC ontology in data and applications on the Web, and its reuse by other ontologies.
The Pedantic Web Group to the RDF Rescue!
SemanticWeb.com conducted an interview about The Pedantic Web Group recently formed by researchers at DERI and Institute AIFB at the Universitaet Karlsruhe.
To read the interview "The Pedantic Web Group to the RDF Rescue!", please click on the following link.
Galway Science & Technology Festival.
Thanks to Brendan Smith- DERI’s Community/Education Outreach Officer, the institute has had its highest ever involvement in the two week Galway Science & Technology Festival.
Open Your Mind
Siegfried Handschuh gave a talk " How Semantics can improve Your Office Work" at the inaugural ‘Open Your Mind’ Lecture, chaired by Connor Hayes.
(Left to Right): Gerry Morgan (Dean of Science), Emer McHugh (Applied Optics), Brendan Smith (DERI), Siegfried Handschuh (DERI), Lindsay Cody (NCBES), Conor Hayes (DERI) & Sarah Knight (ECI).
School Tours of DERI and NUIG: A Success
Last week’s visits by post-primary students to DERI was the third series of school tours that took place over the last year.
These tours are organized in conjunction with our companion institutes at NUI Galway (Applied Optics, ECI, NCBES and REMEDI). Hence participants are exposed to a wide variety of interesting research topics in the lecture halls and laboratories of venues that are recognized internationally as centres of scientific excellence
At DERI, students were treated to a series of talks on different aspects of our research projects by Jacek Jankowski, Krystian Samp and Vinny Reynolds. Deirdre Lee gave visitors a unique female perspective on working in DERI and the challenges facing women entering what has traditionally been regarded as the male-dominated world of technology and scientific development.
One interesting and pioneering aspect of last week’s programme was the introduction of a pioneering Irish language-orientated tour where native Irish speakers were provided at all 5 institutes visited. In DERI, Liam Ó Morain and James Cooley provided fascinating insights in Gaelic to students of Colaiste na Coiribe (one of Ireland’s top schools) on DERI’s main research elements, our involvement with industry and the cosmopolitan nature of our institute’s personnel with dozens of different languages being spoken on a dally basis.
The feedback from participating teachers has been very positive with other schools already applying to be included in the next set of tours.
DERI involved in Galway Science and Technology Festival
In spite of the fact that horrendous rainy weather led to access to Galway city being almost non-existent due to flooded roads , broken bridges and cancelled trains services, today’s Galway Science & Technology Festival was a tremendous success. Thousands and thousands of families braved the harsh conditions to visit the science exhibits and shows in Leisureland and in the adjacent Galway Bay Hotel.
Working with other stakeholders, we helped ensure that ten city and county schools were able to display their projects. The DERI stand was very popular with crowds of children lining up to play the sensor ball game and other computer games (on our ‘One Laptop Per Child’ school scheme computers) as well as to take part in our IT Quiz. In fact our exhibit was the last to close down such was its popularity!
Special thanks has to go to the 10 DERers who staffed our Exhibit – Lukasz (who was there almost the whole day), Ratnesh, Fergal, Julie, Alex, Uldis, Oszkar, Jodi, Smita and Maciez Zaremba. While the Fair was very family and child-orientated and not the place for serious discussions/displays on advanced often theoretical research, nevertheless the presence of the DERIers was strategically vital to our institute. For during the course of the day, we were visited by Irish parliamentarians, the Mayor of Galway city, senior officials in the IDA (Irish Development Authority), top media personnel, the higher echelons of NUIG etc. We would have been noticed by our absence!
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