This page contains links for all the members of STAR Lab. From here you can visit their personal home pages.
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 iciuciu vub.ac.be |
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This page contains the current STARLab members.
Ph.D in Mathematics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 1976.
Appointed as Full Professor at VUB in 1995. Earlier positions include the
University of Antwerp (UIA, 1975-78), Control Data Corp. (Data
Management Research Lab, Brussels, Belgium, 1978-83). Worked there
on the definition of the NIAM (now ORM) method as well as on its query
and constraint languages (RIDL) and on the first tools for this
methodology. Founded the first InfoLab at University of Hasselt (Belgium, 1983-86) and its second incarnation at University of Tilburg (The Netherlands, 1986-95). Current research is called DOGMA and focused on ontologies and their relationship with and use in databases, semantic web and social process-driven semantic design methodologies and tools.
Member and Past Chairperson (1983-92) of the IFIP WG2.6 on Database, and of WG12.7 on Social Semantics and Collective Intelligence (2010-12). Past Chairperson of IFIP TC 12 (Artificial Intelligence, 1987-92), and of TC 2 (Software Theory and Practice, 2003-08). Co-Founder of the International Foundation for Cooperative Information Systems (IFCIS, now CoopIS, since 1994) and current president of the Distributed Objects Applications Institute (DOAI, since 2001). General co-Chair of the annual OnTheMove federated conferences and workshops covering many aspects of distributed and ubiquitous computing.
Founded the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STARLab) at VUB in 1995. Director of STARLab since. Current scientific interests include ontologies, database semantics, domain and database modeling, interoperability and meaningful use of databases in applications such as enterprise knowledge management, the Semantic Web, and community-driven computing in general.
Database Theory (MSc) (syllabus material available on Pointcarré)
Informatiesystemen (Information Systems; MSc) (slides available on Pointcarré)
Open Information Systems (new 2012; MSc; slides and material available on Pointcarré)
Seminar on Advanced Databases & Applications (slides and reader available courses link above)
OnTheMove '12: Rome, Italy, September 10 - 14, 2012
| Office | 10G-730A |
| meersman [at] vub.ac.be | |
| Telephone | +32 (0)2 629 1237 |
| Telefax | +32 (0)2 629 3819 |
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel STARLab 10G731e Pleinlaan 2 1050 Brussel Tel: +32 (0)2 629 3518
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PhD in Computer Science at the University of Reims, France. Currently working as a senior researcher at VUB STARLab. Current research is mainly done in the context of Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels (OSCB, http://www.oscb.be/) project, focusing on social processes, ontology engineering tools and applications and their evaluation. Worked on several EU and local projects since 2009. Acted as an evaluator for EU FP7 projects and as a program committee member of several international conferences and workshops. Research
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A number of works (e.g. [1-3]) have been done recently in the field of personalized recommendations to the user in various domains (e-Learning, e-Marketing, etc.). They mainly focus on capturing the user context in order to be able to recommend the right content, in the right form, to the right person.
Our approach is slightly different in that it focuses on modeling the user knowledge and behavior rather than just the user context. The user knowledge is captured as an ontology which is grounded in natural language, and stored as patterns in a knowledge base which is enriched progressively from the human-system interactions. The evaluation and the delivery of adapted, personalized content and suggestions are based on ontology-based data matching methodology and data mining techniques.
The aim of this thesis is, starting from an existing recommendation system [4], to develop new techniques to model and mine the user knowledge and behavior in order to assist him/her with suitable recommendations. Possible use cases for this study are 1) personalized e-Learning materials recommendation; 2) medical diagnosis based on annotated medical data (e.g. images); 3) semantic support for business process models design; 4) competency matching for employability; 5) recommender for the most suitable school for a student, etc.
Contact: Dr. Ioana Ciuciu (iciuciu@vub.ac.be)
1. Baloian, N., Galdames, P., Collazos, C.A., Guerrero, L.A.: A Model for a Collaborative Recommender System for Multimedia Learning Material. In: de Vreede, G.-J., Guerrero, L.A., Marín Raventós, G. (eds.) CRIWG 2004. LNCS, vol. 3198, pp. 281–288. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
2. Schmidt, A., Winterhalter, C.: User Context Aware Delivery of E-Learning Material: Approach and Architecture. Journal of Universal Computer Science 10(1), 28–36 (2004)
3. Yu, Z., Nakamura, Y., Zhang, D., Kajita, S., Mase, K.: Content Provisioning for Ubiquitous Learning. IEEE Pervasive Computing 7(4), 62–70 (2008)
4. Ciuciu, I., Tang, Y., A Personalized and Collaborative eLearning Materials Recommendation Scenario Using Ontology-Based Data Matching Strategies (2010)
The application of ontology engineering in industry is gaining more and more terrain nowadays. In Computer Aided Design, ontologies are mainly used for interoperation purposes in collaborative work and for describing the different parts and functions of the designed product. Depending on the context, the purpose of ontologies in CAO is to share knowledge collaboratively, to retrieve information and to facilitate modeling and simulation ([1-4]).
The aim of this thesis is to create a methodology to enrich the semantics of a geometric modeler from human-computer interactions and natural language. The modeler integrates user domain knowledge with virtual deformation tools [5]. The user is able to design his/her objects thanks to a panel of virtual tools which can be applied on the surface of the model either visually (by indicating the location and the shape of the deformation) or semantically (by using a dedicated vocabulary). This technique focuses on the user domain knowledge integrated with virtual deformation tools in order to assist him/her in making the right design decisions.
Users are able to contribute to the semantics of the designed object collaboratively thanks to a knowledge base which is orthogonal to each layer of the system’s architecture. The knowledge base represents semantically the geometry and the constraints applied on the surface of the designed object. The user will be able to make annotations (textual and geometrical) directly visually on the surface (geometry) of the designed object. The annotations will be reflected both on the geometry of the designed object and on the knowledge base.
Good (Java) programming skills are requested for this thesis, mainly dealing with the implementation of the geometrical (visual) and textual annotations and the rendering of the designed object using the Visualization Toolkit (vtk) [6].
Contact: Dr. Ioana Ciuciu (iciuciu@vub.ac.be)
1. Toro, C., Posada, J., Wundrak, S., Stork, A.: Improving Virtual Reality Applications in CAD through Semantics. The International Journal of Virtual Reality, vol 5(4), 39--46 (2006)
2. SEVENPRO Annual Public Report, http://www.sevenpro.org (2008)
3. Lavbic, D., Vasilecas, O., Rupnik, R. : Ontology-based Multi-agent System to Support Business Users and Management, Technological and Economic Development of Economy, Baltic Journal on Sustainability, vol. 16(2), 327--347 (2010)
4. Parisi, S., Bauch, J., Berssenbrugge, J., Radkowski, R.: Using Ontology to create 3D Animations for Training purposes. International Journal of Software Engineering and its Applications, vol. 1(1) (2007)
5.Ciuciu, I., Meersman, R., Perrin, E., Danesi, F., Semantic Support for Computer-Human Interaction: Intuitive 3D Virtual Tools for Surface Deformation in CAD, On The Move Federated Conferences and Workshops, SWWS, Crete (2010)
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Current activitiesI am currently a researcher at the Semantics Technology & Applications Research Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, which is part of the Computer Science Department of the Faculty of Science and Bio-engineering Sciences. My research context includes ontology engineering, ontology reuse, and reasoning about ontological commitments. Contact and other information |
A company always has business concepts that are actually business rules for other business concepts. For example, in a bank, the concept of a "Gold Credit Card Customer" is a customer who is entitled to a Gold Credit Card. A formal definition of this concept might be "Gold Credit Card Customer is a Customer having a Retail Checking Account with Account Balance > € 50 000, where" Retail Checking Account "is a type of account in the bank. Using semantics, it is possible to establish such rules, and relate them to the actual data.
The goal of this thesis is to investigate how easy it is for the user to quickly adjust the definition (e.g., from Retail Checking Account to Savings Account) to validate the impact (e.g., based on the first definition, we had x Gold Credit Card Customers, based on the updated definition we now have y - which one is best suited?).
Because companies are dependent on their data to make the right decisions, Data Quality is a very active domain in the world of enterprise. It is about making sure that the data is complete, valid, consistent, timely and accurate for a specific use (e.g., determine the credit worthiness of a customer of a bank asking for a loan). Companies have a wide variety of tools to measure and improve their data quality (e.g., data profiling, data cleansing, data validation, ...). However, there is a gap between the actual business value (e.g., as regulated via business rules) and the actual checks that are being done in data quality tools at the moment.
In this thesis you will study the state of the art of data quality (and possible impacts - e.g., in Business Intelligence), and build a prototype that shows how business semantics can be used to improve data quality tooling.
Doubles in data can occur for many reasons. First, both "A. Turing 8b Manchester Oxford Road" as well as "Alan Turing Oxford Rd Manchester 8b MI39PL" can be found in a database. Two different entries that are likely to refer the same person and same address. Such duplicates can sometimes be found by measuring the textual agreement. Sometimes this is not the case.
Assume a database consisting of publications (eg DBLP, http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db /index.html). Suppose there are two authors with similar names, for example, Alon Levy and Alon Halevy. Although these are textually very similar, this is not sufficient to conclude that they refer to the same person. But looking at the list of co-authors of both people can help to prove that they are 90% identical. For example, it can turn out that Alon Levy changed his surname to Halevy in 1999. So here is structural information such as links to co-authors that can help to identify individuals. The research topic to examine objects that are the same in the real world has many names: record linkage, merge / purge, de-duplication, reference matching, object identification, object reconciliation, identity uncertainty, ...
This thesis consists of two parts. In the first part the scientific literature regarding Object identification is studied (this includes techniques of mining, machine learning and probability). In the second part, these techniques are applied in a case where the data is provided by Collibra (www.collibra.com - a company specializing in data governance declared by the news as the most promising start-up in Belgium).
Before communities can use information and interoperability between information systems is established, a consensus on an ontology needs to be achieved among its different stakeholders. Application symbols are mapped onto concepts in that ontology once the community reaches an agreement. Such a mapping is called an application commitment. Members of a community might enter an observation (hypothesis) while working on an ontology that might be true for their application, but not for the applications of other stakeholders.
Counterexamples for such an observation result in the refusal of that observation, refinement of the ontology or the detection of mistakes in the data sets. A hypothesis can also result in an inconsistent schema that needs to be communicated to the community. Even the dialogue/interaction between the community members can be used to determine which actions should be taken (e.g., argumentation theory in multi-agent settings).
The goal of this thesis is to develop a method and tool to test statements (e.g., via a query) and validate the results via the commitment. The output of this will then be used to trigger various ontology engineering processes.
Contact: Christophe Debruyne (chrdebru@vub.ac.be)
Members in a community interact and perform actions to achieve a common goal (e.g., an information source such as a wiki around a television show, wikipedia, platforms supporting a software engineering method, etc.). One of such goals is reaching a common understand of a shared reality called an ontology.
On a collaborative ontology-engineering platform you have two types of interactions: one between the system and the user (e.g., to manipulate the ontology) and between users (e.g., negotiation, requests for review, etc.). Users naturally evolve towards using a series of action they feel most comfortable with and built a certain expertise and trust from others around it. Mining those interactions allows for different types of users to be clustered. Depending on the type of user, an action has to follow different path or not (e.g., skipping an approval stage). Of course, a temporal aspect has to be taken into account for allowing evolving expertise.
The goal of this thesis is to define a model for these processes (starting from earlier work on this subject [1]), a method to cluster types of users and a reputation framework for ontology engineering. This framework will then be used to define different processes for the same action depending on the type or expertise of user.
Contact: Christophe Debruyne (chrdebru@vub.ac.be)
If a company keeps good diagrams and definitions, the problem is often that there are too many. All too much, an organization is faced with multiple different definitions of a business concept (e.g., Customer in a "Customer Support" context versus Customer in an "Accounting" context, ...). For the organization, it is a nightmare to find out exactly where the differences are and how they can get a more harmonized business semantics.
Through appropriate support from technology, this can be greatly improved. By loading and analyzing existing data (e.g., data, schemas, definitions, ...), you can assist the user in identifying similarities and differences using appropriate algorithms and visualizations. The aim of the thesis is to examine both the mining techniques as well as possible visualization techniques that support analysis by business users.
A company always has a lot of different ways to manage their business concepts, as well as the related taxonomy and business rules. If these need to be managed in a correct way there is a need for proper dependency management. For example, you can have a central concept "Party" (that is managed in a core business unit of the company), which further down branches into other types of parties (e.g., "Customer", "supplier", ...), each of these managed in other departments. The relationship between these concepts implies a certain dependency (e.g., you cannot change "Party" unless it is ok with respect to "Customer"). This continues to the level of the actual data (eg "Alan Turing" is an instance of a "customer" - what does a change of meaning to "Party" mean for poor old Alan?)
The goal of this project is to examine the various possible dependencies, how this impact analysis (impact and repair) can be achieved, and how the best possible support can be achieved if you stay within the rules of dependency management.
Social performance indicators (SPI's) monitor the performance of employees in the community who have a role in Business Semantics Management. The quality of a semantic pattern depends on who defines it. This could be done by analyzing which individual has edited which semantic element and when. Also, it allows the BSM-related communication in the community to be observed using social network analysis (SNA) (Welser et al, 2008). SNA shows the "degree" or "centrality" of any person or document, can provide valuable information for the SPI's. Some semantic patterns are created or commented on by highly positioned or strategically connected people, while others are peripheral or at least connected to a department or group. Monitoring of SPI's can contribute to the descriptive quality and thus the validity of business semantics in development.
In this thesis, the existing literature on Social Performance Indicators and Social Network Analysis is processed, and roles and responsibilities are validated by building a prototype.
Hello! My name is Frédéric Hallot.
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| cvasquez [at] vub.ac.be | |
| Telephone | +32 (0)2 629 2081 |
Short CV | Research Domain | Projects | Publications 
| Other Research Activities [last update: 2012-04-16]
+32 2 629 37 50 yan.tangvub.ac.be 
Dr. Yan Tang got her bachelor in computer science and technology from the department of computer science, Northwestern Polytechnical University of China of China in 2000 and her PhD in science from the department of computer science from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in 2009 (October 20th, 2009). She is the inventor of Semantic Decision Tables (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_decision_table) and now working as a senior researcher and post-doc at VUB STARLab (Semantic Technologies and Applications Research Laboratory). She has published about 38 papers with references, such as international journals, conference proceedings and book chapters in the area of semantic decision making, semantic decision table, ontology based application architecture and business rules. Recently, she published a monograph on semantic decision tables. Yan has been working on 5 EC projects and 2 national IWT projects since 2004. She is a committee member of several international conferences and workshops.
Education background:
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more about Semantic Decision Table tools, check here
try http://semanticdecisiontable.appspot.com/
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Publications (selected publications are attached):
Book:
Book chapter:
.International conference paper:
... .Other publications
See also
| | Yan Tang, Christophe Debruyne, Johan Criel, Onto-DIY: A Flexible and Idea Inspiring Ontology-based Do-It-Yourself Architecture for Managing Data Semantics and Semantic Data, in proc. of the 9th international conference on ontologies, databases, and applications for semantics (ODBASE'2010), Springer Verlag, LNCS 6427, p. 1036 ff. Hersonissou, Crete, Greece, Oct 26-28, 2010 | |
| | Yan Tang and Robert Meersman, DIY-CDR: An Ontology-based, Do-it-Yourself Components Discoverer and Recommender, Theme Issue on Adaptation and Personalization for Ubiquitous Computing, journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Springer, Z. Yu, D. Cheng, I. Khalil, J. Kay, D. Heckmann (eds.) | |
| | Yan Tang, Stijn Christiaens, Koen Keeremans and Robert Meersman, PROFILE COMPILER: Ontology-Based, Community-Grounded, Multilingual Online Services to Support Collaborative Decision Making, in proc. of RCIS'08 (IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science), IEEE catalog:CFP0840D-PRT, ISBN: 978-1-4244-1677-6, Marrakech, Morocco, June 3-6, 2008, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4632117 |
DIY-CDR (Do-it-yourself Component Discoverer and Recommender) is a tool to help users to discover existing components when they want to DIY their own solutions.
It uses the Controlled Fully Automated Ontology Assisted Matching Strategy (C-FOAM) as the matching strategy. C-FOAM contains three matching algorithms at three different levels – String, Lexical and Conceptual (or Graphical).
The demonstration of DIY-CDR contains two scenarios. We use Yahoo! pipes to test and demonstrate DIY-CDR. When a user wants to build his own Yahoo! Pipe, he can use DIY-CDR to find existing Yahoo! Pipes and build his solution based on them.
If the result of the interpreter in DIY-CDR is a concept, then DIY-CDR will illustrate the components that contain this concept in the annotation set. For example, if the input is “bringing”, then C-FOAM will find “bring” (string matching result) and “fetch” (lexical matching result). All the components that are annotated with "bring" or “fetch” will be illustrated.
In this scenario, the result of the interpreter in DIY-CDR is a context, which corresponds to a set of lexons. For example, if the end user's input is “finding place of news”, DIY-CDR will find the contexts identified with “news location finder”, “news producer finder” and “TV news reader”. As “location” is the synonym of “place”, DIY-CDR will select “news location finder” as the internal output. Afterwards, DIY-CDR will use a graph matching algorithm to check whether it matches any of the annotations from all the components.
[last update:2011-02-17]
This page contains selected slides of Semantic Decision Tables, ontology creation methodologies and ontology-based data matching algorithms.
Title |
Presented at |
date |
slides |
| Semantic Decision Tables | IFIP 2010 | 2010-10-28 | IFIP presentation_2010_10_28.pdf |
| Onto-DIY | ODBASE 2010 | 2010-10-26 | OntoDIY - ODBASE 2010 presentation.pdf |
| Towards Evaluating GRASIM for Ontology-based Data Matching |
ODBASE 2010 | 2010-10-26 | GRASIM Evaluation - ODBASE 2010 presentation.pdf |
| Towards Evaluating Ontology Based Data Matching Strategies | RCIS 2010 | 2010-05-19~21 | RCIS presentation_00.pdf |
| Semantic Decision Tables: Theory and Practices | PhD defense | 2009-10 | presentation V2.2 - public defense.pdf |
| On Constructing, Grouping and Using Topical Ontology for Semantic Matching |
SWWS2009 | 2009-10-1~6 | padon for matching - SWWS 2009.pdf |
| Towards a Pattern-Driven Topical Ontology Modeling Methodology in Elderly Care Homes | OntoContent2009 | 2009-10-1~6 | Pattern-Driven Ontology Methodology - OntoContent 2009.pdf |
| PROFILE COMPILER: Ontology-Based, Community-Grounded, Multilingual Online Services to Support Collaborative Decision Making | RCIS 2008 | 2008-06-03~06 | Profile Compiler - RCIS 08.pdf |
| Semantic Decision Tables: Self-Organizing and Reorganizable Decision Tables | DEXA 2008 | 2008-09-01 | DEXA2008presentation_final.pdf |
| On Constructing Semantic Decision Tables | DEXA 2007 | 2007-09-03 | on constructing SDT presentation.pdf |
| On Conducting a Decision Group to Construct Semantic Decision Tables | OntoContent2007 | 2007-10-28 | on Conducting a DG to Construct SDT - OntoContent 2007.pdf |
There are two non-technical end users in our story. Mary is a homemaker with a one-year old son called James. On a certain day when she was reading her newspaper in the living room, James discovered her iPhone and started banging his new toy. Therefore Mary decides to install an existing application call “naughty boy protector” from the onto-DIY app-store. When James started banging Mary’s phone again, the (Nabaztag) bunny, standing next to his crib, started speaking loudly with the same intonation as his mother “Do not touch the iPhone, James!” It continued reminding the boy to put down his mother’s iPhone until Mary came in, took her iPhone and laid it flat again and set the bunny to its initial state. Following happened within Onto-DIY. When James starts shaking Mary’s iPhone, its sensor senses the acceleration. This raw sensor information is sent to the execution environment in the network through the communication layer. The data semantics server checks the information source and finds the proper mapping of the concepts in the ontology base. Then it communicates with the ontology server. The ontology server finds a set of relevant semantic rules, which are stored in the commitment repository. Based on the SDT outcomes, the corresponding action message is send to the bunny (over the communication layer). When the bunny gets the message, it starts saying “Do not touch the iPhone, James!” repeatedly untill the bunny is set back with its initial state.
Initially, the technicians build a few software and hardware pieces. There are preinstalled ontologies (version 1.0, created by domain experts, knowledge engineers and ontology engineers), databases and the condition/action rules (including ontological commitments, SDTs and rules stored/implemented in the smart objects). One day, James starts realizing that shaking the iPhone always trigger the bunny and an angry mother. So he decided to smash the bunny. Onto-DIY got messages from the bunny, such as, its ears were continuously moved with force, or its switch button was tapped very rapidly. Unfortunately, the existing ubiquitous network did not know how to react. In the next part of this report, we will describe how Mary can create an application (DIY her own solution) in order to react on the new situation. After Mary will create her own application successfully, her new solution will be automatically uploaded to the community portal of Onto-DIY. New DIY ideas and concepts are shared and can now be used by other people as parts for the realization of their new DIY ideas or just as an inspiration. Together with the semantics, the DIY solutions will continuously evolve within the community.
Yan Tang, Christophe Debruyne, Johan Criel, Onto-DIY: A Flexible and Idea Inspiring Ontology-based Do-It-Yourself Architecture for Managing Data Semantics and Semantic Data, in proc. of the 9th international conference on ontologies, databases, and applications for semantics (ODBASE'2010), Springer Verlaag, LNCS 6427, p. 1036 ff. Hersonissou, Crete, Greece, Oct 26~28, 2010
(this article is under construction) Semantic Decision Rule Language (SDRule-L)
P2 = [Request, has, is of, Login State]: P2 (Login State) = {Good, Bad}.
(to be continued)
(This article is still in progress) SDRule-ML: Semantic Decision Rule Markup Language. It is a hybrid language of FOL Rule-ML and ORM-ML.
In this article, SDRule-L statements are in red and their corresponding SDRule-ML is in blue. The XML schema can be downloaded here.
P2 = [Request, has, is of, Login State]: P2 (Login State) = {Good, Bad}.
Its SDRule-ML is as below (or click here to view the complete file):
<Object CI="business process in company x" Name="Request" type="NOLOT">
</Object>
<Object CI="business process in company x" Name="Login State" type="NOLOT"></Object>
<Predicate id="lexon1_forward"><Object_Role Object="Request" Role="has"></Object_Role></Predicate>
<Predicate id="lexon1_backward"><Object_Role Object="Login State" Role="is of"></Object_Role></Predicate>
<Constraint type="Set Member">
<Value>Good</Value>
<Value>Bad</Value>
</Constraint>
Motivation Master thesis topics
The thesis contains below topics:
In a communication-driven/group decision making environment, people, organizations, and intelligent software agents must communicate between and among themselves, especially in the very-large scaled context of the World Wide Web. As there are different needs and professional, social, and cultural backgrounds, there can be widely varying viewpoints and assumptions regarding what is essentially the same subject matter. Each uses a different meaning, jargon; each might have different, overlapping, and/or mismatched decision rules, decision items, decision structures and decision methods. The consequent lack of a shared understanding leads to:
In the context of building a group decision support environment, this lack of a shared understanding leads to:
Disparate modeling methods, paradigms, languages, and decision support tools severely limit:
In turn this leads to
The way to address these problems, is to reduce or eliminate conceptual and terminological confusion and come to a shared understanding. Such an understanding can function as a unifying framework for the different viewpoints and serve as the basis for:
“Ontology” is the term used to refer to the shared understanding of some domain of interest which may be used as a unifying framework to solve the problems in the above described manner.
An ontology necessarily entails or embodies some sort of world view with respect of a given domain This world view is often conceived as a set of concepts (e.g., entities, attributes, processes), their definitions, and their inter-relationships, this is referred to as a conceptualization. Sometimes ontology is confused with a conceptual schema for a database, however there are some similarities.
Such a conceptualization might be implicit, e.g., existing only in someone’s head, or embodied in a piece of software. For example, an accounting package presumes some world view encompassing such concepts as invoice, and a department in an organization. The word “ontology” is sometimes used to refer to this implicit conceptualization. However, the more standard usage and that which we will adopt is that the ontology is an explicit account or representation of (some part) a conceptualization. See the figure below for an example of such an explicit representation of a conceptualization: in this case a conceptualization of “panning”, some baking process in the bakers’ world.
What is SDRule-L?
SDRule-L is a modeling language, which is an extension to object-role modeling (ORM) language. Its xml schema is a hybrid language of ORM-ML and Rule-ML. It is used to graphically model decision support items (e.g. decision rules, conditions and alternatives, knowledge in different business processes) and ready to be published on WWW for sharing.
References:
[1] Yan Tang and Robert Meersman, SDRule Markup Language: Towards Modeling and Interchanging Ontological Commitments for Semantic Decision Making, Handbook of Research on Emerging Rule-Based Languages and Technologies: Open Solutions and Approaches, IGI Publishing, ISBN: 1-60566-402-2, USA, 2009
[2] Peter Spyns, Yan Tang and Robert Meersman, An Ontology Engineering Methodology for DOGMA, Journal of Applied Ontology, special issue on "Ontological Foundations for Conceptual Modeling", Giancarlo Guizzardi and Terry Halpin (eds.), Volume 3, Issue 1-2, p.13-39 (2008)
[3]Yan Tang and Damien Trog, Model Ontological Commitments Using ORM+ in T-Lex, in proc. of ORM workshop, OTM 2008, Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-540-88874-1, Volume 5333/2008, pp. 787-796, 9-14 Oct. 2008
[4] Damien Trog, Yan Tang and Robert Meersman, Towards Ontological Commitments with O-RIDL Markpu Language, Proc. of International RuleML Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML'07), in, Adrian Paschke and Yevgen Biletskiy (eds.), Springer Verlag, LNCS 4824
[5] Ontologies and Databases: More than a Fleeting Resemblance , OES/SEO 2001 Rome Workshop, (2001)
[6]Data modelling versus Ontology engineering , SIGMOD Record: Special Issue on Semantic Web and Data Management, 12/2002, Volume 31(4), p.12-17, (2002)
Problem title: ontological commitment in Modal Logics
Contact: Yan Tang
Problem Description: Applications (such as semantic decision support systems, especially SDT) commit to an ontology through ontological commitments (also called application axiomatizations). As many different applications may commit to the same ontology, one may ask what is the semantic relationship (similarity/difference) between these applications. You will formalize this relationship using Modal Logic, which allows logical reasoning cross situations. The notions of ontology and ontological commitment are described and formalized (in first-order-logic) in chapter 3. Please have a look and don't hesitate to contact us if you have any question.
Research Category 1 (not required for internships):
Research issues : Modal logic, formalization of concept/ ontological commitments, proof theory, etc.
skills: logic, DOGMA, ontologies.
further readings:
1) M. Fitting, Basic Modal Logic, Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming, Volume 1, Logical Foundations, 1993.
2) E. Clarke and O. Grumberg and D. Peled, Model Checking, The MIT Press, 1999.
Research Category 2 (required for internships):
Research issues: commitment visulaization based on Modal Logics, logics and verification,
skills:Java Eclipse Plugin development
further readings:
1) M. Fitting, Basic Modal Logic, Handbook of Logic in Artificial Intelligence and Logic Programming, Volume 1, Logical Foundations, 1993.
2) Modal Logic by John McCarthy
3) Introduction of Modal Logic by Anthony A. Aaby
4) 1. T. R. Gruber. A translation approach to portable ontologies. Knowledge Acqui-sition, 5(2):199-220, 1993. 2.
5) T. R. Gruber. Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Workshop on Formal Ontology, Padova, Italy, 1992.
Problem title: SDRule-L graphical presentation
Contact: Yan Tang
Problem Description: Applications (e.g. decision support systems, especially SDT) commit to an ontology through ontological commitments (also called application axiomatizations). Ontology based decision making systems mainly contain semantically grounded decision rules, which can be modeled using SDRule-L, an extension of ORM. There are currently 7 extra operators and connectors in SDRule-L. Its markup language is a hybrid language of ORM-ML and FOL RuleML.
You will build an extension to the existing tool to visualize and model these rules using SDRule-L. The logical operators and connectors allow logical reasoning cross situations. You can find more details on the rule writing of ontological commitment here.
Please have a look and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any question.
Research Category:
Research issues : logic, proof theory, etc.
skills: logic, DOGMA, ontologies, Eclipse and Eclipse plugin development, JGF, Java.
further readings:
Student: Yan Gu (till 1st Feb., 2008), Christophe Debruyne (current)
唐燕博士生于浙江宁波，于2000年毕业于西北工业大学计算机系（现计算机学院），获得本科学历。2002和2003年获得布鲁塞尔自由大学的计算机应用系的计算机应用硕士（GAS）和计算机应用硕士（GGS）。 在2004年，她以从布鲁塞尔自由大学的管理学院取得商业信息管理硕士(BIM GGS)。此三个学位皆以优异成绩（grade of distinction）获取。
从2006年开始，唐燕开始在布鲁塞尔自由大学的科学系的语义网技术和应用实验室(VUB STARLab)攻读博士学位。 在2009年，她以最优成绩（grade of the greatest distinction）从计算机科学系获取博士学位。她的论文记录了她在本体论应用和决策系统的相关领域的研究。在2006年， 罗伯特.米尔斯曼教授（Robert Meersman，也是唐燕的博导）和她一起，共同提出了语义决策表（Semantic Decision Table）的概念。
从2005年至今，唐燕参与了4个欧盟项目的研究，包括2个重点项目（IP projects）。她还参与研究比利时国家范围内的两个项目。目前，她的两个研究项目中，一个是有关语义网在智能家庭的应用，另外一个是有关基于语义决策表的意外事故审计。
至今，唐燕发表了超过30篇被索引的科技论文，包括一本248页的专著。
有关唐燕的论文，研究方向和项目列表请见她的英文简历（http://www.starlab.vub.ac.be/website/staff/yan.tang）。
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Hello, I am junior research staff at VUB STARLab, where I work on the Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels (OSCB) project. Before joining the STARLab, I started my Master study at Dresden University of Technology - TU DRESDEN. One year latter, I took my internship at Knowledge Based System Group, Vienna University of Technology - TU WIEN and completed my Master (with distinction) there. My research interests are Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Semantic Web, and Distributed Computing. I am particularly interested in Description Logics, Deductive Databases, and Web Ontology Language.
Associated STAR Lab Members
 | Phone | + 32 2 629 37 49 |
| Fax | + 32 2 629 38 19 | |
| damien.trog@vub.ac.be | ||
| Address | STARLab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Building G10 Pleinlaan 2 B 1050 Brussels 5 |
I am currently a researcher at the Semantic Technologies and Applications Lab (STARLab) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
My research is centered around the development of a formalism for ontological commitments. An important part of my research is the language called Ω-RIDL. More information about this language can be found on this page.
Aldo de Moor "Scientist in Action"
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Dr. Pieter GM De Leenheer is assistant professor in Business, Web and Media at VU University Amsterdam. He is also co-founder and research director of Collibra, a Brussels-based semantic software company that spun off from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). From 2002-2009, Pieter worked as a scientist at VUB STARLab, and he was lecturer at the same university. Pieter holds a PhD in computer science, and a BSc and MSc in principle computer science, both from VUB. His main interest lies in the social aspects of collaborative business semantics management and its applications.
Pieter authored more than 30 publications in various books, international journals and conferences, among which he co-edited the Springer book "Ontology Management for the Semantic Web". He gives master lectures including Database Theory, (Web) Information Systems, Requirements Engineering, and Semantic Web languages. Being active in EU initiatives for many years, he has extensive experience in acquiring of and participation in projects. In addition he is engaged by the EU commission as an FPx Expert for evaluating proposals and reviewing projects. He is member of ACM and IEEE, and referent/peer reviewer in several international conferences and journals.
Find out more about his activities on his personal website: http://www.pieterdeleenheer.be
Current Activities:
Demey, Jan
Bio |  |
Stijn Christiaens is a researcher at the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STARLab) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium. He contributed (and is contributing) to several national (FWO's Bonatema and IWT-Tetra POCEHRMOM) and European (Leonardo Da Vinci's CODRIVE, FP6's PROLIX) projects on ontology engineering.
At the moment, he is working on theories, methods and tools to support ontology creation and maintenance at the Domain Expert level. The focus of his research in this field is on meaning negotiation, or the process of reaching agreement on the semantic description in the knowledge elements.
Stijn holds a Master in Industrial Engineering (in IT) from the Katholieke Hogeschool Gent (KiHo), a Master in Artificial Intelligence from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and a certificate in Project Management from the Ehsal Management School. After his education he spent some time in supply-chain and warehouse management industry as an R&D software engineer.
Former STAR Lab Members
I work as a researcher for the Semantics Technology & Application Research Laboratory (STARLab) at the Free University Brussel (VUB). My main role is to develop collaborative ontology engineering methodologies and apply the resulting ontologies to real-life applications. VUB STARLab is one of the partners in the TAS3 project where we are developing technologies to enable semantic interoperability across distributed services.
I graduated from the University of Aberdeen in July 2005 with a BSc. Honours in Computing Science (Artificial Intelligence with industrial placement). During the four years I completed modules in computing, psychology, and maths as many undergrads do during that degree. During my industrial placement, I worked for Sun Microsystems Ltd. as a database administrator. The team was principally supporting Oracle DBs but we also had a few Sybase DBs. Due to my knowledge in java/Javascript, I was asked to update the different webpages used by the team (including Sevlets and JSP). I am also a Sun Certified Programmer for the Java 2 Platform 1.4.
From 2005, I have been studying towards a PhD on ontology management at the University of Aberdeen. My main research focus has been on ontology developing and applying techniques related to ontology development, evaluation and alignement. During this time, I worked on the IPAS Project, which aimed at developing OWL ontologies to integrate product and service design within Rolls Royce. Furthermore, I first developed the CleOn methodology, which evaluates the lexical coherence of classes in OWL ontologies based on a thesaurus (e.g. WordNet). I have also spent some times developing an approach to map ontologies based on the implicit knowledge available in ontologies.
I have presented my work at different workshops and conferences, and took part to the Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web in 2006. I was also an active member of the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group that developed the SKOS meta-language. I have also co-supervised students at the bachelor level (during their honours project) and gave a lecture on SKOS, Description Logic and Knowledge Representation Languages (i.e. RDF(S) and OWL) to MSc students.
Christophe Debruyne, Quentin Reul, and Robert Meersman. GOSPL: Grounding Ontologies with Social Processes and Natural Languages. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG 2010), 2010.
Quentin Reul, Gang Zhao, Robert Meersman. Ontology-based Access Control Policy Interoperability. Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Mobility, Individualisation, Socialisation and Connectivity (MISC 2010), 2010.
Quentin Reul, and Jeff Pan. Ontology Alignment Results for OAEI2009. Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop in Ontology Matching (OM2009), 2009.
B. Muhammad, T. Kirkham, E. Harrison, and Quentin Reul. Improving Manufacturing Efficiency at Ford Using Product Centred Knowledge Management. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Digital Information Management (ICDIM), 2009.
Christophe Debruyne, Quentin Reul, Johan Criel, and Laurence Claeys. An Approach for Defining Actions in Rules of the CaSenSa Application. ITEA2 Symposium, 2009.
Quentin Reul, Derek Sleeman and Richard Crowder. Integrated Products and Service Knowledge desktop: Evaluation of Demonstrator 3c (designers). Technical Report AUCS/TR0901, 2009.
David Fowler, Quentin Reul and Derek Sleeman. IPAS ontology development. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Formal Ontology Meet Industry Workshop (FOMI 2008), pages 120-131, 2008.
Edward Thomas, Derek Sleeman, Jeff Z. Pan, Quentin Reul and Joey Lam.
Quentin Reul, Derek Sleeman, and David Fowler. CleOn: Resolution of Lexically Incoherent Concepts in an Engineering Ontology. Technical Report AUCS/TR0801 (February 2008), 2008.
Derek Sleeman and Quentin Reul. CleanONTO: Evaluating Taxonomic Relationships in Ontologies. In Proceedings of 4th International EON Workshop on Evaluation of Ontologies for the Web, 2006
Contact
Berghmans, Jin
Dr. Andrés Domínguez Burgos launched his own company, called Crossminder. It is a software company specializing in semantic engineering and automatic natural language processing, with a strong focus on multi-linguality. More information can be found on http://www.crossminder.com/.
Casteleyn, Sven
Previously, I was a master student under the supervising of professor Meersman. After my graduation in June 2007, I am now applying for a PhD study at STARLab.
Email: dbuibach@vub.ac.be
De Bo, Jan
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Name: De Bo Jan
Place of birth: Oudenaarde Date of birth: March 15, 1976 Age: 27 year Address: Tenderstraat 23, 9000 Gent Telephone: Mobile: E-mail: jdebo@vub.ac.be |
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© Webmaster Jan De Bo - Tenderstraat 23, 9000 Gent - GSM: 
0497/53.44.61
Deridder, Dirk
Desmyter, Kathleen
Current Achievements
2004 Java Sun Certified Developer Winner of the General Business in Enterprise award of the Hatchery Blueprint competition
2003 Awarded Masters in Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments with Distinction
Awards / Fellowships / Grants
Marie Curie Fellowship 2007 - 2008
EPSRC Studentship 2004 - 2007
European Social Fund (ESF) Studentship 2003 - 2004
MSc Research funded by Hewlett-Packard 2002 - 2003
Chair in Conference - Sessions
Chair in Information Systems and Business Intelligence session, International Association for the Scientific Knowledge Conference, IASK-EALT 2007, Porto, Portugal
+32 2 629 34 87
mustafa.jarrar
vub.ac.be Conference Presentations, PostersLiapis, A. (2007) "The Designer's Toolkit: A Collaborative Design Environment to Support Virtual Teams", International Association for the Scientific Knowledge Conference, IASK 2007, December 2nd - 7th 2007, Porto, Portugal, (paper presentation)
Liapis, A. (2007) "Usable Interfaces for Product Designers" Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, KTP Exposition, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK, April 5th – 7th 2007, (poster)
Liapis, A. (2006) "Virtual Designer: The art of computer mediated collaborative design", Moving Forward: College of Arts and Social Sciences Postgraduate Conference , CASS 2006, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, UK, July 13th – 5th 2006, (paper presentation)
Liapis, A. (2005) "Design by Design: Developing new applications to support the design process", Moving Forward: College of Arts and Social Sciences Postgraduate Conference , CASS 2005, Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, UK, July 13th – 15th 2005, (paper presentation) Liapis, A. (2004) "CSCW and the Design Process", International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, NLDB 2004, Salford University, Salford, UK, June 23rd-25th 2004, (poster)
Talks, SeminarsLiapis, A. (2008) "Ωmogenia: A Semantic Driven Collaborative Environment ", Enterprise Interoperability Cluster Meeting, Brussels, Belgium
Liapis, A. (2007) "Legacy systems support in Enterprise Interoperability",e-Challenges 2007, The Hague, The Netherlands
Liapis, A. (2006) "Effective CSCW environments", The Robert Gordon University & Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, Aberdeen, UK
Liapis, A. (2006) "Effective Tutoring and Assessment", The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
WorkshopsHoppenbrouwers, J., Liapis, A. (2007) Ontology Outreach Advisory, workshop in Human Capital Summit 2007 Conference, Maastricht, The Netherlands
Published Reviews
Liapis, A. (2007) "A Review on Web Collaboration Software", The Robert Gordons University Library, Aberdeen, UK
Liapis, A. (2007) "A Review on Mind-mapping Software", The Robert Gordons University Library, Aberdeen, UK
Liapis, A. (2006) "A Review on UK's Virtual Learing Environments", The Robert Gordon University Library, Aberdeen, UK
Liapis, A. (2006) "A Review on Wiki systems", The Robert Gordon University Lybrary, Aberdeen, UK
Liapis, A. (2005) "A Review on Image Search Engines", The Robert Gordon University Library, Aberdeen, UK
Technical Papers
Liapis, A., Meersman, R. (2008) "OMOGENIA: A Semantically Driven Collaborative Environment" Debruyne, C., Liapis, A. (2008) "Ontology Gap Matching" Liapis, A., Meersman, R. (2008) "OMOGENIA: A CSCW Flavour to Ontology Design" Christiaens, S., Liapis, A., Meersman, R. (2008) "Enterprise Interoperability: From Business Process to Ontology"
Publications2008
Liapis, A. (2008) "Introducing OMOGENIA: A New Generation of Semantically Driven CSCW Systems", In Proceedings of 3D Physiological Human, International Workshop, University of Switzerland, MIRALAB, Zermatt, Switzerland, Srpinger LNCS
Liapis, A. (2008) "Towards a New Generation of Content Based Image Retrieval Systems", In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
Liapis, A., Christiaens, S. (2008) " Collaboration Across the Enterprise: An Ontology Based Approach for Enterprise Interoperability" In Gregoris Mentzas, G., Panagiotis Gouvas, P., Thanassis Bouras, T., and Friesen, T. (Eds.), Semantic Enterprise Application Integration for Business Processes: Service-Oriented Frameworks, IGI Global, Harrisburg, PA
Liapis, A., Christiaens, S., De Leenheer, P. (2008) " Collaboration Across the Enterprise: An Approach for Enterprise Interoperability" In Proceedings of the International Conference on Enterprise Information, ICEIS 2008, Barcelona, Spain. Liapis, A. (2008) "Synergy: A Prototype Collaborative Environment to Support the Conceptual Stages of the Design Process", In Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, DIMEA 2008, Athens Information Technology, Athens, Greece, ACM/IEEE Digital Library. Malins, J., Liapis, A. (2008) "Tools to Support New Product Design: A Case Study of a Design Consultancy", in Information and Technology and Product Development: A Research Agenda edited by Nambisan, S., Springer, New York Liapis, A., Meersman, R. (2008) " OMOGENIA: A CSCW Flavour to Ontology Design" In Proceedings of e-Portfolio workshop, Interactive Computer Aided Learning International Conference, ICL2008, Vienna, Austria Liapis, A. (2008) " OMOGENIA: Not Another Collaborative Ontology Editor" In Proceedings of the International Conference of Education Research and Innovation, ICERI2008, Madrid, Spain
2007
Malins, J., Liapis, A. (2007) “The Design Educator’s Toolkit” Interface: Virtual Environments in Art, Design and Education, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland
Liapis, A. (2007) “The Designer's Toolkit: A Collaborative Design Environment to Support Virtual Teams" In Proceedings of the International Association for the Scientific Knowledge Conference, IASK 2007, Oporto, Portugal.
Liapis, A. (2007) "Computer Mediated Collaborative Design Environments", Published PhD Thesis, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK
2006
Liapis, A. (2006) "Virtual Designer: The art of computer mediated collaborative design" In Proceedings of Moving Forward: College of Arts and Social Sciences Conference, CASS 2006, Aberdeen, UK
Malins, J., Watt, S., Liapis, A., McKillop, C. (2006) "Tools and technology to support creativity in virtual teams" In S. MacGregor & T. Torres (Eds.), Virtual teams and creativity: managing virtual teams effectively for higher creativity, IGI Global, Harrisburg, PA
2005
Liapis, A. (2005) "Design by Design: Developing new applications to support the design process" In Proceedings of Moving Forward: College of Arts and Social Sciences Conferences, CASS 2005, Aberdeen, UK
2004
Liapis, A. (2004) "Broadband Network Simulation in JAVA - the design of an asynchronous transfer mode simulator", Published Masters Thesis, British Telecoms, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK
2003
Liapis, A. (2003) "Implementation of a VRML - based environment for Hewlett Packard's website", Published Masters Thesis, Hewlett Packard, University of Hull, Hull, UK
Edited Books Liapis, A., Malins, J., Christiaens, S., De Leenheer, P. (2007) "Virtual Teams and Collaborative Environments: Knowledge Driven Creativity", IGI Global, Harrisburg, PA.
Tanguy's previous research is on knowledge sharing in social networking systems, including aspects of social network analysis. His current research at STARLab is oriented towards the creation of ontologies in a distributed way.
Senior researcher
Research & Development Coordinator
STARlab
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Room 10-G-731e
Phone +32 2 629 3543
E-mail: jhoppenb@vub.ac.be
Expertise
Jeroen specialises in language-related information science and systems architecture. His main interests are on the boundary between language and modelling of both information systems and semantic domains. Using partially graphical and partially textual approaches, he works on the information crisis that hampers both digital libraries and e-business.
Kang Han is currently working as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher on the 3DAH project in the STAR Lab of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. From 2000 to 2004, he has been studying in College of Computer Science, Beijing University of Technology, China, and obtained the Bachelor’s degree of Computer Science and Technology. Then he came to study in France. He obtained the Master’s degree of Informatics in University of Paris Sud, 2005. In October 2005, he started his PhD study majoring in Automatics, in the Laboratory LAMIH, Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut Cambrésis. He defensed successfully for obtaining the PhD in 2009, with “Very Honorable Mention”. His research includes: image processing, pattern recognition, fuzzy logic, ontology, knowledge engineering, and their application on MRI images analysis.
Dr. Zhao, Gang (赵刚)
earned his degrees of MSc and PhD in computer science at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology , UK .
He has been mostly involved in R&D of intelligent system development since 1990. He has been a system programmer, analyst, architect for the system development as machine translation, natural language understanding, speech recognition, information extraction, data and text mining, case tools for database modeling, dialogue systems, rule-based inference engines, human resource management system, patient record management system. He has acted as technology lead and project manager in both industrial and academic institutions for product development as well as research programs such as IST projects. He has taught on distributed system development at the Department of Math and Computing the Open University, UK and worked as senior researcher at STARLab, Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. He has researched and published on computational linguistics, knowledge systems, ontology development and applications. He is consulting to private and public institutions in Belgium on competence-based job portals, information extraction, text mining and ontology-based information management in product development and European research programs.
Evangelos Argyzoudis is a junior researcher at STARLab. He is currently working on the Ambient Intelligence for the Elderly (AmIE) ITEA2/IWT research project, where he is collaborating closely with industrial and other academic European partners. Moreover, he has contributed to a number of European and Flemish project proposals. His main interests lie on the integration of rules and ontologies for intelligent systems and the application of collaborative ontology engineering.
Previously, Evangelos was wokring as an IT Specialist in IBM UK for the high-profile Continuous Linked Settlement project and as a System Administrator for a retail company in Cyprus.
Evangelos has acquired a Master’s degree in Network Systems and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Sunderland in the UK.
E-mail: evangelos.argyzoudis@vub.ac.be
Tel: +32 (0) 2 629 3543
Garofalo, Mara
Gavrilovic, Radinka
Goedefroy, Wim
Hermans, Johan
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[ Kurt Hoorne ]
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"'Cause I'm like ice, buddy, if I don't like you, you've got problems." -- Cosmo Kramer |
Leemans, Frank
Lisovoy, Andriy
Lohmar, Heike
I joined STARLAB on 1st August 2007 to participate in a Marie Curie project network called 3D Anatomical Human.
SHORT BIO:
I was born in Vienna, Austria where I began studies as an interpreter. I changed to a commercial business college, studying Informatics as a subsidiary option. Equipped with commercial knowledge, I realized some ideas in my own business (WebStrategyManagement). To deepeen my knowledge of computing, I started distance studies in Computer Science (Darmstadt, Germany) while working in testing (banking software and 3G telco. While writing my thesis I discovered in particular artificial neural networks, leading to the desire to explore fascinating aspects of biological neural networks and a Postgraduate Course in Bioinformatics (Cologne, Germany).
In Belgium I spent a short time (3 months) at the University of Antwerp in the Computational Neuroscience group. Now I am in STARLab which has, according to the Marie Curie definition, the role of setting up an ontology framework that will enable new ways of sharing knowledge inside the network.
Feel free to contact me for more inf:
| Phone | + 32 2 629 16 19 |
| Fax | + 32 2 629 38 19 |
| margit.mikula@vub.ac.be | |
| Address | STARLab
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Orzu, Mihaita
Oste, Marc
Current Project:
Publications:
Pretorius, Hannes
Sanz, Ismael
Stuer, Peter
Van Acker, Sven
Van den Abbeel, Karin
Currently I'm working on a Marie Curie project called 3D Anatomical Human (2006 - 2010), where I'm responsible for setting up the infrastructure.
Abstract of the project : The objective of this research and training network is to increase the development of technologies and knowledge around virtual representations of human body for interactive medical applications. The network has a specific goal: developing realistic functional 3D models for the human musculoskeletal system, the methodology being demonstrated on the lower limb.
 | Phone | + 32 2 629 37 53 |
| Fax | + 32 2 629 38 19 | |
| jan.vereecken@vub.ac.be | ||
| Address | STARLab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Building G10 Pleinlaan 2 B 1050 Brussels 5 |
Verheyden, Pieter
Verhoye, Kris
Hello. I'm Ruben.
Telephone Number (Intra): 3750
Luk Vervenne is an Internet entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Synergetics. Luk is co-founder of Netvision NV (1994, now Ubizen) and BelSign/Globalsign, Europe’s first digital certificate authority (1996). He comes from the ICT and business publishing world, where he was an editor and an editor-in-chief of several business and industry-related magazines from 1988 till 1994.
Luk is also the business development manager of STARlab of the Free University of Brussels, and is successful in creating synergies between business and academia, resulting in pragmatic technological innovations.
He is co-founder and co-director of HR-XML Europe, the European e-learning Industry Group and the European Institute for e-learning. As a competency- driven innovator, Luk has set up a network of world class experts, making Synergetics an industry thought leader in the field of competencies and context-driven semantics.
Current Activities
Contact
Wijsen, Jef
Wouters, Carlo
Wynants, Marleen
Zheng, Jijuan
Here is the list of STARLab's visiting researchers, professors, regular visitors.
Short biography of Dr. Dongya Wu Dr. Dongya Wu is currently the deputy chairman of network subcommittee of China national information Technology standardization technical committee (NITS) and the committeeman of China Computer Federation(CCF).
In 2004, she got her PhD in Information Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology in PR China. She has more than ten years of experience in Computer Network, Automation, Test Technology and Standard development. Her background ranges from information resource description & utilization, standard conformance test systems design, routing algorithm for ad hoc network, automation testing system development to expert system development.
Dr. Dongya Wu's main publications:
Short biography of Dr. Fedja Hadzic Dr. Fedja Hadzic got his PhD in Philosophy and Computer Science in 2008. His supervisor is Professor Professor Tharam Dillon and Professor Elizabeth Chang. He is recommended to theChancellor Award (only top 2% of thesis got such award) that "The thesis.. as an exceptionally high standard".
Short biography of Prof. Dr. Doug AtkinsonDr Doug Atkinson is a visiting researcher from the School of Information Systems, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. During his visit he is pursuing research interests in groupware, ontology, statistics, and education. In particular he is working on the EU sponsored 3D Anatomical Human project.
Dr. Atkinson has 3 years consulting experience in the statistical analysis in WAust, State Govt. Dept of Agriculture and in area of Decision Conference and Group Decision Support Systems.
He is interested in several research domains, such as Knowledge Management, Ontology, Groupware, Education Research (Written Literacy, Graduate Skills, Plagiarism Detection Software), Decision Support and Qualitative Research Methods.
email: d.atkinson@curtin.edu.au
Short biography of Prof. Dr. Elizabeth ChangAs a Professor, Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer/Lecturer at the Curtin, Newcastle, La Trobe and Swinburne Universities respectively since 1989, Elisabeth Chang created, developed and taught courses in e-Commerce, Software Engineering, Project Management, HCI, Databases, Logistics and Supply Chain Management. She is Director of Centre for Extended Enterprise and Business Intelligence at Curtin University. Professor Chang has over 100 scientific conference and journal papers in IT and numerous invited Keynote papers at International Conferences. All her research and development work are in the area of Software Engineering, IT Applications and Logistics Informatics. Professor Chang, as a project manager, has successfully managed several commercial grade IT projects for industry taking them through the entire software life cycle to project completion during 1997-2002. She has been CIO for one of the largest multi-national logistics provider incorporating 40 warehouses in China, and successfully delivered a large scale e-Warehouse and e-Logistics system on time and within budget in 2001. She has completed Bachelor of Computer Science in Beijing University, Master by Research and PhD in Software Engineering from La Trobe University, Australia.
Prof. Dr. Zhiwen Yu will visist STARLab and give a talk on Feb. 8, 2010. He is currently a professor at the School of Computer Science, Northwestern Polytechnical University, P. R. China. He received his B.Eng, M.Eng and Ph.D degree of Engineering in computer science and technology in 2000, 2003 and 2005 respectively from the Northwestern Polytechnical University. He has worked as a research fellow at the Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University, Japan from Feb. 2007 to Jan. 2009, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Information Technology Center, Nagoya University, Japan in 2006-2007. He has been a visiting researcher at the Context-Aware Systems Department, Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore from Sep. 2004 to May 2005. He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Mannheim University, Germany since Nov. 2009.
He serves as the associate editor, editorial board, or guest editor for a number of international journals such as ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive and Mobile Computing, and Cybernetics and Systems. He is the Program Chair of UIC 2010, Co-Organizer of PMPC 2009, Program Chair of SensorFusion'07/09 and SmarTel'07. He serves as the Publicity Chair of PerCom 2010 and PERVASIVE 2008. He has also served as PC member for a number of conferences, e.g., IEEE PerCom, DEXA, IEEE ICPS, EuroITV, MMSP, KES, ACM SAC, IEEE AINA, EUC, ICOST, GPC, ADCOM, PerEL, ICESS, MUE, MoMM, CARPE, IE, etc. Dr. Yu has published around 70 scientific papers in refereed journals and conferences, e.g., ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Pervasive Computing, IEEE Communications Magazine, User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, PerCom, IUI, etc. His research interests cover pervasive computing, context-aware systems, human-computer interaction, intelligent information technology, and personalization.
