ESAS 2008

Applying Semantic Web Technologies in Research and Development of Software Agents, Mobile Agents and Multi-Agent Systems towards INTEGRATING THE DISTRIBUTED WORLDS.

Semantic web technologies render dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, shared content equally accessible to human reader and software agents. Distributed agents functioning autonomously can utilize semantic Web content to gather and aggregate knowledge, reason and infer new results towards achieving their goals and generating new knowledge. Such knowledge in turn may be disseminated and used to achieve the shared goal of the agents system. Here the vision is to achieve a synergy with multi-agent systems (MAS) technologies whereby both semantics and agents will be equally in the center stage.

ESAS workshop series aims at garnering the synergy of both technologies by taking up both the semantic web and the agent aspects of the common research issue. Topics of interest span a wide spectrum in both theory and practice of autonomous semantic agents, context-aware intelligent agents, agents as semantic web services, software agents, mobile agents, agent architectures, multi-agent systems, agent communities, cooperation and goal seeking through sharing policy and ontology, safety & security in systems, other QoS issues, and so on.

Mobile agent and MAS technologies are crucial in realizing multi-party dynamic application systems. Semantic Web technologies augment MAS by enabling agents with functioning based on the semantics of their mission and of the world around them. Agents, implemented as Web services in developing distributed control and processing applications, entail interesting consequences such as situation awareness, semantic composition of services, context sensitive long-lasting transactions, effecting service policies and quality levels, etc. Complex applications could become realizable with novel features such as factory floor automation for flexible production, collaborative discovery of uncharted geography (for example, cooperative labyrinth discovery), traffic management and info dissemination with facilitation of emergency services, financial markets forecasting with optimization of portfolio gain, etc.

We envisage a strong undercurrent of intelligent software agents, mobile agents, and MAS running through this workshop; side by side with the use of semantic Web technologies, there are several foci of interest:

* Software Agents, Mobile Agents, and MAS: issues relating to architecture, implementation, coordination, service levels, security, etc. of semantic or otherwise agents. * Agent, MAS and Semantic Web Technologies: concomitant utilization of specific technologies in agent, MAS, and semantic Web implementations; semantic agent communities & applications; case studies of best-practice MAS applications; projects in the making; * Ontologies for Agents and MAS: agent cooperation and coordination ontology; ontology of workflow in MAS; ontologies for distributed applications and integration; sharing and semantic interoperability; discovery and operations on ontologies; trust & security issues; * Platforms for agent and MAS implementation: languages, frameworks, tools, integrated development environments and software engineering practices supporting semantic or otherwise software agent & MAS architectures, coordination, trust & security mechanisms, description, discovery and composition of agent-based services. * Other subjects of relevance in semantic software agents, mobile agents, agent-based and multi-agent systems.

LIKELY PARTICIPANTS

Researchers and practitioners of semantic software agents, mobile agents, MAS and semantic Web technologies are invited to propose papers and to attend the workshop. Those with interests in ontology-based systems, semantic agents, and agent-based systems are welcome. Researchers working on the following are especially encouraged to propose papers: realization of multi-agent systems through semantic web technology, ontology-based agent applications, distributed control and processing applications, security & trust, interoperability, service levels and quality issues in such systems. Enterprises and research centers developing ontgologies, languages, integrated development environments, tools, and middleware that are employed in engineering the above are encouraged to propose demo and tutorial presentations.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Alia ABDELMOTY, Cardiff University, UK Alex ABRAMOVICH, Gordon College, Israel Khalil A. ABUOSBA, Arab Academy of Banking and Financial Sciences, Jordan Grigoris ANTONIOU, University of Crete, Greece Mehmet Emin AYDIN, University of Bedfordshire, UK Costin BADICA, University of Craiova, Romania Susmit BAGCHI, Samsung Electronics (SISO), India Zeki BAYRAM, Eastern Mediterranean Univ., TRNC Tibor BOSSE, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Stijn CHRISTIAENS, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Frank F. P. DIGNUM, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands Tharam S. DILLON, Curtin University of Technology, Australia Weichang DU, University of New Brunswick, Canada Peter EKLUND, The University of Wollongong, Australia Riza Cenk ERDUR, Agean University, Turkey Vadim ERMOLAYEV, Zaporozhye State University, Ukraine Martin GAEDKE, Chemnitz University of Technology,Germany Manolis GERGATSOULIS, Ionian University, Greece M.Adeeb GHONAIMY, Ain Shams University, Egypt Aditya K. GHOSE, University of Wollongong, Australia Paolo GIORGINI, University of Trento, Italy Ibrahim GOKCEN, General Electric Co. Global Research Center, USA Guido GOVERNATORI, The University of Queensland, Australia Giancarlo GUIZZARDI, Italian National Research Council (CNR), Italy Stijn HEYMANS, TU Vienna, Austria, & Univ. Ghent, Belgium Bo HU, University of Southampton, UK Fu-Ming HUANG, National Central University, Taiwan Joris HULSTIJN, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands Ismail Khalil IBRAHIM, Johannes Kepler University, Austria Mustafa JARRAR, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Eui-Hyun JUNG, Anyang University, Korea Rajkumar KANNAN,Bishop Heber College, Trichy, India Ahmad KAYED, Applied Science University, Jordan Natalya KEBERLE, Zaporozhye National Univ., Ukraine C. Maria KEET, University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy Michel C. A. KLEIN, Vrije Universiteit, The Netherlands Alexander KOSTIN, Eastern Mediterranean Univ., TRNC Aneesh KRISHNA, Engineering University of Wollongong, Australia Peter KROPF, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland Mark LAST, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel Pieter De LEENHEER, Vrije Universiteit, Belgium Constantine MANTRATZIS, University of Westminster, London, UK Brahim MEDJAHED, University of Michigan, USA Thomas MEYER, Meraka Institute, South Africa Vitaliy MEZHUEV, Berdyansk State University, Ukraine Rym Z. MILI, University of Texas at Dallas, USA Masoud Mohammadian, University of Canberra, Australia Lars M�?NCH, FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany Maurice PAGNUCCO, The University of New South Wales, Australia Michal PECHOUCEK, Czech Technical University, Czech Republic R. RAJESH, Bharathiar University, India Dumitru ROMAN, STI / University of Innsbruck, Austria Ferat SAHIN, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA Markus SCHAAL, Bilkent Univ., Turkey Chattrakul SOMBATTHEERA, Mahasarakham University, Thailand Michael STOLLBERG, DERI Innsbruck, Austria Markus STUMPTNER, University of South Australia, Australia Kaile SU, Peking University, China Vijayan SUGUMARAN,Oakland University, USA York SURE, SAP Research, Germany Andreas TOLK, Old Dominion University, USA Jan TREUR, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands M. Osman UNALIR, Egean University, Turkey Rainer UNLAND, University of Essen, Germany Laurentiu VASILIU, DERI Galway, Ireland Dirk VERMEIR, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium Lee Eng WAH, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore Levent YILMAZ, Auburn University, USA Sule YILDIRIM, Headmark University College, Norway Pınar YOLUM, Bogazici University, Turkey Mohammed ZAKI, Al-Azhar University, Egypt (being updated)

IMPORTANT DATES Mar. 7, 2008 	Workshop paper submission due April 7, 2008 	Workshop paper notification (electronic) April 30, 2008 	All final manuscript and author pre-registration due

SUBMISSION

Original papers will be considered. All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee according to its originality, significance, correctness, presentation, and relevance. We encourage authors to present position papers on practical studies and experiments, critiques of existing work, emerging issues, and novel ideas under development.

Papers must be submitted electronically via the ESAS2008 Submission Page. Manuscripts will be limited to 6 pages including all figures, tables, and references. The format of submitted papers must follow the IEEE conference proceedings guidelines (i.e., 8.5" x 11", Two-Column Format (PDF: instruct.pdf; DOC: instruct.doc); Layout Guide (PDF: format.pdf; DOC: format.doc; all under ftp://pubftp.computer.org/press/outgoing/proceedings/).

All accepted papers will be published in the electronic conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society, indexed through INSPEC and EI Index (Elsevier's Engineering Information Index), and automatically included in the IEEE Digital Library. At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant of the workshop for the paper to be included in the proceedings. Each accepted paper must be presented in person by (one of) the author(s).

The authors of the best papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their work for publication in a special issue of the Expert Systems: The Journal of Knowledge Engineering by Blackwell Publishing. ESAS 2008 is a sequel in the very successful ESAS Workshops Series of the IEEE COMPSAC conferences: acceptance ratio has been less than 35% in both ESAS 2006 and ESAS 2007. Please refer to the Post-Workshop Activity section for information on ongoing journal publication. This CfP was obtained from WikiCFP