OCAS2011

The real challenge for Semantic Web technologies and ontologies lies in  the adoption; although the need for this disruptive technology is  clear,  it has not yet been fully adopted by the mainstream. Ontologies: where,  what for, how, when and why? Ontologies are being used in several  applications, but is ontology engineering a mature  discipline? Not  only are we interested in practical realizations of the Semantic Web,  but also in visions of technology that illustrate how SW technology and  ontologies could change our experience of the Web.


 * Interested in the OCAS Challenge?
 * Interested in submitting research papers or position statements to the OCAS Workshop?
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Questions and issues addressed by OCAS

 * How are SW technologies and Ontologies being adopted by mainstream?
 * Experience reports of the introduction of SW technologies and ontologies in corporate and government environments
 * Once introduced in an environment, how do SW and ontology-based applications evolve?
 * Ontologies in manufacturing and production chains
 * Ontologies supporting CAD interoperability and feature extraction; towards smart CAD environments
 * How could RDF(a) and ontologies be used to represent the knowledge  encoded in scientific documents and in general-interest media   publications?
 * What ontologies do we need for representing structural elements in a document?
 * How can we capture the semantics of rhetorical structures in scholarly  communication, and of hypotheses and scientific evidence?
 * What does a network of truly interconnected documents look like? How could interoperability across documents be enabled?
 * Are decision support systems in the biomedical domain using ontologies? How?
 * How are biomedical ontologies logically formalizing the rich set of  lexical definitions gathered? How are these ontologies going beyond   controlled vocabularies?
 * Practical cases of successful and unsuccessful application of  ontologies and SW  technologies in application domains such as:  financial, biomedical,  e-business, engineering, law enforcement,  document management, e-government, legislative systems.

We would also like to have visionary papers addressing issues such as:


 * Semantic Web + Ontologies + Ubiquitous Computing + Folksonomies =Visions of the future, how can technology make us look smart?
 * Conceptualism vs Realism, how is this related to Ontology Engineering?  How is this related to the realization of the Semantic  Web?
 * How are Semantic Web technologies and Ontologies shaping the intelligent layer of the Web?

OCAS Challenge
OCAS can be summarized in a simple sentence, “Ontologies and Semantic Web technology come of age; how is the Semantic Web changing our experience of the Web?” Moving beyond theoretical frameworks and heading towards a significant impact in end user experience is at the core of OCAS. The overall objective of the challenge is to illustrate how ontologies and SW technologies are delivering novel user experiences.

Prizes:
 * First place: US$ 2000
 * Second place: US$ 1000
 * Three third prizes of $500 each

Selected projects will be funded through implementation by Protech Solutions Inc.

Projects are to focus on innovative uses of HPC and data mining in  semantic technologies for HealthCare, Medical Informatics and Computer   Security. Projects with high relevance to social networking, low-tech  environments, and third-world countries are encouraged.

Those participating in the challenge should provide a three-page  manuscript describing their software; from the manuscript it should be   clear for judges:


 * Software availability: judges and general public should be able  to access the software. In most cases this means that the software,   ontologies and/or infrastructure is freely accessible -free software is   not compulsory.
 * Semantic Web technology: how is this application making use of  semantic web  technology? How is this application making use of existing   infrastructure? Data sources being used, etc.
 * How is it delivering new layers of functionality based on semantic data sources (linked data, RDF stores, ontologies, etc).
 * How is it delivering an intelligent interconnected experience to the end user?
 * What is the added value?
 * How is the Interconnectedness of semantic data sets being delivered to the end user?
 * How are intelligence and interconnectivity being supported by the software or infrastructure?
 * Does the software or infrastructure represent a fundamental change for  the domain rather than just an incremental improvement or just one  of  many added new features?

We would like to have applications from all domains. The GC is not  limited to web based applications, mobile platforms for devices like   iPAD, iphone, Galaxy, XOOM, HTC, etc are also encouraged. Authors  submitting to other Challenges, workshops and conferences are welcome to   also submit their work to the OCAS challenge.

For those who require high performance computing facilities, our sponsor, http://protechsolutions.com/, will make them available free of  charge.

Submission should be via Easychair

All papers submitted for the OCAS Challenge should be formatted  according to the   LNCS   format.

Judging the Challenge

 * Oscar Corcho, Ontology Engineering Group (OEG), UPM, Madrid, Spain
 * Pascal Hitzler, Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH, USA* Alexander García Castro, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, USA.
 * Fabio Ciravegna, University of Sheffield, UK
 * Michel Dumontier, Carleton University, Canada

PC Co-Chairs

 * has program chair::Ken Baclawski
 * has program chair::John Bateman
 * has program chair::Alexander García Castro
 * has program chair::Christoph Lange
 * has program chair::Kim Viljanen

Program Committee Members

 * 1) has PC member::Li Ding, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA.
 * 2) has PC member::John Bateman, Universität Bremen, Germany.
 * 3) has PC member::Michael Kohlhase, Jacobs University, Germany.
 * 4) has PC member::Raul Palma, Poznan University, Poland.
 * 5) has PC member::Oscar Corcho, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain.
 * 6) has PC member::Fabian Neuhaus, University of Maryland, USA.
 * 7) has PC member::William Hogan, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
 * 8) has PC member::Nigam Shah, Stanford University, USA.
 * 9) has PC member::Peter Haase, Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods, Germany.
 * 10) has PC member::Michael Gruninger, University of Toronto, Canada
 * 11) has PC member::Leyla Garcia, Bundeswehr University, Germany.
 * 12) has PC member::Benjamin Good, Novartis, USA
 * 13) has PC member::Matthew Horridge, University of Manchester, UK
 * 14) has PC member::Oliver Kutz, University of Bremen, Germany.
 * 15) has PC member::Raul García Castro, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain.
 * 16) has PC member::Mike Dean, BBN Technologies, USA.
 * 17) has PC member::Steve Pettifer, Manchester University, UK.
 * 18) has PC member::Carlos Toro, VICOMTech Industrial Applications. Spain
 * 19) has PC member::Riichiro Mizoguchi, Osaka University, Japan.
 * 20) has PC member::Carlos Pedrinaci, Open University, England
 * 21) has PC member::Jouni Tuominen, University of Helsinki, Finland
 * 22) has PC member::Boris Villazón-Terrazas, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain