Postdoc position in DERI on real-time data-integration and recommendations for the Social Semantic Web

January 14, 2011 Tech No comments

Position Description

The DERI Social Software Unit and the Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval invite applications for an applied research postdoctoral position for 14 months on real-time data-integration and recommendations for the Social Semantic Web, in the context of the ADVANSSE proposal funded by Cisco systems. The position is expected to start on the 1st of February.

Requirements

Candidates should have a PhD degree in a relevant field of study, e.g. Social Web, Semantic Web, recommendation systems, Web engineering, etc.
The position is for a fixed period of 14 months with the possibility of extension, depending on successful acquisition of project funding in which the selected candidate will be expected to actively participate during his time in DERI. The selected candidate should be able to combine formal scientific work, published in top-class conferences and journals, with application-oriented research and development (proof-of-concept).

Essential skills

  • A PhD, typically in a computing-related discipline, with a strong applied component
  • A record of published research in the aforementioned domains
  • Research experience on the Social Web, Semantic Web, recommender systems and Web engineering
  • An ability to work in an interdisciplinary team
  • An ability to comfortably combine research with applied work
  • An ability to develop and manage their own research agenda
  • Commitment to deliver on project milestones
  • Experience in software development

Desirable skills

  • Knowledge of standardisation work
  • Industry experience
  • Experience in the preparation of research grant proposals
  • Experience in student supervision

Informal Inquiries

For informal enquiries about this post please contact Dr. Alexandre Passant alexandre.passant AT deri.org and Dr. Conor Hayes conor.hayes AT deri.org

Position Applications

Interested candidates should send a detailed CV, a one page statement describing their research interests, experience and suitability for this position, and the names and addresses of two referees.
Applications may be sent, in a single PDF file, to alexandre.passant AT deri.org

Internship positions in DERI: SMOB, PubSubHubbub, privacy, etc.

January 7, 2011 Tech No comments

The Social Software Unit of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway has openings for student internships to work on privacy and policies in mobile and distributed Social Semantic Web applications, with a special focus on SMOB and PubSubHubbub. The overall goal of the project is to extend current infrastructures for mobile and distributed Social Semantic Web applications with intelligent privacy settings interpreted in the cloud.

The internship must be at least 6 months, and the students will combine theoretical research and implementation, delivered as open-source components. Ideally, the internship will lead to the students M.Sc. thesis. The following skills are expected:

  • Knowledge of the Semantic Web / Linked Data and related standards (RDF(S)/OWL, SPARQL, etc.)
  • Knowledge of lightweight vocabularies for the Social Web (FOAF, SIOC, OPO)
  • Knowledge of authorisation / authentication schemes and protocols
  • Interest for Web Engineering and for Web standards
  • Ability and interest to work in an international environment
  • Motivation, creative spirit, pragmatism and independence
  • Strong software development skills (PHP and Python)
  • Excellent communication skills, and fluent in english

To apply, please send:

  • A resume of 2 pages max, including name and e-mail address of 2 referees
  • A one page letter describing your interest in the project and your availability

To alexandre DOT passant AT deri DOT org, in a single PDF file, by Friday 21st of January, with an e-mail titled “SSW internship”. Applications that do not follow these requirements will not be considered. For any question, please e-mail the same address.

CFP ESWC2011 – Social Web and Web Science Track

November 23, 2010 Tech No comments

=================

CALL FOR PAPERS : The 8th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC)
Social Web and Web Science Track

http://www.eswc2011.org/
May 29 – June 2, 2011, Heraklion, Greece

=================

* Chairs: Alexandre Passant, DERI, IE and Denny Vrandecic, KIT, DE
* Abstract submission: December 6, 2010
* Full-paper submission: December 13, 2010

http://www.eswc2011.org/content/cfp#Social%20Web%20and%20Web%20Science

=================

The success of Social Web applications (often referred to as ‘Web 2.0’ applications) is manifested through the fast growth of social networks and sites with user-generated content, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr, and many more. Many Social Web applications have simplified the data publishing process using user-friendly and interactive tools and practices (such as Wikis, tagging, and microblogging) and have decreased the cost and increased the incentive to contribute data. In addition, some trends such as ubiquitous computing lead to new ways and means to share content in real-time within social communities.

The combination of Social Web principles and Semantic Web technologies allows end-users to massively produce and use semantic data through social applications, which in turn enables smarter Web-based applications in various domains. This includes the Social Web itself, where it becomes possible to mine Semantic Web data and discover relationships that were not obvious, whether it is in social network identification or for information retrieval purposes. These can be exploited for various purposes: to personalize applications, recommend content, generate new knowledge, and more. But besides the technical aspect, there is also a need to understand the behaviors and patterns of users on the Web, and in particular on the Social Web. Web Science aims to address these issues, also considering other aspects that are important to realize a Social Semantic Web, such as governance, law, policies and decision-making, etc.

This track on Social Web and Web Science aims at bringing together researchers from these communities to address various challenges from improving Social Web user experiences with Semantic Web technologies in order to build novel semantic applications using Social Web data, as well as understanding the various patterns of the Web. Successful submissions will address at least some aspect of both areas. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Collaborative and collective semantic data generation and publishing
* Social and semantic bookmarking, tagging and annotation
* Enriching the Social Web with semantic data: RDFa, micro formats and other approaches
* Linked data on the Social Web
* Semantically-enabled social platforms and applications
- Semantic wikis
- Semantic desktops
- Semantic portals
- Semantic blogs
- Semantic calendars
- Semantic email
- Semantic news, etc.
* Querying, mining and analysis of social semantic data
* User profile construction based on tagging and annotations
* Reasoning and personalization based on semantics
* Recommendations
- Social navigation
- Social search, etc.
- Privacy, policy and access control on Social Semantic Web
* Provenance, reputation and trust on Social Semantic Web
* Formation, management and understanding of semantically interlinked online communities
* Citizen sensing and ubiquitous Social Semantics
* Social Semantic Web and Internet of Things

=================

SUBMISSIONS

The proceedings of the conference will be published in Springer’s
Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. Paper submission and reviewing
will be electronic. Papers must not exceed fifteen (15) pages in length
and must be formatted according to the information for LNCS authors:
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0

Papers must be submitted as PDF (Adobe’s Portable Document Format)
and will not be accepted in any other format. Papers that exceed 15 pages
or do not follow the LNCS guidelines risk being rejected automatically
without a review. The contributions to the Semantic Data Management track
should be submitted through the track submission site at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=eswc2011social

=================

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract submission: Dec. 6, 2010 (compulsory)
Full paper submission: Dec. 13,2010 (11:59 pm Hawaii time)
Notifications: Feb. 21,2011
Camera-ready due: March 7,2011

=================

PROGRAM COMITTEE

Fabian Abel
Harith Alani
Sören Auer
Edward Benson
Shlomo Berkovsky
John Breslin
Ciro Cattuto
Federica Cena
Richard Cyganiak
Antonina Dattolo
Darina Dicheva
Ying Ding
Jon Dron
Guillaume Erétéo
Anna Fensel
Fabien Gandon
Cristina Gena
Steve Harris
Aidan Hogan
Ekaterini Ioannou
Neil Ireson
Robert Jäschke
Lalana Kagal
Pranam Kolari
Georgia Koutrika
Milos Kravcik
Juanzi Li
Meenakshi Nagarajan
Matthew Rowe
Ansgar Scherp
Juan F. Sequeda
Paul Smart
Sergey Sosnovsky
Steffen Staab
Markus Strohmaier
Mischa Tuffield
Shenghui Wang
Katrin Weller
Mary-Anne Williams
Jie Zhang
Lina Zhou

Ph.D. Position in Enterprise 2.0, Data integration and the Semantic Web @ DERI

June 22, 2010 Tech No comments

Here is another Ph.D. position available in DERI. Deadline is next monday, and if you’re in SemTech and have any questions, please email / tweet me to discuss it face to face.

As part of the “Social Semantic Enterprise” project, and in collaboration with Cisco Systems and the IRCSET (Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology), the Digital Enterprise Research Institute is currently seeking a Ph.D. candidate on the topic of Social Software, Enterprise data integration, information quality and privacy. This research project is part funded by Cisco Research Center in response to the collaboration RFP category.

The successful candidate will study how to integrate public data from the Social Web (Tweets, linkedIn profile, Facebook updates, etc.) in the Enterprise, while at the same time respecting privacy of employees and ensuring that only relevant and accurate data is shared in the enterprise. This integration will provide a better integration of Social Web platforms both inside and outside the workspace, leveraging both with common semantics for an integrated social knowledge management experience.

Candidates should have at least a M.Sc. degree in computer science, science or engineering with excellent results, have the pre-requisites for Ph.D. studies at NUI Galway, and must be fluent in english. The Ph.D. position covers academic fees, a generous monthly stipend and a research travel allowance for a three year period, as well as the use of DERI’s facilities for experimentations and research.

The following criteria are expected from the student:

  • Interest with Semantic Web technologies (RDF(S)/OWL, SPARQL, etc.) and Linked Data
  • Interest and familiarity with social software (blogs, wikis, microblogging, etc.)
  • Interest in Enterprise information systems and data integration
  • Interest for standardisation processes
  • Good programming skills
  • Good english writing skills

The successful candidate will work with Dr. Alexandre Passant in DERI, NUI Galway, within the Social Software Unit. There will be extensive opportunities for collaboration with other researchers and research units and projects in DERI and in Europe, as well as in other world-wide institutes with whom DERI collaborates, including opportunities for a long-term visit during the Ph.D. timeframe. The Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Galway (DERI) is one of the largest semantic research organization in the world. DERI’s mission is to enable networked knowledge, globally interlinking information from the Web and the physical world. DERI is based in Galway is one of the most beautiful Irish cities shaped by artistic communities, active student life, innovative industry and leading edge research. Galway is located at the beautiful west coast of Ireland within the Galway Bay, ‘between’ Europe and the U.S., making it an ideal hub for national, European and international research.

The application must be send by June 28th, 2010 to Dr. Alexandre Passant in either (X)HTML, pdf or plain text and must contain the following:

  • a CV
  • a one page statement explaining the candidate’s interest in and compatibility with the objectives of the position
  • a list of (minimum two) referees
  • additionally, publications, software and other artifacts that the student may be consider relevant – ideally as links to resources available online
  • copies of M.Sc. results and transcripts

Applications that do not follow the previous format will not be considered. Requests for information should be addressed to the same person.

Ph.D. Position in Modeling Linked Sensor Data and Incorporating Social Feedback and Community Sharing @ DERI

June 3, 2010 Tech No comments

Interested in the Semantic Web and in Social Software ? Want to work on the exciting field of their integration with sensor data ? Want to join DERI ? Here’s an current open (and fully-funded) Ph.D. position in DERI for the new EU project SPITFITRE, starting soon. If any questions, feel free to contact me at my @deri email. Edit: In addition, there is a second position open for the same project, essentially focused on querying and mining sensor data. You can check both on the jobs section of the DERI website.

The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland Galway is seeking applications for a fully-funded Ph.D. position in Modeling Sensor Data and incorporating Social Feedback and Community Sharing. The successful candidate will join the EU-funded FP7 SPITFIRE project team in DERI at NUI Galway: Semantic-Service Provisioning for the Internet of Things using Future Internet Research by Experimentation.

The Digital Enterprise Research Institute, Galway (DERI) is one of the largest semantic research organization in the world. DERI’s mission is to enable networked knowledge, globally interlinking information from the Web and the physical world. DERI is based in Galway is one of the most beautiful Irish cities shaped by artistic communities, active student life, innovative industry and leading edge research. Galway is located at the beautiful west coast of Ireland within the Galway Bay, ‘between’ Europe and the U.S., making it an ideal hub for national, European and international research.

SPITFIRE is an international project funded by the European Union working towards the realisation of a stronger connection between the natural and the digital worlds. The goal of this project is to investigate unified concepts, methods and software infrastructures that facilitate the efficient development of applications that span and integrate the Internet and the embedded (i.e., sensor) world, and make use of state-of-the-art Web and Semantic Web technologies to achieve this goal. SPITFIRE will drastically lower the effort required for developing robust, interoperable and scalable applications in the Internet of Things. This will facilitate new kinds of applications and services that are not possible to date and thus have an impact on research, industry and private households. The project consortium consists of academic and industrial partners from Ireland, Germany, Greece and Belgium. It is coordinated by DERI, NUI Galway.

The successful candidate is expected to work towards (1) the modeling of sensor data as Linked Data, (2) the incorporation of user-feedback for validating sensor description and (3) collaborative methods for sharing sensor description and related queries at Web scale. This will provide new methods and techniques for enabling sensor data description being available on the Web, being able to share these description within communities of interest. Use-cases where such methods could be deployed include Ambient Intelligence and Reality Mining. Ambient Intelligence is focused around personal applications, varying dependent on context, user’s goals, user roles, relations and entities. Reality Mining deals with the investigation and modelling of principles underlying the evolution and interactions in large social, communication and collaborative networks derived from individual sensors and their data.

The work will be achieved in close cooperation with other units and projects in DERI, as well as with the other partners from the SPITFIRE consortium. The FIRE initiative and its large-scale experimental facilities provide the unique opportunity to evaluate the developed methods and algorithms at large scale and in a realistic environment.

Areas of interest include – but are not limited to:

  • Modelling Sensor data as Linked Open Data and using ontology engineering best practices
  • Incorporating user-feedback in output of mined sensor description
  • Designing social software and community sharing applications for sensor data
  • Querying sensor data and sharing queries description in online communities

The successful candidate should have at least a Bachelor’s degree in computer science, science or engineering (M.Sc. is a plus), have the pre-requisites for Ph.D. studies at NUI Galway, and must be fluent in english. The Ph.D. position covers academic fees, a generous monthly stipend and a research travel allowance for a three year period, as well as the use of DERI’s facilities for experimentations and research. The Ph.D. position is initially funded for a 3-years duration, with subject to extension to 4-years.

The following criteria are expected from the student:

  • Interest with Semantic Web technologies (RDF(S)/OWL, SPARQL, etc.) and Linked Data
  • Interest and familiarity with social software (blogs, wikis, microblogging, etc.)
  • Interest for standardisation processes
  • Good programming skills
  • Good english writing skills

The successful candidate will work with the DERI Principle Investigator Prof. Manfred Hauswirth and Dr. Alexandre Passant in DERI, NUI Galway. There will be extensive opportunities for collaboration with other researchers and with other research groups and projects in DERI and in Europe, as well as in other world-wide institutes with whom DERI collaborates, including opportunities for a long-term visit during the Ph.D. timeframe.

The application must be send by Jun 30th, 2010 to Dr. Alexandre Passant in either (X)HTML, pdf or plain text and must contain the following:

  • a CV
  • a one page statement explaining the candidate’s interest in and compatibility with the objectives of the position
  • a list of (minimum two) referees
  • additionally, publications, software and other artifacts that the student may be consider relevant – ideally as links to resources available online

Applications that do not follow the previous format will not be considered. Requests for information should be addressed to the same person.

sparqlPuSH at the Semantic Web Scripting Challenge

June 1, 2010 Tech No comments

ESWC2010 is starting today, but some workshops and tutorials have already been held on sunday and monday. Besides the SPOT2010 workshop, I’m happy to announce that sparqlPuSH won the Semantic Web Scripting Challenge prize ! Here are the slides of the presentation.

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=sfsw2010-sparqlpush-100531063507-phpapp01&stripped_title=sparqlpush-proactive-notification-of-data-updates-in-rdf-stores-using-pubsubhubbub

SFSW2010 was actually the last edition of the SFSW workshop series. As shown in the closing session, lots of things happened in the community since 2005, when there was almost no API for managing RDF data on the Web, scalable RDF store, UI nor mash-ups. I believe that these SFSW workshops played an important role in that move, building a pragmatic vision of the Semantic Web landscape. Thank you guys for that ! Besides that, the conference is ongoing for the next three days and I’m presenting our demo paper on dbrec today, and in the demo session tonight (dbrec is also participating in the AI mashup challenge, so your votes are highly welcome :-) . Slides will be uploaded after the presentation, and here’s some teasing, since I’ll avoid the usual bullet-points approach for these ones. Edit : here are the slides of the short presentation.

http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=dbrec-slides-100601073612-phpapp02&stripped_title=hey-ho-lets-go-explanatory-music-recommendations-with-dbrec

CfP: Real-time and Ubiquitous Social Semantics

May 28, 2010 Tech No comments

Fabien Gandon (INRIA), Harith Alani (KMI) and myself are co-editing a special issue on “Real-time and Ubiquitous Social Semantics” for new the Semantic Web Journal. The call for paper and important dates are as follow, and available here as a pdf file. We’re looking forward for many interesting submissions on the topic !

In the past few years, the Web has increasingly shifted from its initial document and librarian paradigm to an ecology of socially-generated data and services. Websites such as Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, etc. emphasise the huge popularity of sharing information in real-time. In addition, the wealth and breadth of applications that exploit open social networking APIs to provide new services and functionalities are growing rapidly, enabling new ways to interact and browse this user-generated content.

At the same time, the deployment of network-enabled mobile devices, RFID and sensors, is realising the ubiquitous nature of social networks. More objects of our everyday life are getting connected to the Internet to become part of its applications, including the Web and social networking services. We are only starting to contemplate the potential of a wide Internet of things, but it is certain that in that new augmentation of our reality, the Semantic Web will be one of the cornerstones of interoperability.

Advances in the Semantic Web and Linked Data realms offer new capabilities for such paradigms, ranging from data integration to knowledge representation for such social data, objects, and service descriptions. However, many challenges remain to be addressed such as scalability, reasoning in dynamic contexts, quality and provenance, privacy and security, multi-modal accesses, context capture and awareness, etc. Nevertheless, Semantic Web frameworks provide the means to support the architecture of such real-time social and ubiquitous platforms.

In this special issue, we seek contributions that tackle the issues of real-time and ubiquitous Social Semantics. In particular, we expect contributions addressing the following topics:

  • From raw social data to semantic data

    • semantic grounding of raw social data
    • generation and aggregation of social semantics
    • ontologies and data models for social data representation and analysis
    • real-time semantic mining and analysis of social data
    • trends and dynamics in social semantic web
    • capturing and representing context in social networking
  • Ubiquitous Web and social semantics
    • integration of virtual and physical worlds
    • integration tools, technologies, and platforms
    • privacy, ethics, and confidentiality
    • presence tracking and semantic augmentation
    • semantic sensors and RFID
    • social semantics on mobile devices
  • Real-time querying frameworks and languages for social data
    • stream querying and reasoning on social data
    • location or time based reasoning, context based reasoning
    • querying volatile, moving and dynamic networks and data sources
    • dynamics, changesets and push-based notifications
    • scalability, approximate reasoning and querying in social applications
    • provenance and quality for querying social data


We solicit high-quality contributions addressing one or more of the aforementioned topics. Submissions should clearly address how they relate to the topic of this special issue (more than “potential” use-cases) and how the contribution enhances the state of the art in its particular domain. We especially welcome papers dealing with real data, description of deployed systems, and discussions on related experiments and methodology.

Papers must be submitted using the journal guidelines available at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/authors. Upon submission on mstracker, the authors should mention “Social Semantics Special Issue” in the cover letter of their article. In addition, authors must keep in mind that the journal relies on an open and transparent review process and that their paper(s) will be available online during the review process. We suggest the authors to carefully check details of the review process at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/reviewers#review.

Important dates

Submissions:
12th of September
Reviews due:
31st of October
Camera-ready version:
28th of November
Online Publication:
February 2011
Printed Publication:
March 2011

Upcoming Semantic trips and presentations

May 19, 2010 Tech No comments

I should travel a lot in the next weeks (volcano permitting !), so if you want to chat about the Social Semantic Web, Linked Data or any other interesting topic around a coffee or a beer, here’s where I will be in the next weeks:

The related papers will be available on this website soon (currently refactoring the biblio, etc.). If you want to meet one of these days, just drop me a comment here or an email !

BlogTalk2010 in Galway – Call for Papers

May 10, 2010 Tech No comments

BlogTalk2010, the 7th International Conference on Social Software, will be held in the National University of Ireland, Galway from 26th to 28th August 2010. The conference is chaired by John Breslin and I’m glad to be the PC-chair of this year’s edition.

Here’s an abstract of the CfP, that is available in full-length here.

Following the international success of the past six BlogTalk events, the next BlogTalk – to be held in Galway, Ireland from 26-28 August 2010 – is continuing with its focus on social software, while remaining committed to the diverse cultures, practices and tools of our emerging networked society. The conference is designed to maintain a sustainable dialog between developers of innovative social software solutions, academics and researchers who study and advance social software and social media, practitioners and administrators in corporate and educational settings, and other general members of the social software and social media communities.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, audiences will come from different fields of practice and will have different professional backgrounds. We strongly encourage proposals to bridge these cultural differences and to be understandable for all groups alike. For researchers, BlogTalk is an ideal conference for presenting and exchanging research work from current and future social software projects at an international level. For developers, the conference is a great opportunity to fly ideas, visions and prototypes in front of a distinguished audience of peers, to discuss, to link-up and to learn. For practitioners, this is a venue to discuss use cases for social software and social media, and to report on any results you may have with like-minded individuals.

We invite you to submit papers describing your research and applications at the BlogTalk 2010 conference. To encourage submission of various types of work by researchers, developers and practitioners, papers can be submitted in either of two tracks:

  • Regular Track (full paper required, 12-14 pages in LNCS format). We expect papers that discuss mature and implemented work, both regarding (1) practical or industrial implementations and use-case reports for social software and social media, or (2) theoretical and research aspects of social networks and social data. Papers should clearly motivate the approach and provide relevant evaluations. Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Program Committee.
  • Demonstration and Poster Track (a two-page abstract describing what will be presented). This track gives the opportunity to present recent and in-progress work, in a forum that will encourage discussions since this track will be held in a special session with ample time for discussions and networking.

      • In addition to the research papers and the poster session, the conference will feature a set of invited speakers: Stowe Boyd, Dan Gillmor and Don Thibeau. We’re looking forward to your contributions covering any theoretical or practical aspect of social software, and looking forward to seeing you in Galway !

      SPARQL + pubsubhubbub = sparqlPuSH

      April 18, 2010 Tech No comments

      There have been lots of discussion recently regarding dynamics and notification in the Semantic Web realm, including various vocabularies for describing changes and approaches for notifying them – as Leigh recently blogged about it.
      Last month, while visiting Kno.e.sis, Pablo an I worked on an approach using pubsubhubbub for RDF changes notification, that I’m happy to announce today.

      The result is sparqlPuSH, an interface that can be plugged on any SPARQL endpoint and that broadcast notifications to clients interested in what’s happening in the store using the pubsubhubbub protocol. At a glance, anyone can register a particular query to the RDF store (e.g. list all microblog posts, or list any changes made by X, using the Changesets vocabulary) and results are provided in an RSS / Atom feed that is then sync-ed using pubsubhubbub: each time new data corresponding the register query is added into the store, the store itself notifies the interested parties of such updates.
      Practically, this means that you can be notified in real-time of any change happening in a SPARQL endpoint.

      The following video describes how the approach works as well as shows a related use-case and you can download its source at http://code.google.com/p/sparqlpush/.
      It can be used as an interface on the top of any SPARQL endpoint and also comes with an ARC2 interface (if you’re using a different endpoint, the interactions happen via HTTP and use requires that your endpoint provides JSON SPARQL query results).

      We believe that a push system like this for RDF notification can change lots of things regarding RDF data management and how to make sense of it, in real-time. In addition, we hope that such approach could be generalised not only to SPARQL endpoints, but to resource themselves, so that one resource can ping a pubsubhubbub hub when it changes, the notifications being then broadcasted to interested parties.

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