ISLab Ontology Engineering Group (ISOEG)

Description

About ISOEG

The ISLab Ontology Engineering Group (ISOEG) of Intelligent System Laboratory of the Computer Engineering Faculty at Amirkabir University of Technology headed by Prof. Ahmad Abdollahzadeh Barfouroush, has been equipped with all necessary software and hardware facilities for performing the needed research and development activities. Amirkabir computer engineering faculty is one of the best computer engineering faculties in Iran with high talented and fresh students. So, we have this chance to conduct our research activities based on these valuable resources.

Our goals and ambitions

We work on developing methods and approaches for creating ontologies of world realities especially in the field of computer science and engineering. We investigate ontology creation from all levels and views. We test and implement different methodologies of ontology creation. Also we test different ontology editors and define their weakness and strengths. In short we explore ontology from each any every angle and perspective.

Research

Our goals and research interests

Goal 1 – Define an applicable definition of ontology that can be used in the computer domain without ambiguity.

Goal 2 – Create a guideline for understanding and creating ontologies.

Goal 3 – Definition of at least 2 BSc. and 1 MSc. theses per year in the field of OE.

Goal 4 – Planning of quarterly gatherings and sessions with people working in the field of OE.

Goal 5 – Finding and evaluating different methodologies in ontology creation. For example we intend to investigate the following methodologies:

Goal 6 – Finding and evaluating different ontological topologies and comparing them.

Goal 7 – Finding and understanding the place and task of ontologies in the Semantic Web and how they can influence data and information retrieval.

Goal 8 – To find answers to the following questions:

What can not be named an ontology?
The difference between ontologies and taxonomies.
The difference between ontological base and knowledge base.
The difference between ontologies and taxonomies.
What are the computational semantics of ontologies? And how much are they?

Goal 9 – Finding and evaluating different ontology definition languages and comparing them. For example we intend to investigate the following:

Goal 10 – Finding and evaluating different ontology editors and comparing them. For example we intend to investigate the following:

Goal 11 – Finding and understanding the relations and differences of the following concepts with ontology creation:

Ontology Engineering Methodologies
Ontology Construction
Ontology Population
Ontology Evolution
Ontology Maintenance
Ontology Versioning
Ontology Mapping
Ontology Translation
Ontology Modularization and Composition
Ontology Matching
Ontology Aligning
Ontology Evaluation
Ontology Learning
Ontology Validation
Ontology Interoperability
Ontology Integration
Ontology Merging
Ontology Engineering Tools
Ontology Visualization

Publications

Our publications

Journal papers

A. Abdollahzadeh Barforoush, and A. Rahnama, Ontology Learning: Revisited, Journal of Web Engineering (JWE), Volume 11, No. 4, pages 269-289, Rinton Press, December 2012.
S. Soltani, A. Abdollahzade, “Web Pages Classification Using Domain Ontology and Clustering“, International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Singapore, 2009
G. Kheradmandian, A. Abdollahzadeh, “A Request Processing System based on Ontology for replying to the queries“, Journal of CSICC, 2006
M. Shamsfard, A.Abdollahzadeh, “The State of the art in ontology learning: A Framework to Compare”, Knowledge Engineering Review Journal, UK, Aug 2004

Conference papers

A. Rahnama, A. Abdollahzadeh Barforoush, Cognibase: A New Representation Model to Support Ontology Development, In proceedings of the IADIS International Conference Information Systems 2011 (IS2011), Avila, Spain, March 2011
A. Abdollahzadeh Barforoush, A. Rahnama, Ontology Learning: Revisited, Submitted and awaiting acceptance to the Journal of Web Engineering (JWE), February 2011
S. Soltani, A. Abdollahzadeh, “OILSW: A New System for Ontology Instance Learning in Semantic Web“, ICSD, India, 2007
S. Soltani, A. Abdollahzadeh, “Web pages classification using domain ontology and clustering“, International Conference Computational Intelligence and Security (CIS 2007), China, 2007
A. Abdollahzadeh, Gh. Kheradmandian, ” A Query Process System Based on Ontology for Question answering,” 11^th International CSI Computer Conference, Jan 2006, Tehran, Iran
M. Shamsfard , A. Abdollahzadeh, “A Framework for Comparison and Evaluation of Learning Ontology Systems“, In proceedings of 9th Annual Computer Society of Iran Computer Conference (CSICC’2004),Tehran, Iran, February 2004
M. Shamsfard, A. Abdollahzadeh, “An Introduction to Hasti: An Ontology Learning System“, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing (ASC`-2), Jul 17-19, 2002, Banff-Canada
M. Shamsfard, A. Abdollahzadeh, “A Basis for Evolutionary Ontology Construction”, 18^th IASTED International Conference in Applied Information, AI2000, Innsbruck, Austria, 2000
A. Abdollahzadeh, M. Shamsfard, “HASTI: A Base for Evolutionary Ontology Construction to Natural Language Understanding” 9th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering 17-19 May 1999, Iran

Our awards

Best team project award on Process Ontology achieved by our PhD student, Ali Rahnama as part of team MoveOn (Move Ontology) at the 9th annual Vespucci Summer Institute in Fiesole, Florence, Italy, July 2011.
- MoveOn team members:
  - Ali Rahnama
    - PhD student, OELab, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran
  - Alexis Reed
    - PhD student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, University of Kansas, USA
  - Aurona Gerber
    - Senior Researcher, Knowledge Systems Group, CSIR Meraka Institute, South Africa
  - Christoph Stasch
    - PhD Student, Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster, Germany
  - Henry Michels
    - PhD student, Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster, Germany
  - Luis Ramos
    - PhD Student, Bremen Ontology Research Group, University of Bremen, Germany

Researchers and Members

Supervisor

Prof. Ahmad Abdollahzadeh Barforoush

Current Members

Ehsan Sharifi

Alumni (PhD)

Mehrnoush Shamsfard

Ali Rahnama

Alumnic(MSc)

Mahdieh Monzavi

Masoumeh Nourollahi

Sima Salmani

Hamidreza Abbasi niasar

Mina Ardakani

Useful books and journal papers

Steffen Staab and Rudi Studer (Eds.). Handbook on ontologies. 2009.
Zalta (Ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2010.
Gomez-Perez, A., Fernandez-Lopez, M., Corcho, O. Ontological Engineering. Springer Verlag London Ltd. 2004.
Baker, C.J.O., Cheung, H. (Eds). Semantic Web: revolutionizing knowledge discovery in the life sciences. Springer: New York, 2007, 225-248.
Pascal Hitzler, Markus Kroetzsch, Sebastian Rudolph. Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009, 455p.
Chu-ren Huang, Nicoletta Calzolari, Aldo Gangemi, Alessandro Lenci, Alessandro Oltramari, Laurent Prevot (Eds.). Ontology and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press. 2010.
Frank van Harmelen, Vladimir Lifschitz and Bruce Porter (Eds.). Handbook of Knowledge Representation. Elsevier, 2008, 1034p.
F. Baader, D. Calvanese, D. L. McGuinness, D. Nardi, and P. F. Patel-Schneider (Eds). The Description Logics Handbook – Theory and Applications. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Nicola Guarino. The Ontological Level: Revisiting 30 Years of Knowledge Representation. In: A.T. Borgida et al. (Eds.), Mylopoulos Festschrift. Springer LNCS 5600, 52–67. 2009.
Berners-Lee, Tim; James Hendler and Ora Lassila (May 17, 2001). The Semantic Web. Scientific American Magazine.
Ian Horrocks, Peter F. Patel-Schneider, and Frank van Harmelen. From SHIQ and RDF to OWL: The making of a web ontology language. Journal of Web Semantics, 1(1):7, 2003.
B. Cuenca Grau, I. Horrocks, B. Motik, B. Parsia, P. Patel-Schneider, and U. Sattler. OWL 2: The next step for OWL. Journal of Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web, 6(4):309-322, 2008.
Barry Smith. Beyond Concepts, or: Ontology as Reality Representation. Achille Varzi and Laure Vieu (eds.), Formal Ontology and Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference (FOIS 2004), Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004, 73-84.
Presutti, V., Gangemi, A., David, S., de Cea, G. A., Surez-Figueroa, M. C., Montiel-Ponsoda, E., Poveda, M. A library of ontology design patterns: reusable solutions for collaborative design of networked ontologies. NeOn deliverable D2.5.1, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (CNR). 2008.
Allen H. Renear and Carole L. Palmer. Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing. Science 325 (5942), 828, 2009.
Fernandez, M.; Gomez-Perez, A. Pazos, A.; Pazos, J. Building a Chemical Ontology using METHONTOLOGY and the Ontology Design Environment. IEEE Expert: Special Issue on Uses of Ontologies, January/February 1999, 37-46.
Corcho, O., Fernandez-Lopez, M. and Gomez-Perez, A. (2003). Methodologies, tools and languages for building ontologies. Where is their meeting point? Data & Knowledge Engineering, 46(1): 41-64.
Carsten Lutz, Frank Wolter, and Michael Zakharyaschev. Temporal Description Logics: A Survey. In: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Symposium on Temporal Representation and Reasoning. IEEE Computer Society Press, 2008.