FOIS2006

FOIS2006 is the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, located in has location city::Baltimore, has location state::Maryland, has location country::USA.

For more information, see web site:=http://www.formalontology.org/fois-2006/fois-2006.htm/.

Important Dates
Acceptance Notification: notification:=June 26, 2006 Submission of camera-ready paper: camera ready due:=July 28, 2006

Conference: November 9-11, 2006

Conference Description
Since ancient times, ontology, the analysis and categorisation of what exists, has been fundamental to philosophical enquiry. But, until recently, ontology has been seen as an abstract, purely theoretical discipline, far removed from the practical applications of science. However, with the increasing use of sophisticated computerised information systems, solving problems of an ontological nature is now key to the effective use of technologies supporting a wide range of human activities. The ship of Theseus and the tail of Tibbles the cat are no longer merely amusing puzzles. We employ databases and software applications to deal with everything from ships and ship building to anatomy and amputations. When we design a computer to take stock of a ship yard or check that all goes well at the veterinary hospital, we need to ensure that our system operates in a consistent and reliable way even when manipulating information that involves subtle issues of semantics and identity. So, whereas ontologists may once have shied away from practical problems, now the practicalities of achieving cohesion in an information-based society demand that attention must be paid to ontology.

Researchers in such areas as artificial intelligence, formal and computational linguistics, biomedical informatics, conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering and information retrieval have come to realise that a solid foundation for their research calls for serious work in ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations that make up their respective domains of inquiry. In all these areas, attention is now being focused on the content of information rather than on just the formats and languages used to represent information. The clearest example of this development is provided by the many initiatives growing up around the project of the Semantic Web. And, as the need for integrating research in these different fields arises, so does the realisation that strong principles for building well-founded ontologies might provide significant advantages over ad hoc, case-based solutions. The tools of formal ontology address precisely these needs, but a real effort is required in order to apply such philosophical tools to the domain of information systems. Reciprocally, research in the information sciences raises specific ontological questions which call for further philosophical investigations.

The purpose of FOIS is to provide a forum for genuine interdisciplinary exchange in the spirit of a unified effort towards solving the problems of ontology, with an eye to both theoretical issues and concrete applications.

Program Chairs
Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Germany) fellbaum@clarity.princeton.edu
 * has program chair::Brandon Bennett (University of Leeds, UK) brandon@comp.leeds.ac.uk
 * has program chair::Christiane Fellbaum (Princeton University, USA and Berlin Brandenburg

has program chair::Nicola Guarino (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy) guarino@loa-cnr.it has program chair::Bill Andersen (Ontology Works, USA) andersen@ontologyworks.com has program chair::Leo Obrst (The MITRE Corporation, USA) lobrst@mitre.org
 * Conference Chair
 * Local Chair
 * Publicity Chair

Program committee

 * has PC member::Bill Andersen (Ontology Works, USA)
 * has PC member::Nicholas Asher (Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, USA)
 * has PC member::Nathalie Aussenac-Gilles (Research Institute for Computer Science, CNRS, Toulouse, France)
 * has PC member::John Bateman (Department of Applied English Linguistics, University of Bremen, Germany)
 * has PC member::Brandon Bennett (School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK)
 * has PC member::Stefano Borgo (Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Italy)
 * has PC member::Joost Breuker (Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
 * has PC member::Roberto Casati (Jean Nicod Institute, CNRS, Paris, France)
 * has PC member::Werner Ceusters (New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, SUNY at Buffalo)
 * has PC member::Tony Cohn (School of Computing, University of Leeds, UK)
 * has PC member::Matteo Cristani (University of Verona, Italy)
 * has PC member::Ernest Davis (Department of Computer Science, New York University, USA)
 * has PC member::Martin Dörr (Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, Heraklion, Greece)
 * has PC member::Carola Eschenbach (Department for Informatics, University of Hamburg, Germany)
 * has PC member::Jérôme Euzenat (INRIA Rhône-Alpes)
 * has PC member::Christiane Fellbaum (Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University, USA and Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin, Germany)
 * has PC member::Antony Galton (School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Exeter, UK)
 * has PC member::Aldo Gangemi (Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Roma, Italy)
 * has PC member::Pierdaniele Giaretta (Department of Philosophy, University of Verona, Italy)
 * has PC member::Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Canada)
 * has PC member::Nicola Guarino (Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
 * has PC member::Udo Hahn (Jena University, Germany)
 * has PC member::Jerry Hobbs (University of Southern California, USA)
 * has PC member::Eduard Hovy (University of Southern California, USA)
 * has PC member::Ingvar Johansson (Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, University of Saarbrücken, Germany)
 * has PC member::Werner Kuhn (IFGI, Muenster)
 * has PC member::Fritz Lehmann (USA)
 * has PC member::Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa, Italy)
 * has PC member::Leonardo Lesmo (Department of Computer Science, University of Torino, Italy)
 * has PC member::Bernardo Magnini (Centre for Scientific and Technological Research, ITC, Trento, Italy)
 * has PC member::David Mark (Department of Geography, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA)
 * has PC member::William McCarthy (Michigan State University)
 * has PC member::Chris Menzel (Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, USA)
 * has PC member::Simon Milton (Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Australia)
 * has PC member::Philippe Muller (Research Institute for Computer Science, University of Toulouse III, France)
 * has PC member::John Mylopoulos (Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada)
 * has PC member::Leo Obrst (The MITRE Corporation, USA)
 * has PC member::Barbara Partee (University of Massachusetts, USA)
 * has PC member::Massimo Poesio (Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, UK)
 * has PC member::Ian Pratt-Hartmann (Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK)
 * has PC member::James Pustejovsky (Department of Computer Science, Brandeis University, USA)
 * has PC member::David Randell (Imperial College London, UK)
 * has PC member::Robert Rynasiewicz (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
 * has PC member::Barry Smith (National Center for Ontological Research and Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, USA; Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, Saarbrücken, Germany)
 * has PC member::John Sowa (Vivomind Intelligence Inc., USA)
 * has PC member::Veda Storey (Department of Computer Information Systems, Georgia State University, USA)
 * has PC member::Richmond Thomason (University of Michigan, USA)
 * has PC member::Mike Uschold (The Boeing Company, USA)
 * has PC member::Achille Varzi (Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, USA)
 * has PC member::Laure Vieu (Research Institute for Computer Science, CNRS, Toulouse, France)
 * has PC member::Chris Welty (IBM Watson Research Center, USA)

Topics of Interest
We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. While authors may focus on fairly narrow and specific issues, all papers should emphasize the relevance of the work described to formal ontology and to information systems. Papers that completely ignore one or the other of these aspects will be considered as lying outside the scope of the meeting. Topic areas of particular interest to the conference are:

Foundational Issues


 * Kinds of entity: particulars vs. universals, continuants vs. occurrents, abstracta vs. concreta, dependent vs. dependent, natural vs. artificial
 * Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence, constitution, subsumption, instantiation
 * Vagueness and granularity
 * Identity and change
 * Formal comparison among ontologies
 * Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, ...)
 * Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells, organisms, ...)
 * Ontology of mental reality (mental attitudes, emotions, ...)
 * Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms, social relationships, artistic expressions, ...)
 * Ontology of the information society (information, communication, meaning negotiation, ...)
 * Ontology and natural language semantics, ontology and cognition, ontology and epistemology, semiotics

Methodologies and Applications


 * Top-level vs. application ontologies
 * Role of reference ontologies; Ontology integration and alignment
 * Ontology-driven information systems design
 * Requirements engineering
 * Knowledge engineering
 * Knowledge management and organization
 * Knowledge representation; Qualitative modeling
 * Computational lexica; Terminology
 * Information retrieval; Question-answering
 * Semantic web; Web services; Grid computing
 * Domain-specific ontologies, especially for: Linguistics, Geography, Law, Library science, Biomedical science, E-business, Enterprise integration, ...