IDS Workshop on Associating Semantics with Graphs

April 16 - 17, 2007
DyDAn Center - Rutgers University

Organizers:

Alex Borgida (co-chair), Rutgers University

Claire Cardie, Cornell University

Hans Chalupsky (co-chair), Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California

Jiawei Han, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Scott Kohn, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories

Peter Patel-Schneider (co-chair), Bell Labs

Call for Participation:

Graphs labeled with text are a ubiquitous information presentation mechanism, with a long history. They are often favored in computational circles because they offer simple and elegant mathematical foundations and data structures. The goal of this workshop is to bring together representatives of communities interested in graphical representations of knowledge. The intent is for this workshop to provide a forum for these communities to share formalisms, problems (including issues of size and dynamic change), techniques, tools, and applications.

The usefulness of algorithms for manipulating graphs with text relies on the intended meaning of the graphs. Graphical representation techniques (such as social networks, semantic graphs, the RDF Resource Description Format, and early AI semantic networks and their descendants) differ widely in the extent to which this meaning ("semantics") is made explicit, formal or augmented. The workshop will place some, but not exclusive, emphasis on such "semantic" aspects.

The topics planned to be addressed include:

• Motivating problems at DHS and elsewhere (e.g., NIH UMLS, WordNet)
• Graphical formalisms for representing knowledge - syntax, semantics, experience
• Augmenting graph formalisms (with ontologies, rules, etc.)
• Querying and mining graphs
• Extracting graphs from text, databases, the WWW, etc. and the semantic interpretation of the results
• Issues arising out of the size and dynamic change of graphs with semantics

The format of the workshop includes invited speakers, with ample time left for discussions.

In addition to the organizers and their collaborators, the current list of invited speakers/panelists includes:

• Olivier Bodenreider, National Library of Medicine
• Ron Brachman, Yahoo!
• Christiane Felbaum, Princeton University
• Christos Faloutosos, Carnegie Mellon University
• Seth Greenblatt, Overwatch
• Ralph Grishman, NYU
• David Israel, SRI
• Cliff Josslyn, Los Alamos
• George Karypis, University of Minnesota
• Ken Murray, SRI
• Evren Sirin, University of Maryland
• Stuart Shapiro, SUNY Buffalo
• David Silberberg, Johns Hopkins University
• Chris Welty, IBM
• Michael Witbrock, Cycorp
• Mike Wolverton, SRI

Prospective participants should send an e-mail with a summary of interests and qualifications (no more than a page long) to spassion@dimacs.rutgers.edu. (Please use as Subject: SEMANTICS OF GRAPHS.)

Priority will be given to members of the national laboratories and faculty/students of university affiliates of the Institute for Discrete Sciences.

Space is very limited, so please apply early if you would like to attend.