Keynote Talks

1. Semantics Powered Bioinformatics: What, Why and How of Semantic Search, Integration, Processes and Analytics

Speaker: Prof. Amit P. Sheth,  University of Georgia and Semagix Inc.

Abstract: Bioinformatics is about providing biologists and those in allied disciplines with ability to exploit information - information that is increasingly distributed, heterogeneous and massive.  Bioinformatics has already succeeded in utilizing database management, workflow and information retrieval technologies, which have provided syntactic search, heterogeneous data access and sharing, and limited forms of integration. A good amount of effort has also involved use of statistical and syntactic techniques to support the essential tasks of finding patterns, similarities, and matches to identify building block structures. Looking to the future, we can realize more exciting potential of bioinformatics if we have more automated ways for analysis leading to insight and discovery - to understand cellular components, molecular functions and biological processes, and more importantly complex interactions and interdependencies between them. And while lot of effort in the last decade focused on genes, next set of challenges involve more complex structures of protein and carbohydrates.

This talk focuses on semantics enabled bioinformatics.  We outline increasing use of semantic techniques in bioinformatics for search, browsing and integration.  Ontologies provide underpinning for most of today’s semantic techniques and the Semantic Web research, and bioinformatics is one of the most aggressive adopters of ontologies among science and industry domains.  We also investigate how we start to address more pertinent discovery and analysis questions such as: “how does the glycosylation pattern of the cell change when it undergoes a physiological change, such as differentiation or transformation to a cancer cell?”  We will also weave a brief overview of the research and exciting commercial state of the art in the semantic technology (specifically ontology driven information systems).   

Sample background material: Bioinformatics for Glycan Expression (an example research project), SCORE / Semantic Enhancement Engine (an example technology), Taalee Semantic Search , Semagix Freedom (an example commercial product).


Bio: Amit Sheth is a Professor at the University of Georgia and CTO of Semagix, Inc. He started the LSDIS lab at Georgia in 1994. Earlier he served in R&D groups at Bellcore, Unisys, and Honeywell. He founded his second company, Taalee, in 1999 based on technology developed at the LSDIS lab, and managed it as CEO until June 2001. Following Taalee's acquisition/merger, he currently serves as CTO and a co-founder of Semagix, Inc. His research has led to three significant commercial products, several deployed applications and over 150 publications. More: http://lsdis.cs.uga.ed/~amit

2. Science & Engineering Information Integration and Informatics at NSF

Speaker: Dr. Michael Pazzani, National Science Foundation

Abstract:

Bio: Michael J. Pazzani is the Director of the Information and Intelligent Systems Division of the National Science Foundation. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA and is on leave from a full professor at the University of California, Irvine where he also served as department chair of Information and Computer Science at UCI for five years. Dr. Pazzani serves on the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine. He has published numerous papers in machine learning, personalization, information retrieval, and cognitive science. 

3. Discovery Systems: Accelerating Scientific Discovery at NASA

Speaker: Dr. Barney Pell, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Abstract:Discovery Systems (DS) is a planned NASA funding program designed to develop and demonstrate discovery and analysis technologies and integrated architectures to accelerate and scale up the scientific discovery process at NASA. DS has three major elements focused on distributed data search, access and analysis; model discovery and refinement, and exploratory environments and collaboration. This talk will present an overview of the program and discuss one of the program goals in which the Semantic Web might play a key role: Knowledge frameworks and intelligent agents that enable scientists to ask what-if questions that are answered by composing interdisplinary models and simulations, heterogeneous databases, and world knowledge

Bio:Barney Pell, Ph.D. is a Senior Computer Scientist with the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS) and serves as the Technical Area Lead of the Collaboration and Assistant Systems area within the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center.  In this role Dr. Pell provides technical and strategic leadership for a 70-person research and development organization.  Research areas include intelligent agents, human-centered computing, collaborative knowledge management, distributed databases, information integration, spoken dialog systems, and semantic web. Customers/missions include Mars Exploration Rovers mission (JPL), Shuttle, International Space Station, and NASA Astrobiology Institute.  Dr. Pell is also the Project Lead for two projects under NASA’s CICT funding program. One project is conducting systems analysis to model the impact of information technology research on scientific processes at NASA. Another project is defining a new $50M/year NASA research program in the area of knowledge access and discovery systems. Dr. Pell returned to NASA in December 2002 after spending 4 years in startup companies.  Dr. Pell served most recently as Vice President of Strategy for Whizbang! Labs. a provider of advanced text processing and automation software.   Prior to joining WhizBang! Labs, Barney was Chief Strategist and Vice-President of Business Development for StockMaster.com, a provider of internet-based stock-market analysis tools.  Dr. Pell helped StockMaster.com grow from $500,000 to $5 million in revenue in 2 years, when the company was acquired  by Red Herring Communications in July, 2000. From 1993-1998, Dr. Pell worked as a Senior Computer Scientist for NASA, where he conducted advanced research and development of autonomous control software for NASA's deep space missions.  Dr. Pell was awarded NASA's "software of the year" award in 1999 for the development of the Remote Agent, the first Autonomous Agent to fly onboard and control a real spacecraft.  A recognized expert on Autonomous Agents, Dr. Pell has published over 30 technical papers on topics related to information retrieval, knowledge management, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and scheduling systems.   Dr. Pell holds a B.S. degree from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.