2019 Annual Newsletter
Happy New Year 2019 to all IAOA members!
This past year was quite an active one for our Association.
The Tenth International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2018) was held in Cape Town, South Africa, on September 17-21, 2018. Oliver Kutz (General Chair) together with Stefano Borgo and Pascal Hitzler (Programme Chairs), as well as Maria Keet (Local Chair), crafted an amazing conference that showcased the latest research in applied ontology.
The Best Paper Award went to
Joao Moreira, Luis Ferreira Pires, Marten van Sinderen and Laura M. Daniele. SAREF4health: IoT standard-based ontology-driven healthcare systems
The two Distinguished Paper Awards went to
Claudio Masolo and Laure Vieu. Graph-Based Approaches to Structural Universals and Complex States of Affairs
and
Michael Gruninger, Bahar Aameri, Carmen Chui, Torsten Hahmann and Yi Ru. Foundational Ontologies for Units of Measure
The Fourth Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) was co-located with FOIS between September 10-15, 2018 (the Monday to Saturday in the week before FOIS). Aldo Gangemi (General Chair) and Antony Galton (Programme Chair) as well as Maria Keet (Local Chair) worked together to organize an educational event of high quality.
Peter Simons, Arina Britz, and Stefan Schulz were among the instructors who facilitated a full immersion experience in ontology (full programme here).
As in previous years, IAOA was again a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit. For 2018 the theme “Context in Context” was selected, covering such topics as Upper Ontologies for Specifying Context, Contexts in the Open Knowledge Network, and Contexts for Integration and Interoperability.
This year, the Ontology Summit 2019 explores the role of ontologies for explaining the reasoning of a system. More specifically, the summit is focused on critical explanation gaps and the role of ontologies for dealing with these gaps. The sessions will examine current technologies and real needs driven by risks and requirements to meet legal or other standards.
One of the premier events for 2019 will be JOWO 2019 (Joint Ontology Workshops) which will take place at the University of Graz, September 23-25, 2019. In addition to workshops, JOWO will host tutorials, joint panel sessions and keynotes, as well as meetings of IAOA Special Interest Groups and Technical Committees.
Interest has been expressed to organize the following workshops:
- BOG (Bad Ontology) – CAOS (Cognition and Ontologies)
- CREOL (Contextual Representation of Objects and Events in Language)
- DAO-SI (Data meets Applied Ontology in Open Science and Innovation)
- FOMI (Formal Ontologies meet Industry)
- FOUST (Workshop on Foundational Ontology)
- ODLS (Ontology and Data in Life Sciences)
- SHAPES (The Shape of Things)
- SoLEE (Ontology of Social, Legal and Economic Entities)
- WODHSS (Workshop on Ontologies for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences)
- WOMoCoE (Workshop on Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution)
- WINKS (Workshop on Interaction-Based Knowledge Sharing)
The other big event this year will be the Summer Institute with the theme Places and Things which will consider the commonalities between ontologies for geographical and physical objects, such as location and dimensionality. Stay tuned for details on the dates for the Summer Institute.
Elections brought some changes on the IAOA Executive Council last December, with Zena Wood retiring and Maria Keet joining the EC. Additionally, Laure Vieu is now President of IAOA. Many thanks for Zena for her invaluable work on the EC, and thanks to Michael for his years of outstanding service as President.
The new EC has already planned for a new internal organization in 2019, with more committees in charge of preparing decisions ahead, and the aim to further involve the membership in its activities. Stay tuned!
With a full agenda for 2019, we look forward to your continuing support in all the endeavours of IAOA and will hope to see you at any or all of this year’s events!
Laure Vieu and Oliver Kutz
for the IAOA Executive Council