Annual Newsletter

IAOA annual newsletter 2022

January 25, 2022 Leave a comment

Dear IAOA members and friends,

the whole Executive Council wishes you a happy and rewarding 2022. We sincerely wish that all of you are in good health and will stay so. Further, notwithstanding disruptions caused by the pandemic, we hope that you are still full of the energy and new ideas that are needed for the future advancement of our community.

The last two years have been rough everywhere and IAOA could not escape the pandemic turmoil. Nevertheless, we can report on IAOA’s recent development and achievements, and we would like to inform you about upcoming events and activities.

One of the most important achievements is an overhaul of the membership fee scheme, with no fee to be paid by individuals.

-> We warmly invite you to (re-)establish your IAOA membership

through our website [1]!

Please find our overview on IAOA updates and subsequent details below.

Once more, all the best for a pleasant and fulfillingrewarding year 2022,

Laure Vieu for the whole IAOA Executive Council

== IAOA Updates ==

Forthcoming:

1.) JOWO 2022 – onsite in Jönköping, Sweden in August

2.) ESAO – continuing the Educational Series on Applied Ontology

3.) Preparing FOIS and ISAO 2023 – with a new hybrid approach

4.) Assembly in 2022

Retrospects:

5.) FOIS and ISAO in 2020 and 2021

6.) New financial approach and fee scheme

7.) Introduction of the IAOA code of conduct

8.) Dissolution of the IAOA organisation in Italy

9.) Executive Council and offices of 2022

=== 1. JOWO 2022 ===

Episode VIII of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), the Svear Sommar of Ontology [2], will take place as an onsite event on August 15-19, 2022, at Jönköping University in Sweden. Its organisation is chaired by Maria M. Hedblom, Karl Hammar and Tan He.

The call for workshop proposals [3] is out (deadline: February 15th). Please feel encouraged to contribute – and let’s meet this August in Sweden!

=== 2. ESAO ===

IAOA’s youngest educational effort is the Educational Series on Applied Ontology (ESAO) [4], created in 2021 as a complementary effort to the well-established Interdisciplinary Schools on Applied Ontology (ISAO), when onsite meetings were not feasible.

The key idea of ESAO is a combination of an online archive of educational material and a webinar series for presentation and exchange on that material. The series was launched as a one-day hybrid event [5] during the 2021 Bolzano Summer of Knowledge (BoSK) in September, followed by the first regular webinar session in November [6].

In 2022, the new educational series will be developed from the points of view of infrastructure and program, aiming at picking up a cruise rhythm.

If you deem the effort worthwhile, please consider supporting it by proposing future webinar topics of interest and/or speakers, simply by email [7]. Moreover, you are warmly invited to join sessions of IAOA’s Education Committee [8], which steers the organisation of ESAO and would benefit from reinforcements.

=== 3. Preparing FOIS and ISAO 2023 ===

Announcements for the location of both the 13th edition of Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) and the 5th Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) in 2023 can be expected soon – stay tuned!

What has been decided already is a new approach for FOIS, called ‘sequentially hybrid’. There are good arguments for both onsite and online events. Some members prefer online events, because they lower the barrier for participation and reduce the carbon footprint of conferences. Other members feel strongly that onsite conferences play an important role for the social fabric of a community, which cannot be replaced by online events. However, the hybrid model exercised at FOIS 2021 (cf. below) turned out as non-satisfactory either.

In a revised attempt to cater to both groups, we plan to organise FOIS 2023 in two temporally disconnected parts. One part will be a traditional onsite conference, the other will happen purely online. Authors will be asked at submission time about their preference for online or onsite participation (or lack thereof), the review process will be equal for all submissions, and all accepted research papers will be included in the proceedings regardless of presentation mode.

Other IAOA events, especially ISAO, will keep their onsite modality for deeper exchanges.

=== 4. Assembly in 2022 ===

Some administrative aspects will be dealt with during this year’s assembly/ies. This includes the usual approval of the financial report of the previous year and, importantly, the election of the next Executive Council, in office during 2023 and 2024.

Please stay tuned for assembly announcement(s), as we currently conclude considerations on having two assemblies or better “merging” them into a single one, likely during JOWO.

=== 5. FOIS and ISAO in 2020 and 2021 ===

The 11th edition of Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) in 2020 [9] was originally planned to become part of the first Bolzano Summer of Knowledge (BoSK). The EC is grateful to the chairs Roberta Ferrario, Boyan Brodaric and Fabian Neuhaus and the local organisers Oliver Kutz and Nicolas Troquard for steering for the best through the uncertainties of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Submissions and paper selection went as usual, and proceedings were published [10]. But the actual conference event was postponed to 2021, as it was felt that a mere online event was undesirable for FOIS. Two of the 2020 workshops were held online, while others were postponed to 2021.

All the more one highlight of 2021 was the happening of the 12th FOIS edition with the same chairs in Bolzano, Italy, in September [11]. There was a new call for papers, another set of proceedings [12], and the conference comprised presentations of research papers from both 2020 and 2021. In addition, FOIS contained 6 workshops, 3 tutorials, an Early Career Symposium, a Demonstrations track and an Ontology Showcase track.

In order to enable wide participation in spite of the travel restrictions that prevented long-distance travel, for the first time FOIS was organised as a hybrid event, allowing for participation both onsite in Bolzano and online. On the one hand, the hybrid model of FOIS 2021 was a great success in the sense that we exceeded the number of participants of all previous years: 147 people had registered themselves on the FOIS Discord server in order to participate in discussions at the main conference (not counting workshops). On the other hand, during the organisation it became clear that that model had severe disadvantages from an organisational point of view. The need to evolve fostered discussion and reconsiderations, resulting in the model now foreseen for FOIS 2023 (see 3. above).

Turning to ISAO, the planned 2020 edition was first postponed to 2021 and then cancelled altogether, as we deemed – considering a hybrid format – that we could not maintain the kind of deep, fruitful and rewarding interaction among lecturers and participants that is characteristic of our interdisciplinary schools. As creativity sometimes emanates from a bad situation, we launched the ESAO series (see 2. above). The launch was a one-day hybrid event [5] starting BoSK 2021 on September 10, followed by the first regular webinar session in November [6].

=== 6. New financial approach and fee scheme ===

During April 2021 we collectively discussed on our mailing list a proposal to eliminate the membership fee for individual members and adopted it eventually. The aim is to decrease any financial barriers to membership, thereby making the association more open and accessible to a wider ontology community. This move will also remove any inconvenience associated with annual membership renewals.

From 2022 on we rely on donations from members to fund IAOA activities in the future. Institutional membership is another important way to support IAOA, financially and thanks to the entailed appreciation.

We are pleased to announce that the registration system is now ready for the new system [1] and we thank you for your patience during the period of no access to it. You are most welcome to renew your membership or join anew – consider doing it right today! Moreover, we are very grateful to IOS Press for continuing to support our community by offering complimentary access to the Applied Ontology Journal to all members [13, 14].

=== 7. New code of conduct ===

In order to promote and enforce an atmosphere of constructive engagement, including the equitable and respectful treatment of participants across personal and professional differences, IAOA adopted a new Code of Conduct [15] and appointed Amanda Vizedom as Code of Conduct Officer in September 2021.

=== 8. Dissolution of the Italian IAOA ===

In the context of relocating IAOA from Italy to Switzerland, the original association in Italy was left with only a few members for the last three years, for administrative reasons. An extraordinary assembly on November 22nd, 2021, unanimously voted for the dissolution of IAOA in Italy. Remaining administrative steps have been taken since then.

Hence, we are happy to say that this long story – which kept us busy with a substantial amount of bureaucracy – has finally come to an end, such that our energies will now be fully dedicated to make IAOA in Switzerland thrive.

=== 9. Executive Council and offices of 2022 ===

Let us end this long newsletter by the announcement that the Executive Council offices for 2022 have been elected/appointed on January 11, 2022, as follows:

* President: Laure Vieu

* Vice-President: Fabian Neuhaus

* Secretary: Frank Loebe

* Deputy Secretary: Megan Katsumi

* Treasurer: Torsten Hahmann

* Deputy Treasurer: Ken Baclawski

* Communication Officer: Emilio Sanfilippo

The remaining offices shall be confirmed during the next EC meeting.

—————-

[1] https://iaoa.org/index.php/join/

[2] https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/2022/index.html

[3] https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/2022/call/index.html

[4] https://wiki.iaoa.org/index.php/Edu:ESAO

[5] https://esao2021.inf.unibz.it/

[6] https://wiki.iaoa.org/index.php/Edu:ESAO#1st_ESAO_Webinar_on_Nov_9.2C_2021

[7] info@iaoa.org

[8] https://wiki.iaoa.org/index.php/Edu:Home

[9] https://fois2020.inf.unibz.it/

[10] https://www.iospress.com/catalog/books/formal-ontology-in-information-systems-8

[11] https://fois2021.inf.unibz.it/

[12] https://www.iospress.com/catalog/books/formal-ontology-in-information-systems-9

[13] https://iaoa.org/index.php/membership/benefits/

[14] https://iaoa.org/index.php/member-area/ios-press-online-access/

[15] https://iaoa.org/index.php/code-of-conduct/

2020 Annual Newsletter

February 21, 2020 Leave a comment

Dear IAOA members,

2020 proceeds in its second month now, but still: Happy New Year to everyone!

Below you’ll find a review of an active and successful year 2019 for IAOA, followed by an outlook on our agenda for the present year. If you would like to share any thoughts on these matters, please feel invited to do so.

2019 IAOA Events

Summer Institute

We had a fruitful Summer Institute on Places and Things [1] at the University of Utrecht on 21-25 July 2019, bringing together three high-level facilitators:

Werner Kuhn (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Canada)
Simon Scheider (University of Utrecht, The Netherlands)

and 12 motivated participants for four days packed with stimulating lectures and active group work. The overall format of the Summer Institute was oriented at the design and evaluation of spatial ontologies by working through scenarios related to geospatial analysis and interactions with the physical world.

The topic proposed for the next IAOA Summer Institute (in 2021) was to focus on the specification and use of competency questions.

The Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO)

Then, the premier IAOA event in 2019 was JOWO, Episode V: The Styrian Autumn of Ontology [2,3], which took place at the University of Graz during September 23-25, 2019. This wonderful fifth edition of the Joint Ontology Workshops, chaired by Adrien Barton and Selja Seppälä, included 12 workshops and 5 tutorials with a broad range of topics (cf. the listing at the bottom).

A total of 101 papers were submitted to the workshops of which 83 were accepted.

Moreover, the participants enjoyed three outstanding keynote speakers:

Antony Galton (University of Exeter, UK)
Yongsheng Gao (SNOMED International)
Valentina Presutti (Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology of CNR, Rome, Italy)

and, last but not least, several extremely pleasant social events.

JOWO is clearly growing in audience. The 2019 edition attracted over 100 participants from many countries, from both academia and industry.

Also, this event was a fruitful occasion to gather and advance the IAOA community. There were meetings of two IAOA Technical Committees:

the kick-off meeting of the newly founded Industry and Standards Technical Committee (ISTC) [4] (was named “Applied Ontology in Industry and Standards” at JOWO), see also the section IAOA Organization below;
the meeting of the Education Committee [5].

In addition, there was a general IAOA meeting whose large attendance brought many discussions clearly showing that these two IAOA Technical Committees meet the needs of our community. You are all encouraged to join them, as well as the Semantic Web – Applied Ontology (SWAO) Scientific Committee [6].

The now famous Pub Quiz organized by the Education Committee was a fantastic way to close the whole event in a great mixture of fun, science, and drinks!

Other 2019 Events Supported by IAOA

As in previous years, IAOA was again a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit [7]. For 2019 the theme “Explanation” was selected, under which the summit explored the role of ontologies for explaining the reasoning of a system and covered such topics as Financial Explanations, Medical Explanations, Explainable AI, Narrative, and Commonsense.

The Ontology Summit 2020 focuses on Knowledge Graphs (KGs) [8]. More specifically, the theme is to examine KGs from a number of points of view, ranging from low-level representation and storage techniques to high-level semantics, and from the vendors to the end users.

Moreover, the 12th Seminar on Ontology Research in Brazil – ONTOBRAS 2019 was successfully held in Porto Alegre from September 2 to 5 and has been supported by IAOA [9,10].

IAOA Organization

A new internal organization was gradually established during 2019. Several administrative committees [11] are in charge of preparing decisions ahead and executing actions on behalf of the Executive Council (EC). New internal management tools (Slack, Trac) have been implemented. To communicate with the community, an IAOA wiki [12] has been added to our IAOA website [13] and our mailing lists.

For significantly improving outreach, the Industry and Standards Technical Committee (ISTC) [4] was founded. ISTC has two core purposes: (a) to foster the use of applied ontology in standardization initiatives, and (b) to facilitate the interactions across people in industry and in applied ontology research. Its wiki will be launched within our wiki space soon [12] and the community at large will be called to join. Stay tuned!

2019 was a year without EC elections. Elections within the EC were run to choose officers as every year, with the single change of a new vice-president from 2020 on. In 2019 and continuing in 2020, the members of the EC are [14] :

Ken Baclawski (Northeastern University, Boston, USA), Treasurer
Roberta Ferrario (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Canada), Vice-President in 2020
Maria Keet (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Oliver Kutz (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy), Vice-President in 2019
Frank Loebe (University of Leipzig, Germany), Secretary
Fabian Neuhaus (Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany)
Laure Vieu (IRIT-CNRS, Toulouse, France), President
Amanda Vizedom (Credit Suisse, USA)

Agenda for 2020

2020 is a year with the International Conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems (FOIS) and the Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) – and an exceptional one at that. Indeed, FOIS 2020 [15] and ISAO 2020 [16], as well as JOWO 2020 [17], will all be held in the context of an exciting series of events, the Bolzano Summer of Knowledge (BoSK) [18], which will take place in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy, during the month of September of 2020. Altogether, BoSK will host between 10 and 15 events among which, besides FOIS and ISAO, the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW) [19] and the International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO) [20] certainly are relevant to our community, in addition to many JOWO workshops.

FOIS 2020 will see three great keynotes by:

Arianna Betti (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Nicola Guarino (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Stefan Schulz (Medical University of Graz, Austria)

Don’t let the deadline for submitting a FOIS paper, March 19th, pass!

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, Frank Loebe, Roberta Ferrario and Michael Gruninger

for the IAOA Executive Council

[1] http://geographicknowledge.de/iaoa-summer-institute/

[2] https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/2019/

[3] https://iaoa.org/index.php/2019/10/10/jowo-2019-report-from-graz/

[4] https://iaoa.org/index.php/faq/industry-and-standards-technical-committee/

[5] https://iaoa.org/index.php/faq/education-committee/

[6] https://iaoa.org/index.php/faq/semantic-web-and-applied-ontology-committee/

[7] http://ontologforum.org/index.php/OntologySummit2019

[8] http://ontologforum.org/index.php/OntologySummit2020

[9] http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/ontobras/en/call-for-papers/?lang=en

[10] https://iaoa.org/index.php/2019/10/08/ontobras-2019-report-from-porto-alegre/

[11] https://iaoa.org/index.php/organization/administrative-committees/

[12] https://wiki.iaoa.org/index.php/Main_Page

[13] https://iaoa.org/

[14] https://iaoa.org/index.php/organization/executive-council/

[15] https://fois2020.inf.unibz.it/

[16] https://isao2020.inf.unibz.it/

[17] https://fois2020.inf.unibz.it/jowo-2020-call-for-workshops-and-tutorials/

[18] https://summerofknowledge.inf.unibz.it/

[19] https://ekaw2020.inf.unibz.it/

[20] https://icbo2020.inf.unibz.it/

Sub Events of JOWO 2019

12 workshops

BOG (2nd International Workshop on Bad or Good Ontology)
CAOS IV (Cognition and OntologieS)
CREOL (Contextual Representation of Objects and Events in Language)
DAO-SI (Data meets Applied Ontology in Open Science and Innovation)
FOMI (10th International Workshop on Formal Ontologies meet Industry)
FOUST III (Workshop on Foundational Ontology)
ODLS 2019 (Ontology and Data in Life Sciences)
SHAPES 5.0 (The Shape of Things)
SoLEE (Ontology of Social, Legal and Economic Entities)
WINKS-2 (Second Workshop on Interaction-Based Knowledge Sharing)
WODHSA (1rst International Workshop on Ontologies for Digital Humanities and their Social Analysis)
WOMoCoE (4th International Workshop on Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution)

5 tutorials

DOnEReCA: Data-driven ontology engineering with Relational Concept Analysis by Petko Valtchev, Mickael Wajnberg
FOUNT: Towards a systematic methodology for foundational ontologies: Properties, relations, and truthmaking by Nicola Guarino, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Daniele Porello
MLwO: Semantic similarity and machine learning with ontologies by Robert Hoehndorf, Maxat Kulmanov
SNOMED CT Tutorial by Stefan Schulz, Yongsheng Gao, Stefan Sabutsch, Nina Sjencic
TLO: Top Level Ontologies (ISO/IEC 21838) by Barry Smith, Michael Gruninger

2019 Annual Newsletter

January 30, 2019 Leave a comment

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

Website Relaunch, News of 2018 and Review of 2017

September 7, 2018 Leave a comment

Welcome to the IAOA website, relaunched in early September 2018. Besides our hope that the relaunch is beneficial for all users of the site, another major good news for everyone interested in being or becoming a member of IAOA is that we are gradually reopening membership renewal during September and October … eventually! More details on the reopening can be found at the page Join IAOA.

The relaunch is further a good opportunity to highlight the major 2018 events organized by IAOA as well as to reflect on IAOA’s activities in the previous year. Indeed, IAOA’s two major 2018 events are most topical during September 2018.

The Tenth International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS 2018, will be 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), are crafting an amazing conference that will showcase the latest research in applied ontology. In addition to the main track, FOIS hosts five workshops and two tutorials as the Joint Ontology Workshops, JOWO 2018, as well as an Early Career Symposium. It further includes an Assembly of the membership, accessible locally and virtually and open to everyone interested. For up-to-date information, please visit the FOIS 2018 website.

Moreover, the Fourth Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology, ISAO 2018, will be co-located with FOIS in Cape Town and precedes the conference between September 10-15, 2018. Aldo Gangemi (General Chair) and Antony Galton (Programme Chair) as well as Maria Keet (Local Chair) have worked together to organize an educational event of high quality. Peter Simons, Stefano Borgo, and Stefan Schulz are among the instructors who will facilitate a full immersion experience in ontology, as one can see from the programme of the school.

Between January and April 2018 IAOA was again a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit, as in previous years. For 2018 the theme “Contexts 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. The 2018 Ontology Summit Communique has recently been published in Applied Ontology.

Likewise and thereby turning to the beginning of 2017, IAOA was one of the co-organizers of the Ontology Summit 2017, which addressed the theme “AI, Learning, Reasoning, and Ontologies”. It explored the various connections between these areas, with conclusions presented in the 2017 Communique.

The Fourth IAOA Summer Institute was held during August 8-11, 2017 at the University of Toronto, Canada. The topic of the Summer Institute was “Upper Ontologies”, with Stefano Borgo, Michael Gruninger, Nicola Guarino, and Barry Smith as facilitators. Over thirty-two participants brainstormed and debated issues arising from the conceptual underpinnings and application of upper ontologies.

The Joint Ontology Workshops (Episode III: The Tyrolean Autumn), JOWO 2017, took place at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy between September 21-23, 2017. An impressive number of ten co-located workshops explored a diverse range of topics related to applied ontology in varied ways:

CREOL: Contextual Representation of Objects and Events in Language
DAO: Data meets Applied Ontologies
DEW: Ontology Debugging & Evaluation
EPINON: Epistemology in Ontologies
FOMI: Formal Ontologies Meet Industry
FOUST II: 2nd Workshop on Foundational Ontology
ISD3: The 3rd Image Schema Day
ODLS: 8th Workshop on Ontologies and Data in Life Sciences
SHAPES 4.0: The Shape of Things
WINKS: Workshop on Interaction-Based Knowledge Sharing

The post-proceedings of JOWO 2017 include 69 contributions and were published in January 2018 as volume 2050 of CEUR Workshop Proceedings. Special thanks to the JOWO 2017 chairs — Stefano Borgo, Oliver Kutz, Frank Loebe, and Fabian Neuhaus — for planning and executing amazing and memorable three days!

All efforts are made to allow for a similar success of our flagship events in September 2018. Moreover, there is an active agenda for the remainder of the year in administrative terms, among other items including the further settling of IAOA in its still new location Switzerland, rounding off website refurbishment and not at least running another, virtual Assembly for electing members for the Executive Council in November.

We look forward to the continuing support of our longstanding as well as novel members in all endeavours of IAOA. Moreover, we invite everyone interested to participate in ISAO, FOIS or any future events of the Association – it would be a great pleasure to meet you there!

Michael Gruninger and Oliver Kutz
for the IAOA Executive Council

IAOA Newsletter 2015/2016

February 25, 2016

Dear IAOA members,

2015 comprised a special milestone for our community as we marked the10th anniversary of the Applied Ontology journal [1]. Nicola Guarino,Mark Musen, and the rest of the Editorial Board worked hard on a specialissue, which will be published in the coming months.

IAOA was one of the co-organizers for Ontology Summit 2015 [2], whichaddressed the theme “The Internet of Things: Toward Smart NetworkedSystems and Societies.” and explored Ontology Integration in IoT,Semantic Sensor Network Ontologies, Decision Making in DifferentDomains, and Related Standards and Synergies for Emerging IoT Ontologies.

The Third IAOA Summer Institute (in cooperation with the VespucciInstitutes 2015) [3] was held during the week of June 22-26 at Collegeof the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA. The topic this year was”Spatial Ontologies for e-Science” with Werner Kuhn, Peter Fox, andMichael Gruninger as facilitators. Amidst the scenery of coastal Maine,participants engaged in a wide range of discussions, primarilyconsidering the notion of location. Topics included the role of locationin schema.org [4] and PROV-O [5], geoscience without geometry, and astudy of the concept of along (e.g. as in samples were taken alongthe river). Michael Gruninger was bestowed the honour of Fellow of the
Vespucci Initiative for the Advancement of Geographic Information inScience [6]. Special thanks are extended to Werner Kuhn, whoseindomitable energy, inspiration, and organizational prowess made theSummer Institute another success.

Last year marked the first edition of JOWO (Joint Ontology Workshops)[7] at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence(IJCAI) [8] in Buenos Aires, Argentina on July 25-31. This eventco-located the Workshop on Modular Ontologies (WoMO), Formal Ontologiesfor Artificial Intelligence (FOfAI), the Workshop on Ontologies andLogic Programming for Query Answering, and the Workshop on Belief Changeand Non Monotonic Reasoning in Ontologies and Databases.

The 7th Workshop on Formal Ontologies Meet Industry (FOMI) [9] wasco-located with the RuleML Conference [10] in Berlin on August 5.Organized by Roberta Cuel and Bob Young, the workshop brought togetheran interesting mix of perspectives from a wide range of industrialapplications.

Concerning internal affairs, the end of the year brought changes to theExecutive Council (EC). Marion Haemmerli, Janna Hastings, and Leo Obrstall retired from the EC. Leo has served as an EC member from thecreation of IAOA in 2009, and Marion has been instrumental in laying thegroundwork for the relocation of IAOA from Italy to Switzerland. Aheartfelt thanks to Janna, Marion, and Leo for all of their hard work!Ken Baclawski, Amanda Vizedom, and Zena Wood were elected to theExecutive Council, with their term starting this January, 2016.

Under the leadership of Maria Keet and Zena Wood, the IAOA EducationCommittee has been re-energized, with the visible result of getting awiki [11] started, where people can find information on ontologycourses, material, and textbooks. See there [12] to find out how tocontribute to this effort.

This coming year will be quite exciting, with IAOA supporting severalmajor events. The Ninth International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016) [13] will be held in Annecy, France, onJuly 6-9. Giancarlo Guizzardi (General Chair) together with RobertaFerrario and Werner Kuhn (Programme Chairs), as well as PatrickBarlatier and Richard Dapoigny (Local Chairs), are crafting an amazingconference that will showcase the latest research in applied ontology.For up-to-date information, visit the website at
[13] https://www.iaoa.org/fois2016 .

The Education Committee is leading the planning for the Third Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) [14], which willtake place in Bolzano, Italy, between June 27 and July 1, 2016, i.e.Monday to Friday in the week before FOIS. Keep your eyes open for publicannouncements in the near future.

As in previous years, IAOA will again be a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit [15]. Ontology Summit 2016 has selected as theme for this year”Semantic Integration”. The Summit will offer a particularly importantopportunity for identifying use cases for applying formal ontologies tosemantic integration problems in the domains of earth sciences, biologyand medicine, cloud computing, engineering, and finance.

The relocation of IAOA from Italy to Switzerland is still on our agenda.Unfortunately, this project could not be finished in 2015 as intendedoriginally, primarily due to delays in the revision of the Statute andthe Bylaws for Switzerland. However, we are now approaching thecompletion of this revision as well as the formal foundation of IAOA inSwitzerland, which are planned until March 2016. Please note that thistiming has a side effect on membership renewals for 2016. All activememberships of 2015 are “silently” extended until March 31, 2016. Afterthe foundation of IAOA in Switzerland and the setup of a new bankaccount all members will be informed when we are ready to enroll forthis year.

With an active agenda for 2016, we look forward to your continuingsupport in all the endeavours of IAOA and will hope to see you at any orall of this year’s events!

Michael Gruninger and Oliver Kutz
for the IAOA Executive Council

[1] http://www.iospress.nl/journal/applied-ontology/
[2] http://ontolog.cim3.net/OntologySummit/2015/
[3] http://www.vespucci.org/presentation
[4] https://schema.org/
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/
[6] http://www.vespucci.org/
[7] https://www.iaoa.org/jowo/
[8] http://ijcai-15.org/
[9] http://www.csw.inf.fu-berlin.de/fomi2015/
[10] http://2015.ruleml.org/
[11] http://iaoaedu.cs.uct.ac.za
[12] http://iaoaedu.cs.uct.ac.za/pmwiki.php?n=IAOAEdu.HowToJoin
[13] https://www.iaoa.org/fois2016
[14] http://isao2016.inf.unibz.it/
[15] http://ontologforum.org/index.php/OntologySummit

Frank Loebe

2014 New Year’s Address to IAOA Members by the Executive Council

January 14, 2014

Dear IAOA members,

Happy New Year!

tripticoPortada.psd Looking back on 2013, it is evident that our Association is thriving in a number of areas.

2013’s Summer Institute was held in cooperation with the Vespucci Institute in Fiesole, Italy in June. The selected topic was: “Ontologies and models for integrated assessments of multiple-scale processes“. Using the notion of “land functions” as a basis, discussions covered a host of highly interdisciplinary approaches, including spatial micro-simulation models for environments and social science, to move towards an ontology of land function and land function dynamics.

Dimitris Ballas (University of Sheffield), Tom Bittner (SUNY-Buffalo), Max Craglia (JRC), Werner Kuhn (University of Mnster), Carlo Lavalle (JRC) served as facilitators. And particular thanks go to Werner Kuhn for his energy and assistance in another highly successful Summer Institute!

IAOA was also one of the co-organizers forOntologySummit 2013, which addressed the theme “Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle” and explored criteria, tools, and techniques for evaluating ontologies.

In addition, marking a new development for the Association, IAOA sponsored a Prize for the Best Hackathon-Clinic Project at the Ontology Summit.

The winners of the Award in 2013 were:

– Mike Bennett (FIBO; EDM Council; Hypercube)

– Mara Poveda Villaln (OOPS!; Universidad Politcnica de Madrid)

– Astrid Duque Ramos (OQuaRE; University of Murcia)

– Samir Tartir (OntoQA; Philadelphia University, Jordan)
Congratulations to all of the winners.

The new Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG was created in November, with Leo Obrst leading the effort. Various activities continued in the other Special Interest Groups and Technical Committees, although we are strongly encouraging much higher participation levels from members in the future! There is much to do. In particular, we are hoping to energize the Education Committee and initiate the development of an ontology textbook. Zena Wood has agreed to be the new Chair of the Education Committee, taking over from Antony Galton and Fabian Neuhaus.

The year also brought changes to the Executive Council, with Giancarlo Guizzardi and Laure Vieu both retiring.Many thanks to Giancarlo and Laure for all of their hard work! Laure, in particular, has served as our Treasurer since the inception of the Association, an absolutely vital role. The current success of IAOA is in large part due to her untiring efforts, and she will be greatly missed.

Elections were held in 2013, and Janna Hastings and Marion Haemmerli both joined the Executive Council, with their term starting this January, 2014. Re-elected to the Executive Council were Oliver Kutz, Frank Loebe, Fabian Neuhaus, and Leo Obrst.

For the coming year, 2014, we are eagerly anticipating a wide range of major events.Foremost, we have FOIS occurring this year September 22-25 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. With Laure Vieu as General Chair, Pawel Garbacz and Oliver Kutz as Programme Committee Chairs, and Giancarlo Guizzardi and Renato Rocha Souza as Organization Chairs, FOIS promises to be a spectacular venue for the presentation of the latest ontological research. For the latest information, visit the website athttp://fois2014.inf.ufes.br .

The Second Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis will also take place in Vitoria, Brazil, in the week before FOIS. The emphasis here will be on ontological analysis, pursuing the goal of showing how the different disciplines within IAOA interact and communicate to answer a variety of problems. Details on the program/courses of the school, venue and accommodation and registration procedures are available athttps://iaoa.org/isc2014 .

As in previous years, IAOA will again be a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit. Ontology Summit 2014 has selected as theme for this year “Big Data and Semantic Web Meet Applied Ontology“. The Summit will offer a particularly important opportunity for building bridges between the Semantic Web, Linked Data, Big Data, and Applied Ontology communities. The Kickoff session takes place already on January 16, 2014 — for more details, see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2014 .

This coming year therefore holds great promise for new activities within the Association as well as new opportunities for involvement across all the interdisciplinary areas that make up Applied Ontology. We therefore 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 face-to-face events!

Michael Gruninger and John Bateman

for the IAOA Executive Council

Frank Loebe

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