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***********   Call for Papers: Ontology Learning   ******************
********************   ECAI-2000 Workshop  **************************
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********************   August 22, 2000     **************************
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Comprehensive information to be found at
                        http://ol2000.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de


Workshop Summary

 Ontologies serve as a means for establishing a conceptually concise
 basis for communicating knowledge for many purposes. In recent years,
 we have seen a surge of interest that deals with the discovery and
 automatic creation of complex, multirelational knowledge structures.
 For example, the natural language community tries to acquire word
 semantics from natural language texts, database researchers tackle
 the problem of schema induction and integration, and people building
 intelligent information agents research the learning of complex
 structures from semi-structured input (HTML, XML). All the while,
 efforts in the machine learning community pursue the induction of
 more concise and more expressive knowledge structures
 (e.g., relational learning) in general.

 For the workshop we intend to gather a diverse range of participants
 interested in the learning of ontologies. In particular, we are
 also interested in the maintenance (revision, incrementality) and
 integration (from various sources) aspects of learning ontologies.
 We want to further, or even establish, the exchange of ideas between
 these communities --- and maybe even others that we have not thought
 of. Hence, we solicit papers that present innovative approaches to
 ontology learning that are to be discussed in the workshop, system
 demonstrations or position statements.


Important Dates

 Deadline for paper submission 1 April 2000
 Notification of acceptance    1 May 2000
 Deadline final contributions  1 June 2000


Submission Information

 We invite contributions that advance the state-of-the-art in topics
 related to the purpose of the workshop. Persons interested in
 participating should submit either a technical paper (less than
 5000 words) or a position paper (less than 1500 words) addressing
 new research issues. In addition, we solicit proposals for panel
 discussions and break-out groups that work towards visions for
 intelligent processes. Submit before April 1, 1999 in electronic form
 (strongly preferred!) to:

     ama@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de

or send three hard copies of your submission to:

"Ontology Learning"
Steffen Staab and Alexander Mädche
Institute AIFB,
Karlsruhe University,
D-76128 Karlsruhe,
Germany

Organizing Committee

 Steffen Staab (Contact),
     AIFB, Karlsruhe University,
     76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
     email: sst@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de
     phone: +49-721-608 4751
     fax: +49-721-693 717
 Alexander Maedche, AIFB, Karlsruhe University
 Claire Nedellec, Inference and Machine Learning Group,
                  LRI, Université Paris Sud
 Peter Wiemer-Hastings, Division of Informatics,
                        University of Edinburgh

Program Committee
 Illarramendi Echave Arantxa, Universidad del Pais Vasco, Spain
 Dieter Fensel, Free University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL
 Nicola Guarino, National Research Council, Padova, Italy
 Asuncion Gomez-Perez, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
 Udo Hahn, CLIF, University of Freiburg, Germany
 Ian Horrocks, University of Manchester, UK
 Jörg-Uwe Kietz, Swiss Life, Zurich, Switzerland
 Yves Kodratoff, LRI, France
 Christine Parent, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
 Marie-Christine Rousset, LRI, France
 Rudi Studer, Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany