Alignments and contexts in networked ontologies

The semantic web project has provoked the blossoming of ontologies of various degrees of sophistication available on the web. Taking advantage of these ontologies for a particular purpose requires the selection of relevant ontologies and their assembly in something that can be qualified as a networked ontology and may, in turn, be made available on the web.

The European integrated project NeOn aims at defining this notion of networked ontologies and developping the conceptual and computer tools for taking advantage of them. This includes in particular:

• expressing the relations between these ontologies (composition, version, etc.);
• expressing the context of development and use of networked ontologies;
• selecting ontologies with regard to these criterion;
• composing the ontologies with regard to relations between ontology entities.

We have been investigating the relations between ontologies expressed as "alignments" between ontology entities. This allows to define the semantic consequences of networked ontologies. We also have designed and implemented a "universal" alignment service and infrastructure for the semantic web that can be used for agent communication, context matching, peer-to-peer querying. This infrastructure will require further developments in order to support the manipulation and exploitation of networked ontologies.

The Exmo project at INRIA is looking for a bright and autonomous researcher for taking an active part in the NeOn project, in particular in the definition of the NeOn networked ontology model and the further development of associated tools. The work will take advantage of the pioneer work carried out within Exmo on ontology matching and matching infrastructure, alignment semantics, context modelling for ambient intelligence and modular ontologies.

The selected candidate will work in deep integration with the European colleagues involved in NeOn as well as the member of the Exmo team.

References:

• NeOn (http://www.neon-project.org)
• NeOn in two pages
• Alignment semantics (https://exmo.inria.fr/files/publications/zimmermann2006b.pdf)
• Alignment API (https://moex.gitlabpages.inria.fr/alignapi/)

Qualification: PhD or equivalent in computer science. Specialization in knowledge representation, ontologies or software engineering is welcome.

Researched skills:

• Interaction with other researchers.
• Design and programming skills.
• Autonomous researcher.
• Writing capabilities.
• Innovative.

Hiring date: as soon as possible.

Place of work: The position is located at INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Montbonnot (near Grenoble, France) a main computer science research lab, in a stimulating research environment. Research will be carried out in the Exmo team under the supervision of Jérôme Euzenat. It will require the involvement of the candidate in related projects.

Duration: 12 months (extendible to longer period)

Salary: 2320 EUR/month

Contact: For further information, contact Jerome:Euzenat#inrialpes:fr.
Some more administrative information is available (but do not hesitate to contact us any since we are more flexible).

INRIA Priority research themes:

• Designing and mastering the future network infrastructures and communication services platforms/Concevoir et maîtriser les futures infrastructures des réseaux et des services de communication;
• Developing multimedia data and multimedia information processing/Développer le traitement des informations et données multimédia.