Special Interest Groups (SIG's)

Special Interest Group Meeting, 9am to 5pm, Wed 9th April

Amandeep S. Sidhu, Professor Tharam S. Dillon, Dr David Hansen
Design and Implementation of Metadata and Ontologies in Biomedicine

Facilitators: Amandeep S. Sidhu, Research Fellow in Biomedical Informatics DEBII, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, <a.sidhu@curtin.edu.au>, Tharam S. Dillon Head R&D, DEBII, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, <tdillon@cbs.curtin.edu.au>, and David Hansen, Project Leader, Health Information Environment, e-Health Research Centre, Queensland, <David.Hansen@csiro.au>

Title: Design and Implementation of Metadata and Ontologies in Biomedicine

Outline: Biomedical Ontologies have developed in an uncoordinated way, often reflecting mere relations of 'association' between what are called 'concepts', and serving primarily the purposes of information extraction from on-line biomedical literature and databases. In recent years, we have learned a great deal about the criteria which must be satisfied if ontology is to allow true information integration and automatic reasoning across data and information derived from different sources. In this SIG we will broadly cover current research on development biomedical ontologies, and various issues in biomedical informatics addressed by these ontologies. Researchers (Mainly from Australasia) will be invited to submit research and discussion papers exploring the theories, design, and applications of biomedical ontologies.

The papers in the SIG will cover the following topics:

• Design of Biomedical Ontologies
• Use of Ontologies to manage Interoperation in Biomedical Databases
• Ontology representation and exchange languages
• Biomedical Ontologies and Web Ontology Language (OWL)
• Support of Ontologies for Biological Information Retrieval and Web Services
• Change Management in Biomedical Ontologies
• Tools for Development and Management of Biomedical Ontologies

Formatting details for Invited Papers: The papers will be allowed a maximum of 10 pages in Oxford University Press. Full text of all papers and will made available online to SIG participants and AusWeb 2008 delegates. These papers will be published in an issue of Biomedical Ontologies Journal in 2009.

Biographical Details: Amandeep S. Sidhu is a Senior Researcher at Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute at Curtin University of Technology, Perth with expertise in Protein Informatics. He is currently leading innovative Protein Ontology Project since 2003. His research interests include: Biomedical Ontologies, Structural Bioinformatics, Proteomics, XML Enabled Web Services, and Artificial Intelligence. His work in these fields resulted in over 50 scientific publications. He is an Editorial Board Member for International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics. He is an Editorial Board Member for Advances in Chemoinformatics and Computational Methods Book Series by IGI Global. In recent years he has severed as a guest editor for International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics, International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, and International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics. He is currently involved with many semantic web and bioinformatics conferences and workshops as an organizer or as a program committee member. He is current acting as a Coordinator for IEEE Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Community. He is also serving as Vice Chair of NSW Chapter of IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

Professor Tharam S. Dillon is currently working as Head of Research & Development for Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia. He was previously working as the Dean of Faculty of Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) until December 2006. He was the Foundation Professor in Computer Science and Engineering in La Trobe University where worked as Head of School of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences before he joined UTS in July 2003. He is the chair of Work Group on Web Semantics (WG 2.12/12.4) in Technical Committee for Software: Theory and Practice (TC2) for International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP). He is an expert in object component-based conceptual modeling and design, XML modeling, ontology development and knowledge engineering. He has published six authored books and six co-edited books. He has also published over 600 scientific papers and has over 1000 citations of his work in refereed journals and conferences. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of three international journals namely the International Journal of Computer Systems Science and Engineering, the International Journal of Electric Power and Energy Systems, and the International Journal of Engineering Intelligent Systems. He is also an Advisory Editor of IEEE Transactions in Industrial Informatics. He is on the advisory editorial board of Computer Communications. He has been an Advisory Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks.

Dr David Hansen is the leader of the Health Data team and project leader of Health Information Environment and e-Health Metadata and Ontologies research projects at the e-Health Research Centre. Prior to this, David was the Development Manager for SRS at LION Bioscience, Ltd in Cambridge, UK.