Basic Formal Ontology 2.0

DATE: Saturday and Sunday, August 18-19, 2012.

VENUE for FACE-TO-FACE PARTICIPATION: Room14A, Basement, Baldy Hall, University at Buffalo North Campus, Amherst, NY.

Suggested hotels: [1]

FACULTY: Alan Ruttenberg and Barry Smith (University at Buffalo)

DESCRIPTION

Basic Formal Ontology is currently being used by over 100 ontology-based research projects in biomedical informatics and increasingly in other fields. The course will provide an introduction to the content and use of BFO in ontology development. Attendees will acquire knowledge of the ontology and of its use as top-level ontology in multiple ontology development projects in a variety of fields. They will learn about the most recent developments in the ontology and acquire basic knowledge of the new formalizations of BFO in first-order logic (FOL) and in OWL.

SCHEDULE

Saturday, August 18: 9am-5pm

• The main idea of BFO
• Existing domain ontologies extending BFO
• The development of BFO 2.0
• Overview of BFO 2.0 architecture

Instances and universals

Continuants and occurrents

Dependence and independence

Generic dependence and information entities

Processes and process profiles

Sunday, August 19: 9am-5pm

• Examples of uses of BFO
• Creating a domain ontology by extending BFO
• BFO in First Order Logic
• BFO in OWL (Alan Ruttenberg)
• Applications of BFO in OWL (Alan Ruttenberg)
• Concluding discussion (Alan Ruttenberg and Barry Smith)

PARTICIPATION

Participants should have some background in ontology (including either philosophical or applied ontology). No specific knowledge of BFO is presupposed. This tutorial allows both face-to-face and on-line participation. Participation may be for credit (with an official university transcript), or the tutorial may be audited (with a certificate of completion if needed). The course will take place on the weekend of August 18-19, 2012, with follow-up meetings as necessary for those taking the course for credit.

Log-on/dial-in instructions for on-line participation will be provided by email to registered participants prior to the meeting.

FOR CREDIT

Participation in this tutorial will yield 1 credit hour; up to 3 further credit hours can be received through completion of a project under the guidance of an assigned faculty member. Projects must be completed before November 30, 2012.

External participants may wish to consider the possibility of having credits from this tutorial applied to the UB Masters and PhD Programs in Ontology. The University plans also an on-line Advanced Graduate Certificate Program in Ontology, to which credits for this course will also be applicable. Further details can be obtained from Barry Smith

Registration details for University at Buffalo (UB) students are here.

External (non-UB) participants who are interested in participating in this tutorial for credit should write to Barry Smith for registration instructions.

AUDITING

Auditing, both on-line and face-to-face, is free to registered participants. All those wishing to audit this tutorial should fill in the registration form provided here as soon as possible. A certificate of participation will be supplied on request, but auditing the course does not count for credit.

FACULTY

Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology. He is the author of some 500 publications, and his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US, Swiss and Austrian National Science Foundations, the US Department of Defense, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the European Union. In 2010 he was awarded the first Paolo Bozzi Prize in Ontology by the University of Turin. Smith is one of the principal scientists of the NIH National Center for Biomedical Ontology, a Scientific Advisor to the Gene Ontology Consortium, and a PI on the Protein Ontology and Infectious Disease Ontology projects. He has organized over 100 ontology conferences, workshops and tutorials.

Alan Ruttenberg is a Principal Scientist at Science Commons and the Director of the University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Data Exchange. His project, the Neurocommons, prototypes the use of Semantic Web technology for integrating and querying biomedical knowledge, working on structuring and using biological and clinical knowledge to answer questions and computationally interpret experimental data. He is a Coordinating Editor of the OBO Foundry and a former chair of the OWL Working Group.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Background information concerning BFO is available here.

For introductory reading see: Pierre Grenon and Barry Smith: "SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology", Spatial Cognition and Computation, 4 (2004), 69-103.

The current draft version of the BFO 2.0 Specification is available here.

For further information please write to Barry Smith.