Introduction to Protégé

DATE

Saturday and Sunday, August 11-12, 2012.

VENUE

Room14A, Basement, Baldy Hall, University at Buffalo North Campus.

FACULTY

Ron Rudnicki (CUBRC, Buffalo), Alan Ruttenberg (University at Buffalo), Barry Smith (University at Buffalo)

DESCRIPTION

This course is for absolute beginners in ontology. It provides an introduction to the Protégé 4.2 ontology editor, details of which can be found here.

It will begin with a brief introduction to ontology building, and to the use and importance of ontologies, with examples from medicine and defense. This will be followed by an introduction to the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The bulk of the course will consist of an interactive introduction to the use of Protégé in building an ontology. No background in the use of computer languages and programming is presupposed. All sessions will be highly interactive.

SCHEDULE

A detailed schedule and expanded course description is provided here.

PARTICIPATION

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).

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.

Registration details for University at Buffalo (UB) students taking this course for credit are here.

External (non-UB) participants who wish to take this course for credit, either on-line or through face-to-face participation, should write to Barry Smith as soon as possible.

External students may wish to consider applying credit from this tutorial 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.

AUDITING

Auditing by UB persons is free. For external participants an auditing fee of $100 will be charged. This fee applies equally both to on-line and face-to-face participants. All those wishing to audit this tutorial should contact Barry Smith as soon as possible. A certificate of participation will be supplied on request, but auditing the course does not count for credit.

INSTALLATION OF PROTEGE

On-line participants should install Protégé version 4.2 beta (as of June 13, 2012) on a machine they can use during the course. Begin installation by first registering at the Protégé site Protégé New User Registration. After registering, download the installation file of Protégé version 4.2 from Protégé Version 4.2 Download Page that is appropriate for your machine. Brief, but valid, installation instructions are provided on the Download Page.

FACULTY BIOS

Ron Rudnicki has a background in the areas of software quality assurance, database programming, application development and data warehousing. For the last 6 years he has developed ontologies for the Biometric Identity Management Agency, Army Net-Centric Data Strategy Center of Excellence (ANCDS CoE), and the IARPA Knowledge and Discovery Program. He is currently employed as a Senior Research Scientist at CUBRC, Inc.

Alan Ruttenberg is Director of the University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Data Exchange. He is a prominent contributor to ontology research, and especially in the use of Semantic Web technology for integrating and querying biomedical knowledge.

Barry Smith is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the University at Buffalo. He has published many papers on theoretical and applied ontology and is involved in multiple ontology projects in the biomedical, military and other domains.