Dr Maria Vargas-Vera Home Page

Maria - photo taken in York, United Kingdom (2003) --- photos from Mexico can be found at the bottom of  this page.

Note: this page does not cover all my professional activities.

 

I graduated  in Mathematics at the Faculty of Sciences, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM),  Then, I did a Master in Computer Sciences at UNAM and  I obtained my PhD from the Artificial Intelligence Department at Edinburgh University Scotland UK.

 

Research Interests:

I am interested in the use of Ontologies in NLP (Natural Language Processing). Currently, I work on Ontology-Based Information Extraction, Question Answering, Automated Assessment of Student Essays, Semi-Automatic Construction of Ontologies from text , Information Retrieval and  Ontology mapping.

 

Teaching:

De Montfort University, England, UK. (terms).

  • MSc course ''Intelligent Systems'',  Faculty of Computing Sciences and Engineering, Department of Computer & Information Sciences, Autumn term (September 2002 until January 2003).

Sciences Faculty -  Mathematics Department, National University of Mexico (UNAM)  (semesters).

  • Artificial Intelligence, Science Faculty UNAM, semester 98-2 and semester 2000-1.
  • Database Systems, Science Faculty UNAM, semester 2000-1.
  • Functional and Logic Programming, Science Faculty UNAM, semester 99-1 and semester 99-2.
  • Expert Systems, Science Faculty UNAM, semester 98-2.

Edinburgh University, Scotland UK. Demonstrator of the following courses (terms):

  • Artificial Intelligence II Edinburgh University, term 92-I
  • Artificial Intelligence I Edinburgh University,  term 91-II

National University of Mexico (UNAM)- courses in Mathematics and Computer Science  (semesters).

  • Data Structures: 6 month course (given twice), 1990-1991.
  • Compiler Theory: 6 month course, 1991.
  • Linear Algebra I, II, and Advanced: each 6 months long (I gave this series 3 times) 1980-1982.
  • Introduction to Computers: 6 month course (given 3 times), 1980-1982.
  • Discrete Mathematics: 6 months course, 1990.
  • Data Structures: Instituto Tecnologico Monterrey Campus Toluca, Mexico, 1989.
  • Expert Systems course for the ``Continuing Education for Engineers'' Programme, 1991.

 

My Students:

Current students:

Former students:

Supervised internships:

  • David Celjuska, 2003.
  • Mattia Lanzoni, 2001.

 

Member of PhD related Committees:

External Examiner:

  • External Examiner (President of the Jury), National University of Mexico, September 2006.
  • PhD External Examiner, Robert Gordon University, February, 2004. Aberdeen, Scotland UK.

 

Teaching interests:

 

Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Knowledge Representation, Database Systems, Logic Programming, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval and Machine Learning.

 

 

Research:

 

Current Projects:

 

KnowledgeWeb. Knowledge Web is a FP6 Network of Excellence that aims to support the transition of Ontology technology from Academia to Industry. The current consortium is integrated by 18 participants including leading partners in Semantic Web, Multimedia, Human Language Technology, Workflow and Agents.

 

AKT is a multi-million pound, six-year collaboration between internationally recognized research groups at the Universities of Southampton, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield and the Open University. AKT aims to tackle fundamental problems associated with the management of knowledge.

·        CONQUIRO A Cluster-Based  Information Retrieval Meta-search Engine. CONQUIRO  provides a suite of clustering methods:  hierarchical and non-hierarchical  clustering methods. CONQUIRO represents a solution to the problem of information management.

·        AGENT_AQUA Agent Based Question Answering System.

·        AQUA  Ontology driven Question Answering System. AQUA combines Natural Language processing (NLP), Ontologies, Logic, and Information Retrieval technologies in a uniform framework. AQUA makes  intensive use of an ontology in several parts of the question answering system. Typical questions using AQUA as closed-domain Question Answering System  can be found at AQUA-QUESTIONS.

·        MAOM-QA Multi-Agent Ontology Mapping for Question Answering. We are participating in the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative Contest 2006.(DSSim system).

 

Past Projects:

1. AKT related projects (The Open University)

 

·        SVE  Student Essay Viewer. A tool that allows tutors and students to visualize argumentation in student essays.

 

·        EVENT  (Event Recognition on News Stories). A tool which allows to recognize events happening in a news stories and populates a hand-crafted ontology.

 

·        ONTOSOPHIE is our new tool for Semi-Automatic Population of Ontologies from Text with confidence values associated to both the extraction rules and extracted values (extracted slots).

 

·        MnM  Semi-Automatic Population of  Ontologies from Text using Amilcare. MnM is the most well known tool (in the Semantic Web Community) for ontology-driven semantic mark-up. MnM allows also to populate  a given ontology.

 

·        INFOEXTRACTOR Semi-Automatic Population of Ontologies from Text using Marmot, Crystal and Badger.

 

 

2. Machine Learning

Extraction of Fuzzy Rules  (National University of Mexico)

     

3. Fuzzy Logic and Objects

Fril++: An Object-Oriented Fuzzy Logic Programming Language     (Bristol University, England UK)

 

4. Construction of  Logic Programs  using the idea of  Program Schemata

Automatic Programming -- Program Composition  (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK)

 

5. Object-Oriented Databases & Logic Programming

A Copy Structure-Based Prolog interpreter for a Unix System  (National University of Mexico)

 

Program Committees (Conference/Workshops):

 

Reviewer:

  • Book:  New Directions on Question Answering, MIT press, 2003.
  • The Second  International Conference on Knowledge Capture (KCAP-03), Oct 23-25, USA,  2003.
  • The 2003 International World Wide Web Conference (WWW-2003). Budapest, Hungary, May 20-24, 2003.
  • Special issue on the Semantic Web of the Elsevier Journal on Computer Networks, October 2002.
  • Euroweb 2002 Conference. The Web and the GRID: from e-science to e-business. St Anne's College Oxford UK, December 17-18, 2002.
  • The 13th  International Conference on Knowledge Engineering on Knowledge Management (EKAW02). Siguenza Spain, October 1-4,  2002.
  • The  Workshop on Knowledge Management through Corporate Semantic Webs (KMSW) held in association with The  13th  International Conference on Knowledge Engineering on Knowledge Management (EKAW02). Siguenza Spain, September 30,  2002.
  • Workshop on Ontologies for Multi-Agent systems (OMAS) held in conjuction with the  13th  International Conference on Knowledge Engineering on Knowledge Management (EKAW02). Siguenza Spain, September 30,  2002.
  • The International Semantic Web Conference ISWC2002, Sardinia Italy. June 10-12,  2002.
  • The International Workshop on the Semantic Web in conjunction with  The Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2002), Honolulu, Hawaii. May 7,  2002.
  • Ontologies and Information Sharing Workshop at IJCAI-01, Seattle Washington, USA. August 4-5, 2001.
  • First International Conference on  Knowledge Capture  (KCAP-01), Victoria B.C. Canada. Oct 21-23, 2001.
  • Human Language Technology and Knowledge Management Workshop  (HTL & KM) ACL-EACL 2001, Toulouse France. July 6-11 2001. (Association for  Computational Linguistic).

 

Most recent publications:

Refereed Books/Journals:

  • Maria Vargas-Vera, Emanuela Moreale, Arthur Stutt, Enrico Motta and Fabio Ciravegna. MnM:  Semi-Automatic Ontology Population from Text. Ontologies: A Handbook of Principles, Concepts and Applications in Information Systems, Editors Rajiv Kishore, Ram Ramesh, and Raj Sharman. Chapter 13, Springer Verlag,  ISBN-10: 0-387-37019-6.  December,  2006.
  • Victoria Uren, Philipp Cimiano, Siegfried Hanndschuh, Maria Vargas-Vera, Enrico Motta and Fabio Ciravegna. Semantic Annotation Systems for Knowledge Management: A Survey of Requirements and State of the Art:  Journal of Web Semantics, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp. 14-28, Elsevier,  January 2006. http://www.semanticwebjournal.org/   or alternatively  can be found at

http://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S1570826805000338

 

Refereed Conferences/Workshops:

 

Technical Reports:

 

·        Publications in Citeseer DataBase

 

Keynote speeches:

 

Session Chair:

 

Organized  workshops:

 

Expert Project Evaluator:

  • I have been involved in referring international project bids for the European Commission (Brussels 2005). In particular Expert Evaluator for the 6th EU Framework programme for research, technology development and demonstration (FP6), call under the strategic objective "Semantic based Knowledge and Content Systems", Brussels, 18 to 27 April 2005.

 

Editorial Board:

·        Associated Editor: Revista Iberoamericana Computacion y Sistemas (included in the list of Scientific Journals of Excellence, of CONACyT—Mexican Ministry of Science and Technology); internationally refereed, ISSN 1405-5546, from March 2006 to present.

 

Memberships:

  • Member of Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society.
  • Member of  Mexican Society of Artificial Intelligence (SMIA).

 

 

Talks:

  • Invited departamental seminar, AQUA-Ontology-Driven Question Answering System.  The Robert Gordon University, Scotland, UK. February 11  2004.
  • Internal departamental seminar, AQUA: An Ontology-Driven Question Answering System. Mathematics and Computing Department, The Open University,  England, UK. March 2003.
  • Internal KMI seminar, AQUA: An Ontology-Driven Question Answering System. Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University,  England, UK. March  2003.
  • Internal departmental seminar,. Pattern-Driven Information Extraction. Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. April 2002.
  • Invited departmental seminar, Pattern-Driven Information Extraction. Department of Computing Science, Brock University, Ontario, Canada. February 2002.
  • Internal KMI seminar, Template-Driven Information Extraction. Knowledge Media Institute, the Open University, England, UK. August 2001.
  • Invited internal seminar, Combining objects and Fuzzy Logic. IIMAS, National University of Mexico,  Mexico City, Mexico. December 1998.
  • Invited internal seminar, Fril++: Object Oriented Programming with Uncertainty. Artificial Intelligence Department (Software Systems & Processes Group), Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK. December 1997.
  • Internal seminar, Fril++: Object Oriented  Fuzzy Logic Programming Language. The ACRC (Advanced Computing Research Centre), Bristol University, England, UK. December 1996.
  • Internal seminar, Using Prolog Techniques to Guide Program Composition. The ACRC (Advanced Computing Research Centre), Bristol University, England, UK. December 1995.
  • Invited seminar, Using Prolog Techniques to Guide Program Composition, CICESE, Ensenada Mexico, September  1995.
  • Internal seminar, Using Prolog Techniques to Guide Program Composition.  Artificial Intelligence department, Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK. May 1995.
  • Internal seminar, A Techniques Editor for Prolog. Artificial Intelligence department, Edinburgh University, Scotland, UK. February 1992.
  • Internal seminar, A Copy Structure-Based Prolog Interpreter. IIMAS, National University of Mexico,  Mexico City, Mexico. January 1988.

 

FLINK:

Social Network: Semantic Web.

 

People (collaborate or work with):

  • Pedro Miramontes (National University of Mexico). (join supervision of students).
  • Emanuela Moreale (School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Nottingham University).
  • Miklos Nagy (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, England UK).
  • Victoria Uren (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, England UK).
  • Arthur Stutt (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, England UK).
  • John Domingue (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University).
  • Simon Buckingham Shum (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, England UK).
  • Enrico Motta (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University).
  • Gaston Burek (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University).
  • Jan Paralic (Technical University Kosice Slovakia). (join supervision of students).
  • David  Celjuska  (Technical University Kosice Slovakia).
  • Mattia Lanzoni  (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University).
  • Fabio Ciravegna (Sheffield University, UK).
  • Yannis Kalfoglou (Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University).
  • Eliot Pen^a (National University of Mexico).
  • James F.  Baldwin (Bristol University, England UK).
  • T.P. Martin (Bristol University, England UK).
  • Diana Bental (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • Andy Bowles (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • Wamberto Vasconcelos (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • Alberto Castro  (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • Gabriel Duncan  (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • David Robertson (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • Robert Inder (Edinburgh University, Scotland UK).
  • R Carrera  (National University of Mexico).
  • Francisco Cervantes (National University of Mexico).

 

Photos at Frida Kahlo House (Mexico 2004):

                               

            Maria and a Mexican friend                              Maria

 

Photos from Mexico City and Teotihuacan Mexico :

 

                                   

              Independence Angel                                 Sun Pyramid

Photos were taken by Emanuela Moreale

 

Hobby:

I collect old brooches (Eighteen Century or later).

 

 

Contact Details:

Email:  [email protected]