FOIS 2010
Sixth International Conference on
Formal Ontology in Information Systems
(co-located with KR 2010)

http://fois2010.mie.utoronto.ca


S E C O N D C A L L F O R P A P E R S



CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

The FOIS conference series began with the first meeting in Trento,
Italy, in June 1998, which was followed by meetings in 2001, 2004,
2006, and 2008. The sixth FOIS conference will be held in Toronto,
Canada, during 11-14 May 2010, and we are now calling for papers to be
considered for inclusion in the conference.

Ontology began life in ancient times as a fundamental part of
philosophical enquiry concerned with the analysis and categorisation
of what exists. In recent years, the subject has taken a practical
turn with the advent of complex computerised information systems which
are reliant on robust and coherent representations of their subject
matter. The systematisation and elaboration of such representations
and their associated reasoning techniques constitute the modern
discipline of formal ontology, which is now being applied to such
diverse domains as artificial intelligence, computational linguistics,
bioinformatics, GIS, knowledge engineering, information retrieval, and
the Semantic Web. Researchers in all these areas are becoming
increasingly aware of the need for serious engagement with ontology,
understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations
making up their respective domains of enquiry, to provide a solid
foundation for their work.

FOIS is intended to provide a meeting point for researchers from these
and other disciplines with an interest in formal ontology, where both
theoretical issues and concrete applications can be explored in a
spirit of genuine interdisciplinarity.

CONFERENCE ORGANISATION

Conference chair: Nicola Guarino (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Program chairs: Antony Galton (University of Exeter, UK)
Riichiro Mizoguchi (Osaka University, Japan)
Local organisation: Chris Welty (IBM Research, Hawthorne, NY, USA)
Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Canada)

The FOIS conference series is now an official initiative of the newly
established International Association for Ontology and its Applications
(www.iaoa.org).


TOPICS COVERED

We seek high-quality papers on a wide range of topics. While authors
may focus on fairly narrow and specific issues, all papers should
emphasize the relevance of the work described to formal ontology and
to information systems. Papers that completely ignore one or the other
of these aspects will be considered as lying outside the scope of the
meeting. Topic areas of particular interest to the conference are:

Foundational Issues
* Kinds of entity: particulars vs universals, continuants vs
occurrents, abstracta vs concreta, dependent vs independent,
natural vs artificial
* Formal relations: parthood, identity, connection, dependence,
constitution, subsumption, instantiation
* Vagueness and granularity
* Identity and change
* Formal comparison among ontologies
* Ontology of physical reality (matter, space, time, motion, ...)
* Ontology of biological reality (genes, proteins, cells,
organisms, ...)
* Ontology of artefacts, functions and roles
* Ontology of mental reality and agency (beliefs, intentions and
other mental attitudes; emotions, ...)
* Ontology of social reality (institutions, organizations, norms,
social relationships, artistic expressions, ...)
* Ontology of the information society (information, communication,
meaning negotiation, ...)
* Ontology and Natural Language Semantics, Ontology and Cognition

Methodologies and Applications
* Top-level vs application ontologies
* Ontology integration and alignment; role of reference ontologies
* Ontology-driven information systems design
* Ontology-based application systems
* Requirements engineering
* Knowledge engineering
* Knowledge management and organization
* Knowledge representation; Qualitative modeling
* Computational lexicons; Terminology
* Information retrieval; Question-answering
* Semantic web; Web services; Grid computing
* Domain-specific ontologies, especially for: Linguistics,
Geography, Law, Library science, Biomedical science, E-business,
Enterprise integration, ...

DEADLINES AND FURTHER INFORMATION

Submissions: 23 October 2009
Notification of acceptance: 18 December 2009
Final camera-ready submission: 15 January 2010
Conference: 11-14 May 2010

Submitted papers must not exceed 14 pages, including the bibliography
and an abstract of no more than 300 words.

Papers should be submitted electronically as PDF files prepared in
accordance with the IOS formatting guidelines. For detail of electronic
submission please see the conference web page at
http://fois2010.mie.utoronto.ca/.

Proceedings will be published by IOS Press and will be available at
the time of the conference. Please note that at least one author must
register for the conference in order for an accepted paper to be
published in the proceedings.


PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

Bill Andersen (Ontology Works, Inc., USA)
John Bateman (University of Bremen, Germany)
Brandon Bennett (University of Leeds, UK)
Stefano Borgo (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Joost Breuker (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Paul Buitelaar (National University of Ireland, Galway)
Roberto Casati CNRS-EHSS, Paris, France)
Werner Ceusters (University of Buffalo, USA)
Matteo Cristani (University of Verona, Italy)
Ernest Davis (New York University, USA)
Maureen Donnelly (University of Buffalo, USA)
Martin D?rr (Foundation for Research and Technology, Greece)
Carola Eschenbach (University of Hamburg, Germany)
J�r�me Euzenat (INRIA, Grenoble, France)
Christiane Fellbaum (Princeton University, USA)
Roberto Ferrario (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Antony Galton (University of Exeter, UK)
Aldo Gangemi (ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy)
Pierdaniele Giaretta (University of Verona, Italy)
Pierre Grenon (Open University)
Michael Gruninger (University of Toronto, Canada)
Nicola Guarino (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
Udo Hahn (Jena University, Germany)
Jerry Hobbs (University of Southern California, USA)
Ken Kaneiwa (National Institute of Information and Communications
Technology, Kyoto, Japan)
Werner Kuhn (University of M�nster, Germany)
Terry Langendoen (University of Arizona, USA)
Alessandro Lenci (University of Pisa, Italy)
Leonardo Lesmo (University of Torino, Italy))
Claudio Masolo (ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
William McCarthy (Michigan State University, USA)
Chris Menzel (Texas A&M University, USA)
Simon Milton (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Riichiro Mizoguchi (University of Osaka, Japan)
Philippe Muller (University of Toulouse III, France)
John Mylopoulos (University of Toronto, Canada)
Natasha Noy (Stanford University, USA)
Daniel Oberle (SAP Research, CEC Karlsruhe)
Leo Obrst (The Mitre Corporation, USA)
Maria Teresa Pazienza (University of Rome, Italy)
David Randell (University of Birmingham, UK)
Alan Rector (University of Manchester, UK)
Riccardo Rosati (University of Rome, Italy)
Guus Schreiber (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Johanna Seibt (University of Aarhus, Denmark)
Michael Sintek (DFKI GmbH, Kaiserslautern, Germany)
Barry Smith (University of Buffalo, USA)
John Sowa (Vivomind Intelligence Inc., USA)
John Stell (University of Leeds, UK)
Veda Storey (Georgia State University, USA)
Achille Varzi (Columbia University, New York, USA)
Laure Vieu (CNRS-IRIT, Toulouse, France)
Chris Welty (IBM Research, Hawthorne, USA)