[BlueObelisk-discuss] Workshop/symposium on semantic physical science

[Peter Murray-Rust]

The following workshop/symposium will be using BlueObelisk components and
may be of interest to people who can get to Cambridge in January. [We are
unlikely to have live streaming, but talks shoudl be recorded]

We are delighted to announce that we are running a Workshop and Symposium
on Semantic Physical Science (see below). This will explore how to use
physical scientific data in semantic form and will explore: creation by
humans and machines, specifications including dictionaries/schemas, writing
and using code (Java, FORTRAN), creating semantic data/annotation, data
repositories, and publication/re-use.

We are encouraged by the success of a 1-day workshop we ran in Melbourne
last month where we explored the ideas and technology. The feedback was
very positive, suggesting that the time has come for Physical Science to
embrace semantics. Common components are dictionaries, units of
measurement, errors, metadata and the workshop/symposium will explore how
to create and use these. We are also encouraged by a recent
JISC/OKF/W3C-SWAT4LS life sciences hackathon that we helped to run (which
showed that substantial progress can be made in 2-3 days)

This workshop is made possible by support from EPSRC. Please feel free to
mail this to other scientific groups and organizations and mailing lists,
especially in chemistry, earth and materials sciences.



*Workshop and Symposium on Semantic Physical Science, Unilever Centre for
Molecular Science Informatics, Cambridge UK (2012-01-10/12) *

*We are running a hands-on workshop (January 10th/11th 2012) and symposium
(January 12th 2012) on Semantic Physical Science, supported by EPSRC
(“Pathways to Impact”). At these events, we will be investigating how
semantic technologies (dictionaries, mark-up languages, ontologies,
data-typing) can be applied to the capture, publication, preservation and
re-use of data in the physical sciences (especially chemistry and materials
science). We have invited 25 scientists (particularly from the fields of
crystallography/solid state, analytical spectroscopy and computational
chemistry; see list below) to a two-day workshop where we will review and
create toolkits and protocols. We are delighted to see very great interest
from national laboratories and national providers of services. *

*The results of the workshop and general talks on semantic principles will
be presented at the full day symposium, which will be of particular
interest to creators of chemical software, publishers, repository managers
and funders who encourage data publication. The symposium is open to
everyone without charge. The approximate program will be released shortly
but some details will reflect the progress made in the preceding workshop.
There will be significant time for discussion. If you wish to attend the
symposium, please email ***@gmail.com to register; places are
limited to 50 – first come, first served! *

*Please distribute this flyer to anyone who you feel may be interested. *

*There may be one or two places still available in the workshop – please
email ***@gmail.com for information. *

*Confirmed attendees: *

*Nico Adams (CSIRO), Simon Coles (University of Southampton), Clyde Davies
(Microsoft), Bert de Jong (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Martin
Dove (University of Cambridge/Queen Mary University of London), Jorge
Estrada (Zaragoza Scientific Center for Advanced Modeling), Marcus Hanwell
(Kitware), Marcus Kraft (University of Cambridge), Mahendra Mahey (JISC),
Brian McMahon (IUCr), Karl Mueller (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory),
Weerapong Phadungsukanan (University of Cambridge), Henry Rzepa (Imperial
College), William Shelton (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), Paul
Sherwood (STFC Daresbury Laboratory), Michael Simmons (University of
Cambridge), Christoph Steinbeck (EBI), Jens Thomas (STFC Daresbury
Laboratory), Andrew Walker (University of Bristol), Alex Wade (Microsoft),
Nancy Washton (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory ), Mark Williamson
(University of Cambridge), Erica Yang (Science and Technology Facilities
Council)*