Daniel Kless

PhD Student

Department of Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Room 2.34, ICT Building, 111 Barry St, Carlton, VIC, Australia

Phone: +61 3 8344 1555
Email: d.klesspgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Jump down this page to: Research Interests : Thesis : Publications : Background : Awards

 

Research Interests

Core areas

Ontologies, Vocabularies, Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), Information Organization, Metamodeling, Datamodeling, Domain modeling, Knowledge representation, Library and Information Studies, Information Science

Related areas

Content Management, Information Management, Knowledge Management (KM), Model-driven architecture (MDA), Information Architecture (AI), Computer Science (CS), Information Systems (IS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Semantic Web, Information retrieval, Indexing, Tagging, Metadata

Thesis

Title

Framework for the description and comparison of semantic models

Supervisors

Dr Simon Milton, Dr Edmund Kazmierczak

Research goal

Exploring models, meta-languages or similar instruments that make characteristics of existing types of semantic models understandable and comparable.

Object of investigation

Semantic models as they are typically produced in various communities:

• (Formal) ontologies from the Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Science (CS), and the Semantic Web community
• Conceptual (data) models from the Information Systems (IS) community
• Vocabularies / Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) from the Library and Information Studies (LIS) community
• Any other types of domain descriptions for the organization, representation and retrieval of information and knowledge

More specifically, the analysis shall encompass at least the first two, but possibly also further types of semantic models in the following priority list:

1. Thesauri
2. Web-Ontologies (generally published in OWL)
3. Class Diagrams
4. Semantic models applied in industrial organization
5. Ontologies (logic-based such KIF, Description Logic / DL or Common Logic / CL)
6. Classification Schemes

Further candidates of future analysis include:

Synonym rings, Subject headings, Name authority lists, Semantic Networks, Taxonomies, Folksonomies, Topic maps, Directory structures, Navigation bars, Table of contents, Indexes, Terminologies, Lexicons, Dictionaries, Glossaries

Contribution of the research

A framework, i.e. a set of models, meta-languages or similar instruments revealing characteristics of semantic models:

• Data-models / meta-models: revealing their conceptual nature
• Properties such as the 'specificity' or 'complexity': revealing the qualityin which a specific domain is described
• Use cases: revealing the context in which they are typically applied

Moreover, a meta-language / reference language shall a) express and systemize theconceptual elements that can be found across the various types of semantic models and b) translate between the different terminologies in the various communities

Novelty

The combination of:

• Understandability, i.e. comprehensibility by all of the various communities that produce semantic models as well as business analysts, information architects or other practitioners planning and designing semantic models.
• Consistency, i.e. the applicability of the framework to describe / specify each type of semantic models in the same way.
• Expressivity, i.e. the instrument should be able to reveal all the important characteristics of semantic models, their differences and commonalities

Research design

The research is planned to iterate between analysing specific types of semantic models, building/synthesizing the framework and applying it.

Benefits

• More qualified strategic decisions for or against a type of semantic model
• Better evaluation of semantic models
• Improved interoperability analysis for the various types of semantic models
• Better understandability of semantic modeling as a subject field
• Facilitated learning across the communities producing semantic models

Please download the prelimiary draft version of my PhD confirmation report and its presentation for a more complete description of my research.

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Publications

Papers

• Framework for use case-specific thesaurus evaluation (work in progress)
• Erstellung eines allgemeinen Standards zur Wissensorganisation, Fortschritte in der Wissensorganisation, Band 11 Wissensspeicherung in digitalen Räumen. Nachhaltigkeit, Verfügbarkeit, semantische Interoperabilität" , February 2008, Konstanz, Germany, Ergon-Verlag Würzburg (not yet printed)

Presentations

• Will it really be Ontologies that bring semantics into search engines?, Fourth HCSNet Next-Generation Search Workshop (NGS09), 16-17 April 2009, Blue Mountains (near Sydney), Australia
• Erstellung eines allgemeinen Standards zur Wissensorganisation, International Society of Knowledge Organization (ISKO), German chapter, February 2008, Konstanz, Germany
• From a thesaurus standard to a general knowledge organization standard?!, Networked Knowledge Organization Systems (NKOS) workshop, September 2007, Budapest, Hungary

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Background

Professional

• Elaboration of a business idea about the personalization of news and information on the Internet (January 2008 until December 2008)
• Project Engineer at the Knowledge Management department of Airbus, Bremen, Germany (employed through Pumacy Technologies AG, May 2006 until March 2008)
• Internship at the Knowledge Management department of the Parexel GmbH, Berlin, Germany (October 2003 until January 2004)
• Internship at the Marketing department at Patni Computer Systems Ltd., Bombay / Mumbai, India (September 01 until December 2001)

Educational

• PhD at the Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Australia (since February 09, prospectively until January 2012)
• Master of Science in Information Science in the program Content and Knowledge Engineering of the Utrecht University (Universiteit van Utrecht), the Netherlands (February 2004 until March 2006)
• German Diploma (~Bachelor of Science) in Information Science in the program International Media and Computing at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW) Berlin, Germany (October 1999 until September 2003)
  

Professional memberships and social engagement

• Member of the German Standardization Body (DIN), section for Librarianship and Documentation / NABD 9 for the Revision of the international thesaurus standard (ISO 25964 "Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies", since May 2007)
• Students representative in the Research & Industry Committee and President of the postgraduate research students group (ISRPG) at the Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne, Australia (since March 2009)
• Head of the 98’ High School alumni network (June 2007 until October 2008)
• Active alumni member of the "Friedrich-Ebert" Foundation alumni network, officer for mailing list administration (August 2006 until January 2009)
• Students representative at the Academic Senate of the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW) Berlin - the university's highest decision-making committee, Berlin, Germany (April 2001 - March 2003)
• Students Board member at the the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW) Berlin, officer for "International Affairs and High school development" (October 1999 - January 2001)

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Awards

• PhD scholarship by the Australian government and the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne (since February 2009)
• “Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung” Scholarship recognizing academic excellence and community work (July 2000 until April 2006)

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