The SWAD-Europe project consortium consists of five organisations, each with a with proven record of contributing to the development of Web technology. The consortium is led by W3C. Since 1994 W3C has provided technical leadership of Web standards, and since 1997 the W3C Metadata and Semantic Web Activities have been working to establish the foundational technologies for the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web is itself an initiative of the W3C. All the major Semantic Web technologies are being standardised or discussed within the Interest and Working Groups of W3C. The other participants in the project have also made major contributions to Web, and Semantic Web, technology.
Between the five partners, we have prototyped or deployed what amounts to the largest collection of Open Source or Free Semantic Web software in existence. The previous work of the consortium includes the creation of several RDF parsers (in Java, C, Perl, Python, XSLT and Javascript), a number of RDF database implementations, APIs and query languages. RDF and Semantic Web systems that have developed and deployed by project team members include Jena, Redland, Inkling (SquishQL), Annotea, Algae, CWM, Pipsqueak and RDFWeb.
Most importantly, this work has not been conducted in isolation. The partnerships represented by the proposed project consortium are founded on pre-existing collaborations. We have collaborated on standardisation (RDFCore: ILRT, W3C, HP; MathML: W3C, Stilo), on Education and Outreach (W3C, CCLRC, ILRT, HP), and on the creation of specific Semantic Web applications that exercise our tools and standards (Thesaurus: ILRT and CCLRC; Annotations: W3C and ILRT).
The management structure of the project reflects a longstanding relationship between ILRT and W3C’s Metadata and Semantic Web Activities. W3C will provide overall direction for the project, with ILRT providing a substantive body of technical work as well as coordinating financial and administrative management. ILRT is the largest institute of its kind in the UK with extensive experience of managing large and small projects funded by the EC and by other organisations.
The other supporting partners in the proposal each provide skills and resources that enrich the entire collaboration. The consortium includes input from major industry and commercial partners: Hewlett Packard is a major computing, software and services company whose European Labs are based in Bristol, UK. CRLC is the UK office of the W3C based at the Rutherford-Appleton labs in Didcot. As a W3C Office it has close contacts with INRIA and with W3C’s international network of Offices. It also does a great deal of W3C dissemination. Stilo is a Bristol-based XML training and software company.
Full details of these organisations are given below.
W3C will provide overall direction for the project, co-ordinated through W3C’s European base at INRIA and the international W3C Semantic Web Activity.
Background information on INRIA is provided separately below.
The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. W3C has more than 500 Member organizations from around the world and has earned international recognition for its contributions to the growth of the Web. W3C is financed primary by its Members and, to a lesser extent, by public funds. W3C Membership is available to all organizations.
W3C is hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [INRIA] in Europe; and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan. Many of the more than sixty researchers and engineers that make up the W3C Team work at these host locations.
By promoting interoperability and encouraging an open forum for discussion, W3C commits to leading the technical evolution of the Web. Since its creation, W3C has developed more than 35 technical specifications for the Web's infrastructure. However, the Web is still young and there is still a lot of work to do, especially as computers, telecommunications, and multimedia technologies converge. To meet the growing expectations of users and the increasing power of machines, W3C is already laying the foundations for the next generation of the Web. In particular, W3C’s plans for the future of the Web are represented in the notion of the SemanticWeb that is the focus of the current proposal. W3C's technologies will help make the Web a robust, scalable, and adaptive infrastructure for a world of information.
W3C’s European presence is hosted by INRIA in France.
INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) is a French public-sector scientific and technological institute operating under the dual authority of the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Industry. INRIA's missions are "to undertake basic and applied research, to design experimental systems, to ensure technology and knowledge transfer, to organize international scientific exchanges, to carry out scientific assessments, and to contribute to standardization".
The research carried out at INRIA brings together experts from the fields of computer science and applied mathematics covering the following areas: Networks and Systems; Software Engineering and Symbolic Computing; Man-Machine Interaction; Image Processing, Data Management, Knowledge Systems; Simulation and Optimization of Complex Systems.
INRIA gathers in its premises around 2 100 persons including 1 600 scientists , many of which belong to partner organizations (CNRS, industrial labs, universities) and are assigned to work in common "projects". On INRIA's budget, around 500 full-time equivalent research and development positions can be accounted for.
A large number of INRIA senior researchers are involved in teaching and their PhD students (about 550) prepare their theses within the different INRIA research projects (currently 74).
Its budget is roughly 90 MEuro, 20% of which comes from research and development contracts, royalties and sales. Industrial relations are strategic for INRIA:
Numerous industrial partners contract with the Institute for collaborative research. They are French or foreign companies, of all sizes. 400 such contracts are presently active. Roughly 40% of these contracts are European funded ones. Since 1984, 250 European Framework-Programme (FP) projects have been executed.
As the ultimate step in technology transfer, researchers are party to the setting up of companies in order to implement their technology on the market. Thirty seven spin-off companies have been created since 1984. In 1999, INRIA has launched two subsidiaries to promote high-tech start-up companies: INRIA-TRANSFERT deals with early accompaniment of the future companies, whereas I-SOURCE GESTION provides for "seed-money".
INRIA is a member of ERCIM EEIG, European Research Consortium for Computer Science and Mathematics. Outside Europe, INRIA also has a significant activity: it has created joint research laboratories (Russia and China), signed cooperation agreements (NSF, India, Brazil, etc.) and promotes intensive scientific exchanges.
Full profiles of the entire W3C Team, including the non-European members of the Semantic Web Activity, are available from the Consortium’s Web site, http://www.w3.org/People/
The individuals named here will be amongst those Europe-based team members who will contribute to W3C’s work on SWAD-Europe, working closely with the entire W3C Team, and the Semantic Web team in particular. Within W3C, the project will be managed as part of W3C’s larger Semantic Web Advanced Development Activity. Eric Miller (Semantic Web Activity Lead) and Ralph Swick (W3C SWAD Lead) will share responsibility with the SWAD-Europe Project Director (Dan Brickley) for the integration of SWAD-Europe’s work into the wider W3C Activity.
Dan is a member of the W3C team working primarily in the Semantic Web Activity. From 1995 to 2001 Dan worked at ILRT, joining the W3C team as a Visiting Fellow in 1999 to contribute to the Metadata Activity, and to the creation of the Semantic Web Activity. At ILRT Dan established one of the first research groups dedicated to the implementation and deployment of RDF and Semantic Web technology. He led ILRT’s technical work in the EU-funded DESIRE project, was a Principle Investigator on the Harmony (Multimedia Metadata) project, and Technical Director of the MedCERTAIN (EU-funded health information filtering) project. Dan has been contributing to W3C’s RDF initiative since 1997, serving as editor of the RDF Schema Specification, as chair of the RDF Interest Group, and as co-chair of the RDF Core WG. He serves on W3C’s Semantic Web Co-ordination Group, and is a member of the EU-US Joint Committee on Agent Languages. He is currently responsible for European Semantic Web developments within W3C at INRIA.
Daniel Dardailler joined the W3C team in July 1996 and is now Deputy Director for W3C in Europe. His technical duties include technical leadership in the Web Accessibility Initiative and activity lead for the Quality Assurance of W3C.
Prior to that, he was acting as a Software Architect for the X Window System Consortium, responsible for the Motif toolkit and others CDE (Unix Desktop) components.
Daniel holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Nice/Sophia-Antipolis (89).
Before joining W3C in November 1998, Charles had been working for Sunrise at RMIT on a variety of things including Web Accessibility and teaching people how to do HTML. At W3C, Charles is working on Web Accessibility full time, focussing on guidelines, protocol review, and outreach.
Bert Bos completed his Ph.D. in Groningen, The Netherlands, on a protoyping language for graphical user interfaces. He then went on to develop browser software and support for humanities scholars, before joining the W3C at INRIA/Sophia-Antipolis in October 1995. He is now working on stylesheets, XML and internationalisation
Yves Lafon studied Mathematics and computer science at ENSEEIHT in Toulouse, France, and at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Montreal, Canada. His field of study was signal recognition and processing. He discovered Internet Relay Chat and the Web in Montreal in 1993 and has been making robots and games for both. He joined the W3C in October 1995 to work on W3C's experimental browser, Arena. Then he worked on Jigsaw, W3C's Java-based server.
Yves is now the Jigsaw activity leader and XML Protocol activity leader.
Karl Dubost joined W3C in July 2000 as Conformance Manager. Karl holds in 1995 a DEA (Msc) in Astrophysics and Spatial Techniques at Meudon Observatory after a BSc in Physics at Montreal University. He worked for various companies and spent three years as webmaster/system manager/project manager in the education field at IUFM de Paris. He has also translated several W3C Recommendations, including RDF Model and Syntax Recommendation into French as a volunteer.
The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in the development, use and application of learning and research technologies. ILRT has a successful track record of innovation in the use and evaluation of Information and Communications Technologies and in developing, leading and successfully delivering a range of projects and services for education and commercial clients, research councils and national and international research funding bodies. Currently the Institute is involved in over 40 externally funded projects in research, development, applications and training, and employs 70 full and part-time staff with a range of expertise and skills across the technical and educational domains. The annual turnover for the Institute in the last financial year was around £2.5 million.
The Institute's considerable success in attracting new projects and continuing funding for existing ones is a measure of the dedication, skills and commitment of staff. There is a strong emphasis on quality and professionalism in a leading-edge research and development and service environment; this is reflected in the Institute's commitment internally to training and staff development and to its quality assurance procedures. This has been recognised externally as the Institute was awarded the Investors in People standard in March 1999 and successful reassessed in April of 2001.
Institute projects have national and international impact and value, attracting funding from, for example, the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Commission, as well as professional associations and support from local schools and businesses. In addition, the Institute has recently been granted qualified status as both a provider and developer of materials for the new University for Industry.
The Institute has extensive and pioneering experience in working with Semantic Web Technologies, particularly in the fields of RDF database implementation and services (for example in the EASEL and WSE projects and the Redland RDF database) and in the implementation and use of query languages for RDF (for example the SquishQL RDF query language). The Institute has also worked on projects investigating semantic web annotations (MedCERTAIN, DESIRE) and thesauri (DESIRE). Members of the Institute are active in W3C semantic web Working Groups (RDF Core) and Interest Groups (RDF, RDF logic, RDF calendar). As part of the DESIRE initiative, the Institute has produced extensive training materials and held several workshops covering all aspects of gateway set up and management.
Libby is a senior technical researcher currently working on Semantic Web technologies, specifically on the design and implementation of RDF query languages. She also leads the W3C's RDF calendaring taskforce. Libby has three years' experience working with RDF and XML, working within the DESIRE II (http://www.desire.org/, RE4004) and Harmony (http://metadata.net./harmony) projects. She is a member of the W3C WebONT workng group.
Jan is a senior technical researcher for the Educator Access to Services in the Electronic Landscape (EASEL IST-1999-10051) project which involves creating adaptive learning content for web-based delivery using the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) model. Jan researches and develops RDF-based systems including modelling queries, cross-schema interoperability, high-level RDF APIs, modelling trust and on exposing legacy data in various formats (primarily RDBMS) as RDF. Jan participates in RDF standardisation as a member of the W3C RDF Core Working Group
Dave is a technical researcher who has been developing, researching and deploying Internet research discovery systems and metadata since 1993. He is a long-time member of the Dublin Core Initiative and worked with development of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), the editor of the first DCMES in RDF/XML document. Dave has been working with RDF since 1998 and deployed several services with it and the Dublin Core. Dave joined ILRT in June 2000 and has been working on integrating RDF, web crawling and human-cataloguing of the web as part of the Web Search Environments project and for this developed the Redland RDF system. Dave participates in RDF standardisation as a member of the W3C RDF Core Working Group and has co-edited the first two W3C Working Drafts produced by that group. He has also given several invited presentations at international workshops and conferences on RDF, Dublin Core and the Semantic Web.
Nikki Rogers is a technical researcher working on the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG, http://www.sosig.ac.uk/) project with experience in digital library and information gateway services for image description and discovery, distributed query and retrieval and content aggregations mechanisms using RDF and Semantic Web technologies.
Lesly Huxley has been responsible for design and delivery of the SOSIG training portfolio and promotional materials since her appointment in 1996. As the SOSIG training team expanded with staff funded from other sources (REGARD http://www.regard.ac.uk/, DESIRE http://www.desire.org/). Lesly, as Training and Liaison Manager, co-ordinated design, development and delivery of new training modules, hands-on exercise and reference materials (paper and online) and publicity material such as desktop cards, display boards and leaflets. She continues to personally deliver at least half the total number of workshops and presentations annually. Lesly has recently completed studying part-time for a Doctorate in Education, and has published a number of articles and papers about Internet training as well as educational technology, training and management. Lesly has been involved in the development of the Institute's training and development activities and policy for the past 18 months and largely through her efforts the Institute has just achieved the Investors in People standard. She is a graduate member of the Institute of Personnel and Development and holds a Diploma in Human Resource Management.
The Central Laboratory to the Research Councils (CCLRC) is a UK government research and development laboratory located at three sites in the UK, of which the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is the largest (http://www.clrc.ac.uk/). CCLRC employs 1800 staff, of which 1200 are located at RAL. CCLRC had an annual turnover in 2000/01 of £98.1M, of which 4% came in grants from the EU, while 75% came from commercial contracts, UK Government Research Council grants.
CCLRC has produced several successful spin-off companies to exploit its research products including Vector Fields Ltd, Bookham Technology Ltd and Qudos Technology Ltd. We have also been supportive of start-up companies being created to exploit the research results of Esprit funded projects, such as Oratrix Development BV founded this year to exploit the results of the Esprit IV project Chameleon on which CCLRC participated. However, the main route to exploitation used for CCLRC Intellectual Property is to license it to companies with existing market positions, from which we acquire about £1M income per annum.
The Business and Information Technology Department employs about 130 staff, supporting, researching and developing IT, including considerable experience in EU projects funded under Esprit II, III, IV, Telematics, RACE and ACTS programmes (http://www.bitd.clrc.ac.uk/). Relevant projects with ITD include: MIPS (ESPRIT III 6542) (1992-1995 which uses structured metadata to control the integration and use of multimedia components; Hypermedata addresses the exchange of healthcare information between heterogeneous distributed HISs (Hospital Information Systems), including metadata control; W3C-LA, Limber,
ITD within CCLRC/RAL acts as the UK office for W3C the World Wide Web Consortium. Therefore we have access to the latest developments in their web technologies and recommendations which we will bring to the project.
Dr Brian Matthews joined RAL in 1986, after completing a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Bristol. In 1988 he completed an MSc in the Foundations of Advanced Information Technology at Imperial College, London, and in 1996 a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Glasgow. Brian Matthews has been working within the Information Technology Department of CCLRC on a variety of UK and European funded research and development projects in advanced information technology, including formal systems modelling and structured data and documentation. He was RAL technical leader and acting project manager on the EC project TORUS, which included work on distributing engineering design data across the web, integrating engineering data with structured documentation within formal process models. Recently, he has worked with the W3C within the W3C-LA project on emerging web standards including XML, XSL and RDF, and their application to online glossaries.
Dr Michael Wilson is the manager of the W3C UK Office, hosted by RAL/CCLRC.
The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is a leading global manufacturer of computing, Internet and Intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognised for excellence in quality and support.
HP has been operating in Europe since 1959 with the opening of its first manufacturing facility outside Palo Alto, California, at Böblingen near Stuttgart, Germany. From the outset, HP aimed to be a European citizen and have a balanced presence. The company has deliberately sought to grow, not only by relying on its marketing, but by actively investing in European manufacturing and R&D operations. After 40 years in Europe, HP employs close to 25,000 people in fields ranging from R&D, manufacturing, sales and support. HP has manufacturing operations in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
HP Laboratories is Hewlett-Packard's central research organisation and its innovation engine. Its dual missions are to help HP remain successful in current businesses while creating new business opportunities through technology innovation. Hewlett-Packard European Laboratories were established in Bristol, England in 1984, and currently employ around 150 researchers, with research projects focussed on Information Infrastructure, Personal Appliances, Communications and Platforms for E-Business.
HP Laboratories has made many contributions in the areas of communications and e-commerce: current work in these fields includes participation in projects "M3I" (IST-1999-11429) on systems for managing Internet congestion, and "CASENET" (IST-2001-32446) on secure protocols for e-commerce. We are actively involved in Information Infrastructure standardisation efforts, including standards relating to XML and to the Semantic Web. We have developed a number of open-source semantic web tools which are available to and used by the research and development communities.
Brian is an evangelist and prime mover behind the Semantic Web activity at HP. He is co-charing the RDF Core working group, maintainer of the RDF issues list and author of the original version of the jena toolkit.
Jeremy is very active in the area of RDF syntax and parsing, author of the ARP parser for jena and a member of the RDF Core working group. He has particular interests in the application of graph theory to RDF.
Andy is interested in the use of explicit metadata in business processes, specifically using RDF to capture semantics of business information objects. He is also very active in the area of RDF query languages and is author of the RDQL module for jena.
Ian is active in the area of software agents, particularly concerned with personal agents and user-agent interaction. He is interested in the application of semantic web technologies to the representation of user data and is author of jena's DAML API.
Dave is interested in the use of semantic web technologies to link decentralized information systems together both with each other and with people. He has a side interest in semi-structured data and is working on a relational database back-end for jena.
Chris has a long standing interest in design and implementation of computer languages and associated tools.
Janet has a strong interest in both software agents and the human side of computing. She is manager of the core HPL Semantic web activity.
Stilo Technology Ltd is a wholly-owned division of Stilo International plc, the first specialist XML company to be listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. In addition to Stilo Technology Ltd, Stilo International plc wholly owns Omnimark Technologies Corporation in Ottawa, Canada, and holds a majority shareholding in eidon GmbH in Nuremburg, Germany.
Group companies develop and market content engineering technologies which enable enterprises more readily to automate the integration, creation, management and re-purposing of large quantities of data using XML.
Customers include major systems integrators (CGEY, CSC, Siemens, EDS); Fortune 500 companies (IBM, SUN, Boeing); Government agencies (the US Department of Defence, European Parliament); and many of the world's largest publishing organisations, including the US Government Printing Office and Reed Elsevier. With offices now in Canada, USA, UK, Germany, Belgium, France and distributors in Australia and Japan, Stilo companies operate in some of the world's leading markets and so are additionally able to provide global customers with local training, sales, consultancy and supporting services.
Stilo Technology has the research and development responsibility within the group, investigating new standards, technologies and models of service provision, and develops innovative approaches, tools and techniques to meet the requirements of the evolving markets. Stilo Technology Ltd was a member of the ESPRIT OpenMath project (EP24969), and is a member of the ESPRIT OpenMath Thematic Network (OM-TN-IST-2000-28719). Stilo Technology Ltd is also a member of the W3C. Stilo was part of the Special Interest Group which helped develop the XML 1.0 recommendation. Stilo has also contributed significantly to the development of MathML.
After reading mathematics at Oxford, Stephen Buswell has worked in IT in the UK, Europe and North America at organisations including Logica, European Payment Systems Services and, as an independent consultant, the Polish Ministry of Finance. Applications included telecommunications, finance and control software for life sciences experiments on board Spacelab. Stephen co-founded Stilo in 1992, since when he has specialised in markup languages, information architecture and web technologies. Stephen is a member of the W3C Math Working Group and a Principal Writer of the MathML Recommendation for mathematics on the web. He worked on the ESPRIT OpenMath project (EP24969), and is a member of the ESPRIT OpenMath Thematic Network (IST-2000-28719). Stephen is also a member of the W3C Advisory Committee.
Nick has worked as a software engineer and project leader for twelve years. He specialises in data management and database software, and has in depth knowledge of database systems. He has worked as an engineer producing a sophisticated object oriented database, and has produced advanced software for the GIS industry. Nick has experience in a wide range of industrial areas including finance and space, usually working with large data management problems. He is currently working an ontology-based system for knowledge management and complex data transformation.