Introduction to Semantic Search

Monday, June 6, 2011

01:15 PM - 04:30 PM

Level:	Technical - Intermediate
Location:	Plaza B

This presentation highlights the role of semantic technologies in offering new search capabilities in Web search, vertical search and enterprise search. The tutorial offers an overview of theory, engineering issues and practical applications. In particular, we discuss:

Background from Semantic Web, Information Retrieval and Database literature
Semantic Search tasks, including RDF retrieval and hybrid retrieval of data and documents
Crawling and indexing
Query processing and Ranking
Evaluation of Semantic Search
Demonstration of existing Semantic Search systems

A basic familiarity with Semantic Web terminology is recommended for attending this tutorial.

Dr. Peter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book 'Social Networks and the Semantic Web' (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of "AI's Ten to Watch" by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.

Thanh Tran is currently leading the semantic search special interest group at AIFB of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He worked as consultant and software engineer for IBM and Capgemini. His research interests are centered around next generation search applications on the Web, where topics range from formal models for web resources (KR), storage and query processing concepts for RDF and text (DB & IR) and user interfaces for web search. His work is published in numerous top-level conference proceedings (SIGMOD, ICDE, WWW, CIKM, ISWC) and earned the second prize at the Billion Triple Challenge 2008. He runs the series of workshops on semantic search and is currently working as assistent professor and project leader of AIFB for the EU project X-Media, and the German projects iGreen and CollabKloud.