Putting Semantics into e-Science and the Grid
(invited lecture for DS 2006)

Author: Carole Goble

Affiliation: School of Computer Science, the University of Manchester, Manchester, U.K.

Abstract. e-Science is scientific investigation performed through distributed global collaborations between scientists and their resources, and the computing infrastructure that enables this. Scientific progress increasingly depends on pooling know-how and results; making connections between ideas, people, and data; and finding and interpreting knowledge generated by strangers in new ways other than that intended at its time of collection. It is about harvesting and harnessing the /collective intelligence/ of the scientific community. It has as much to do with intelligent information management as with sharing scarce resources like large scale compute power or expensive instrumentation.

The Semantic Web is an initiative to enable and operate a semantic infrastructure for gathering and exploiting the Web's collective intelligence, exploiting technologies primarily from artificial intelligence and data management computing. Applying the Semantic Web paradigm to e-Science seems like it might be a winner. Moreover, e-Science looks promising as the nursery that the fledgling Semantic Web needs in order to mature.

This talk makes a case for why e-Science needs the Semantic Web and the Semantic Web needs e-Science, using my experiences from working in the Life Sciences.


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