Call for Papers

International Workshop on

Engineering Semantic Agent Systems

(ESAS 2006)

September 18-21, 2OO6, Chicago, USA

In conjunction with

30th IEEE Annual Int’l Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2006)

(http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2006/)

 

And co-located with IEEE CS CoSTEP Conferences

(http://conferences.computer.org/CoSTEP/)

2006 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2006)

 2006 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2006),

2006 Int. Workshop on Software Technology and Engineering Practice (STEP 2006)

 

WORKSHOP THEME:
Applying Semantic Web Technologies in Research and Development of
Software Agents, Mobile Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Semantic web technologies render dynamic, heterogeneous, distributed, shared content equally accessible to human reader and software agents. Here the vision is to achieve a synergy with multi-agent systems (MAS) technologies whereby agents will be in the center stage. Distributed agents functioning autonomously can utilize semantic Web content to gather and aggregate knowledge, reason and infer new results towards achieving their goals and generating new knowledge. Such knowledge in turn may be disseminated and used to achieve the shared goal of the agents system.

Other workshops have so far missed to garner the synergy of both technologies by taking up either the semantic web aspect or the agent aspect of the common research issue. Topics of interest span a wide spectrum of both theory and practice of agent architectures, software agents, mobile agents, autonomous semantic agents, context-aware intelligent agents, agents as semantic web services, multi-agent systems, agent communities, cooperation and goal seeking through sharing policy and ontology, safety & security in systems, other QoS issues, ...

Mobile agent and MAS technologies are crucial in realizing multi-party application systems. Semantic Web technologies augment MAS by enabling agents with functioning based on the semantics of their mission and of the world around them. Agents, implemented as Web services in developing distributed control and processing applications, entail interesting consequences such as situation awareness, semantic composition of services, context sensitive long-lasting transactions, effecting service policies and quality levels, etc. Complex applications could become realizable with novel features such as factory floor automation for flexible production, collaborative discovery of uncharted geography (for example, cooperative labyrinth discovery), traffic management and info dissemination with facilitation of emergency services, financial markets forecasting with optimization of portfolio gain, etc.

We envisage a strong undercurrent of intelligent software agents, mobile agents, and MAS running through this workshop. Side by side with the use of semantic Web technologies, several foci of interest are threaded:

  • Software Agents, Mobile Agents, and MAS: issues relating to architecture, implementation, coordination, service levels, etc. of semantic or otherwise agents.
  • Agent, MAS and Semantic Web Technologies: concomitant utilization of specific technologies in agent, MAS, and semantic Web implementations; semantic agent communities & applications; case studies of best-practice MAS applications; projects in the making;
  • Ontologies for Agents and MAS: agent cooperation ontology; ontology of workflow in MAS; ontologies for distributed applications; sharing and semantic interoperability; discovery and operations on ontologies;
  • Platforms for agent and MAS implementation: languages, frameworks, tools, integrated development environments and software engineering practices supporting semantic or otherwise software agent & MAS architectures, coordination, trust & security mechanisms, description, discovery and composition of agent-based services.
  • Other subjects of relevance in software agents, mobile agents, agent-based and multi-agent systems.

IMPORTANT DATES

Apr 1, 2006 deadline for paper submission. (Deadline Extended to Friday April 14)
May 15, 2006 notification of acceptance.
June 25, 2006 camera-ready due.

SUBMISSION

Original papers not being submitted to journals or other conferences will be considered. All submitted papers will be reviewed by the program committee according to its originality, significance, correctness, presentation and relevance. We encourage authors to present position papers on practical studies and experiments, critique of existing work, emerging issues, and novel ideas under development.

Papers must be submitted electronically via the ESAS 2006 Submission Page (http://compsac.cs.iastate.edu/ESAS/). Manuscripts will be limited to 6 pages including all figures, tables, and references. The format of submitted papers must follow the IEEE conference proceedings guidelines.

Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings of the 30th IEEE Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 2006). At least one of the authors of each accepted paper must register as a full participant of the workshop for the paper to be included in the proceedings.

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

Chairs

Atilla ELCI (Chairman)
Internet Technology Research Center and Dept. of Computer Engineering,
Eastern Mediterranean University,
Famagusta, Northern Cyprus, Turkey
e-mail: Atilla.Elci@emu.edu.tr

Mamadou Tadiou Kone (Co-Chair)
Dept. of Computer Science,
Faculty of Science and Engineering,
Laval University, Québec, Canada
e-mail: Kone.Mamadou@gmail.com

 

Tharam S. Dillon (Co-Chair)
eXel Lab and Dean,

Faculty of Information Technology,
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
e-mail: tharam@it.uts.edu.au

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Asuman DOGAC

Middle East Technical University,
Turkey

Michal PECHOUCEK

Czech Technical University,
Czech Republic

Hasan DAVULCU

Arizona State University,
U.S.A.

Marin DIMITROV

OntoText Lab,
Bulgaria

Alex ABRAMOVICH

Gordon College,
Israel

Vadim ERMOLAYEV

Zaporozhye State University,
Ukraine

M. Osman UNALIR

Egean University,
Turkey

M.Adeeb GHONAIMY

Ain Shams University,
Egypt

Martin GAEDKE

University of Karlsruhe,
Germany

Aleksander PIVK

Jozef Stefan Insitute,
Slovenia

Rainer UNLAND

University of Essen,
Germany

Stephen J.H. YANG

National Central University,
Taiwan

Jan TREUR

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 
The Netherlands

Michael STOLLBERG

DERI Innsbruck, 
Austria, and
Stanford University, USA

Jiming LIU

Hong Kong Baptist University,
Hong Kong

John-Jules Meyer

Universiteit Utrecht,
The Netherlands

Schahram Dustdar

Vienna University of Technology,
Austria

Goran Zugic

Semantion, Inc.,
Canada

Eyal OREN

DERI Galway,
Ireland

Brahim Medjahed

University of Michigan,
USA

Vijayan Sugumaran

Oakland University,
USA

Elizabeth Chang

Curtin University of Technology,
Australia

Ismail Khalil Ibrahim

Johannes Kepler University,
Austria

Mohamed Aborizka

Arab Academy for Science and Technology,
Egypt

Eui-Hyun Jung

Hanyang University,
Korea

Mustafa Jarrar

STARLab, Vrije Universiteit,
Belgium

Giancarlo Guizzardi

Laboratory for Applied Ontology (ISTC-CNR),
Italy

Alia Abdelmoty

Cardiff University,
UK

Stanislav Pokraev

Telematica Instituut,
The Nederlands

Ahmad Kayed

Applied Science University, Jordan;
SNC- Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (on leave)

C. Maria Keet

University of Bozen-Bolzano,
Italy

Fausto Giunchiglia

University of Trento,
Italy

Ibrahim Gokcen

General Electric Co. Global Research Center,
USA

Pieter De Leenheer

Semantics Technology & Appls Research Lab., Vrije Universiteit,
Belgium

Paolo Giorgini

University of Trento,
Italy

Vitaliy Mezhuev

Berdyansk State University,
Ukraine

R. Rajesh

Bharathiar University,
India

Laurentiu  Vasiliu

DERI Galway,
Ireland

Markus Schaal

Bilkent Univ.,
Turkey

Khalil A. ABUOSBA

Arab Academy- B & F
Jordan

Zeki BAYRAM

Eastern Mediterranean Univ.
TRNC

Alexander KOSTIN

Eastern Mediterranean Univ.
TRNC

Mustafa RIZA

Eastern Mediterranean Univ.
TRNC

 

The Program Committee is being formed. Those interested in joining may contact the workshop chairperson Atilla.Elci@EMU.edu.tr by supplying the following information:

  • Name, position and affiliation
  • Contact numbers and mailing address
  • E-mail and Web site addresses
  • Research interests and a list of relevant publications
  • A brief biography.

LIKELY PARTICIPANTS

We expect researchers and practitioners of software agents, mobile agents, MAS and semantic Web technologies to propose papers and to attend the workshop. We are seeking position papers addressing all aspects of agents and agent-based systems, semantic or otherwise. Researchers working on the following and related subjects are especially encouraged: realization of multi-agent systems through semantic web technology, ontology-based agent applications, distributed control and processing applications, security, interoperability, service levels and quality issues in such systems. Enterprises and research centers developing languages, IDEs and tools that are of use in implementing the above are encouraged to propose demo and tutorial. Our objective is to explore unifying software engineering paradigms used in realizing the semantic MAS applications across domains.

POST-WORKSHOP ACTIVITY

The authors of a number of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their papers for possible publication in Multiagent and Grid Systems - An International Journal, IOS Press: ISSN 1574-1702 http://www.iospress.nl/flyers_j/15741702.pdf. A special issue may as well be possible.

GENERAL INQUIRIES

For updated information, please refer to http://conferences.computer.org/compsac/2006/ESAS.html or contact the workshop chairperson Atilla.Elci@EMU.edu.tr.