Mark Greaves, Vulcan Inc.
Vulcan's Project Halo is an ambitious, multiyear research
program to develop a detailed scientific knowledge base that can answer
AP-level questions and provide explanations in a user-appropriate
manner. It is one of the largest AI research programs in the US today.
Halo's current focus is building AI tools that allow graduate students
in chemistry, biology, and physics to author scientific knowledge
adequate to answer sophisticated natural-language questions without
relying on trained knowledge engineers. Halo researchers have been
working to link Semantic Web technology with the other knowledge
representations in the system. This talk will lay out Halo's
technologies and results to date, and describe the technical and UI
issues we have faced in getting users to author scientific conceptual
knowledge
About the Speaker
Dr. Mark Greaves is currently Program Manager for Knowledge
Systems at Vulcan Inc., the private asset management company for Paul
Allen (www.vulcan.com). At Vulcan, he is sponsoring advanced R&D in
large knowledge bases and semantic web technologies, including Project
Halo (www.projecthalo.com). Formerly, Mark served as Director of
DARPA's Joint Logistics Technology Office, and as Program Manager in
DARPA's Information Exploitation Office. He managed a variety of DARPA
projects in semantics and distributed computing technology, including
the DAML project that funded the development of the OWL, OWL/S, and SWRL languages. Prior to coming to DARPA, Mark worked on natural language semantics and software agent technology at the Mathematics and Computing Technology group of Boeing Phantom Works