SCIENTIFIC VISITS TO EUROPE

APPLICATION FORM

NOTE: Please type as handwritten applications will not be accepted. Please set the text size at 12pt.  All sections on this form should be completed.  Attachments should be added only where required.  Please use the space provided.

SECTION I

1.	Full name and title (upper case for surname): Dr Philippe MARTIN.

2.	Business address, email, phone & fax numbers:
Address: Griffith Uni. – School of ICT – PMB 50 – GCMC – QLD 9726 Australia.
E-mail: pm@phmartin.info.  Phone: +61 7 5552 8252.  Fax: +61 7 5552 8066.

3.	Date and place of birth: January 21st, 1967, Libreville (Gabon, Africa).

4.	State whether you are a citizen or a permanent resident of Australia: citizen.

5.	Educational qualifications, including institutions and dates:
October 14th, 1996: Ph.D in Software Engineering, on “Knowledge Acquisition and Information Retrieval using Conceptual Graphs and Hypertext Structured Documents”, at the INRIA (Sophia Antipolis) in the ACACIA project.
June 29th, 1992: degree of Engineer in Software Engineering, specialty Artificial Intelligence, at the University of “Nice - Sophia Antipolis” and the Ecole Supérieure en Sciences Informatiques (ESSI).

6.	Employment history, including employers, places and dates:

INSTITUTIONS	STATUS 	START	END	      REMARKS	
INRIA, France	PhD student	Oct. 1992	Oct. 1996		
University of Adelaide, Australia	Postdoc / Research fellow	Dec. 1996	Dec. 1997	Grant from the DSTO	
Griffith University, Australia	Research Fellow	April 1998 	June 2000	Grant from the DSTO	
DSTC (Distributed Systems Technology Center), Australia	Senior Research Fellow	July 2003	August 2003		
LOA (Laboratory for Applied Ontology), CNR, Trento, Italy	Visiting Professor	Oct. 2004	Nov. 2004	Paid by the LOA	
Griffith University, Australia	Sessional Lecturer	Jan. 2005	Dec. 2005		
Griffith University, Australia	Senior Lecturer	Jan. 2006			

7.	Attach publication list (last five years).
Martin Ph. & Eklund P. (2001). Large-scale cooperatively-built heterogeneous KBs. Proceedings of ICCS 2001, 9th Int. Conference on Conceptual Structures (Springer Verlag, LNAI 2120, pp. 231-244), Stanford University, California, USA, July 30 to August 3, 2001.
Martin Ph. (2002a). How WebKB could contribute to PORT. Proceedings of PORT 2002, 2nd PORT workshop, first day of ICCS 2002. 
Martin Ph. & Eklund P. (2002). Manageable Approaches to the Semantic Web. “Practice & Experience” alternate track of WWW 2002, 11th International World Wide Web Conference,
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, May 7-11, 2002.
Martin Ph. (2002b). Knowledge representation in CGLF, CGIF, KIF, Frame-CG and Formalized-English. Proceedings of ICCS 2002, 10th Int. Conference on Conceptual Structures (Springer Verlag, LNAI 2393, pp. 77-91), Borovets, Bulgaria, July 15-19, 2002. 
Martin Ph. (2003a). Knowledge Representation, Sharing and Retrieval on the Web. Chapter of a book titled “Web Intelligence” (Springer-Verlag; editors: N. Zhong, J. Liu, Y. Yao; pp. 263-297), January 2003.
Martin Ph. (2003b). Correction and Extension of WordNet 1.7. Proceedings of ICCS 2003, 11th Int. Conference on Conceptual Structures (Springer Verlag, LNAI 2746, pp. 160-173), Dresden, Germany, July 21-25, 2003. 
Martin Ph., Blumenstein M. & Deer P. (2005). Toward cooperatively-built knowledge repositories. Proceedings of ICCS 2005, 13th Int. Conference on Conceptual Structures, (Springer Verlag, LNAI 3596, pp. 411-424), Kassel, Germany, July 18-22, 2005.

Eboueya M., Lillis D., Jo J., Cranitch G. & Martin Ph. (2006). Mobile Active Participative Learning Environments for the 21st Century Classroom: The MAPLE Project, 
EUI-Net 2006 (European Conference on European Models of Synergy between Teaching and Research in Higher Education), Tallinn, Estonia, May 3-6, 2006.

Martin Ph., Eboueya M., Jo J. & Uden L. (2006). Between too informal and too formal. Proceedings of KMO 2006, International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organi-zations (UM FERI; ISBN 86-435-07809-6; pp. 38-87), Maribor, Slovenia, June 13-14, 2006.

SECTION II

8.	Brief title of proposal:
Application of precision-oriented knowledge modeling approaches to cooperation and e-learning via semantic grids.

9.	Summary of project:
In no more than 50-100 words, write a summary of the aims of your proposed research.  The summary should be written in a style understandable to the intelligent layperson and suitable for a press release.  It should give a clear indication of the expected outcomes of the research and explain the significance of the project.

Semantic grids combine Grid Computing techniques and Semantic Web techniques (two promising but not-yet-mature kinds of techniques for sharing data, knowledge, services
and CPU resources) and thus are potentially the most suited platforms for collaboration or 
e-learning. Yet, retrieving, comparing, entering and sharing/re-using precise and 
well-structured knowledge remains difficult. I have reduced these problems in the context 
of large shared knowledge base servers by developing knowledge sharing and valuation protocols, notations and a large shared ontology (formal vocabulary). This project aims to adapt (or, more precisely, test adaptations of) these techniques to semantic grids.
10.	Describe specific aspects of your experience or recent activities which indicate your capacity to be successful in your proposed research project.

I have designed the above cited techniques and implemented most of them in a knowledge server named WebKB-2 (which currently interconnects the categories of a dozen existing ontologies, handles about 92,000 categories, some of their relationships, and a few thousands more complex statements about the categories). I will implement the rest of the techniques 
by the end of the year. I will design and implement a good part of the adaptation of these techniques to semantic grids before this proposed research visit (January 2008). Thus, this period would be about testing these adaptations on the semantic grid and applications of the University of La Rochelle (France) in relation with the designers of those applications. An initial part of this testing would be represent the content of some course materials in the precise and well structured way. This is a task that I am currently performing for three courses given by the School of ICT of Griffith University.

11.	Have you previously visited Europe or collaborated with scientists from there? 

I have done my studies in France (I did my PhD at the INRIA in Sophia Antipolis). Since then, I worked in Australia except when I was “Visiting Professor” at the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) (Trento, Italy) in October and November 2004  (this visit was paid by the LOA). I am French and Australian.

12.	Would this visit facilitate the development of your career?  Please explain.

Yes, since it would permit to showcase and make more widely known (via direct contacts but also soon after via tools and articles) the interest and applicability of the kind of techniques that I have designed and therefore the precision-oriented knowledge sharing approach that I am advocating (this approach falls within the general “Semantic Web” ideas but, unlike the currently most popular but most limited interpretations and applications of those ideas, it is not about associating simple meta-data to documents, it is about representing and interconnecting concepts, beliefs, problems and techniques and other resources whether or not they are described in documents). These techniques would likely influence both the Semantic Web field and the Semantic Grid field that are still very much in their infancy even though the W3C's “Semantic Web” activity began in 1997 and although some projects about knowledge base sharing over the internet began before the advent of the Web.

13.	State objectives of the visit, including research proposal and titles of lectures to be given. (maximum length one A4 page)
The number and duration of the lectures that I would give cannot be predicted but the subjects that I would be presenting are the following ones (and each would require at least 15 minutes of presentation): “what should knowledge be normalised into?”, “intuitive, expressive and normalising syntaxes to ease knowledge entering, retrieval and sharing”, “a large and intuitive ontology to ease knowledge entering, retrieval and sharing”, “protocols for cooperativaly building and evaluating the content of a large knowledge base”, “precise and modular representation of course materials and ontology-related tools and ideas”, “adaptations of those techniques for semantic grids”.
Research Proposal 
Knowledge representation on the Web or in grids is often superficial, coarse-grained and heterogeneous, which makes knowledge retrieval and re-use difficult. For example, even though it is recognised that Learning Objects (LOs) should be as small as possible to increase the possibilities of choosing between them and combining them, almost all of currently existing LOs contain more (and actually much more) than one “simple statement” (SS - a SS is typically one relation between two formal/informal terms/SSs, e.g., a relation connecting “Java” and one of its characteristics), and have coarse-grained simple meta-data associated to them (e.g., strings such as “Java” and “introduction”). Using SSs (or, more precisely, adding to a semantic network, to provide new knowledge or some feedback or evaluation on existing knowledge) means directly creating good meta-data. The more semantic relations between the objects (terms or statements) provided by the different knowledge providers (researchers, engineers, teachers, students, customers, etc.), the better. To support and encourage the entering and re-use of precise and well-related knowledge representations, I have designed (i) notations that are expressive, concise, intuitive and normalising (i.e., reducing the number of ways something can be expressed), (ii) knowledge sharing and valuation protocols, (iii) a large shared ontology (formal vocabulary) aligning various other well known ontologies, (iv) a knowledge server (WebKB-2) supporting these previous elements within private knowledge bases (KBs) or one shared KB. The goal of this project will be to extend and apply these elements to semantic grid based ubiquitous e-learning applications exploiting the Mobile OGSI.NET and S-OGSA platforms at the University of La Rochelle (France), in relation with the designers of those applications, especially those of the MAPLE project.
In the above cited KBs, each term and statement has an associated creator (more precisely, a source and, optionally, an interpreter). This avoids lexical conflicts, permits to handle as “beliefs” the statements that are not definitions, and supports arbitrarily complex filterings of knowledge according to its creators. When a user wants to add a belief that is contradictory or partially redundant with an already existing statement in the shared KB, some of the above cited protocols ask the user to explicit the relations between the two beliefs via a relation such as “corrective_specialisation”, “correction” or “example”. This keeps the KB consistent and permits people or softwares to choose between beliefs (e.g., by taking the most specialised) when an application requires a choice. The originality and popularity of beliefs (and then of their creators), is evaluated via a (possibly personalisable) algorithm based on votes on these beliefs and argumention relations between them. This contributes to support automatic filterings of knowledge (e.g., during browsing), to avoid the usual drawbacks of putting all known knowledge related to a certain object (or a certain domain) into a shared KB, and hence (because the KB is shared) to permit the knowledge server to guide knowledge entering and maximise knowledge sharing. This centralised approach seems at odd with the grid (or peer-to-peer) paradigm but I believe it is actually easily re-usable: each machine can have its own server and a push/pull replication mechanism can integrate into each user's KB the updates made in other user's KBs on objects shared by these KBs (more precisely, the updates/additions of relations which for inference purposes are important for these shared objects; the users' KBs are thus identical on the parts they share; a more detailed description of this mechanism is proposed in Martin (2005)). This will be tested during this project. 
14.	The Scientific Visits to Europe scheme is funded by the Department of Education, Science and Training’s International Science Linkages Program (ISL) announced in the Government’s Innovation Statement, Backing Australia’s Ability.

a)	The objective of the ISL is to improve Australian access to international leading-edge science and technology.  Describe how your proposed research project will improve Australian access to science and technology in Europe (eg. establish links with researchers in your field; gain access to equipment, knowledge and skills not available in Australia).

This proposed research project would indeed permit much stronger collaboration between some Australian researchers and some European researchers involved in Semantic Grid and/or e-learning, starting with me (and other researchers in e-learning at Griffith Uni.) and researchers at the University of La Rochelle (and those they are collaborating with in the Semantic Grid and/or e-learning domains). This would permit some Australian researchers and companies (starting with me and other researchers in e-learning at Griffith Uni.) to have access to some software, hardware, know-how and memberships that are useful for working in the leading-edge parts of the Semantic Grid and/or e-learning domains. In October 2004, the European Commission launched two large projects related to those domains: ELeGI (“European Learning Grid Infrastructure”) and OntoGrid (an eight-partner European project which aims to create a provide a software platform for semantic grids). There is no equivalent large project on these domains in Australia. 

b)	Your proposed visit only needs to satisfy Question 14 (a) to be eligible for ISL funding.  However we would like to know if your proposed visit would contribute to any of the other objectives of the International Science Linkages Program as listed below.  If so, please explain.

i)	Improve the capacity of industry to exploit new technologies
ii)	Build productive alliances between industry, science and technology
iii)	Facilitate a culture of innovation in Australian business
iv)	Contribute to the commercialization of R&D

It indirectly contributes to all these objectives by permitting Australian industries to use leading-edge software for knowledge sharing, learning and, more generally, collaboration (within a company as well as with customers, scientists and other businesses). A genuine Semantic Web would be at least as beneficial to companies (compared to the current Web) at the advent of the Web was. This comparison remains for a (Semantic) Web restricted to an intranet or a grid.

c)	The International Science Linkages Program is required to take account of, but is not confined to, the National Research Priorities.  Indicate if your proposed research project accords with any of the following National Research Priorities:

i)	An environmentally sustainable Australia
ii)	Promoting and maintaining good health
iii)	Frontier technologies for building and transforming Australian industries
iv)	Safeguarding Australia

It accords with the “Frontier technologies for building and transforming Australian industries” priority.
SECTION III

15.	Duration of visit (number of days):  26 days
(Duration of visit must be between 14 and 40 days, including weekends)

16.	Proposed dates of arrival and departure:
(Travel must commence between 1 July 2007 and 30 June 2008)
Arrival: Monday 7 January 2008 - Departure: Friday 1 February 2008

17.	Host(s) details.

	Name and address of main host	Period of stay:  26 days

Dr Michel EBOUEYA (mike@univ-lr.fr), Associate Professor
Université de la Rochelle, Deputy Head of the Computer Science Department,
L.3.I. Laboratoire d'Informatique Image et Interaction
Pôle Sciences et Technologie, Avenue Michel Crépeau
17042 La Rochelle Cedex 1 - France

	Details of other hosts to be visited	Period of stay

18.	Attach letters from your host(s) inviting you and commenting on the proposed collaboration. (A letter from each institute to be visited must be attached).

This letter is attached.

19.	Successful applicants may receive from the Academy a grant-in-aid of up to $10,500.  This is based on a contribution towards travel between Australia and the host institution(s) up to a maximum of $2,500, and a living allowance of up to $200 per day (maximum of $8,000).  Please note that the travel and living allowances are not transferable.  Please note that insurance and visa costs are not covered by the grant-in-aid and they are the responsibility of the participant.

	Please provide details of the amount that you applying for:

Excursion economy air fare to: La Rochelle Airport	Aus$2500

Daily allowance (26 days @  $125 /day)	Aus$3250
(maximum of $200 per day not exceeding 40 days)

Total amount requested	 Aus$5750

20.	Have you applied for funds to support this visit from other sources?

No.

21.	 Attach a letter from your department/division head stating why funding for your research proposal is not available from within your organization.

This letter is attached.

22.	Have you previously applied for or participated in the Academy’s international programs? 

No.

23.	Have you received funding from other sources for overseas visits during the past three years?  Please give details.

No.

24.	Referees.

Referees should not be from the applicant’s department or division, or from the host institution.  Only one written reference is required.

a)	Name, address and contact details of one referee (Australian or overseas) who will provide the Academy with a written report:

Pr. Roger Nkambou, Université du Québec à Montréal, Département d'informatique, 
                                  Local: PK-4925, Montreal, Québec, Canada
Phone: (514) 987-3000, ext. 8395;  Fax: (514) 987-8477;  E-mail: Nkambou.Roger@uqam.ca

b)	Names, addresses and contact details of two additional referees (Australian) who may be contacted by the selection committee if further information is required:

Pr. Kerry Raymond, Q.U.T. (Queensland University of Technology), Faculty of I.T.
                                 OC 126 Margaret Street Level 3  304, Brisbane QLD 4001
Phone: (07) 3864 9330;  Fax: (07) 3864 1801;  E-mail: k.raymond@qut.edu.au

Pr. Peter Eklund, Chair of Information Systems, The University of Wollongong,
                            Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522
Phone: (02) 4221 3874;  Fax: (02) 4221 4474;  E-mail: peklund@uow.edu.au

IMPORTANT NOTICE

25.	Applications are considered carefully against the selection criteria by a committee of scientists with diverse expertise. The funding available is limited and sufficient only to support a proportion of applicants. The decisions of the committee are based upon the assessed competitiveness of the proposal. The Academy is not able to enter into discussion or correspondence regarding the reasons why an application is successful or not.

Signature of applicant:

Date:  July 13th 2006

SCIENTIFIC VISITS TO EUROPE

GUIDELINES FOR APPLICANTS

Deadline for applications:	14 July 2006

Deadline for referee reports:	14 July 2006 (The referee report should be sent electronically in Rich Text Format or PDF or via fax).  Refer to the Notes for Referees for details.

Notification of outcome:	1) The Minister for Education, Science and Training will make an official announcement on the successful applicants.
		2) The Academy expects, but cannot guarantee, that all applicants will be notified of the outcome by the end of December 2006.

Contact:	Fax: 02 6201 9494, E-mail:  is@science.org.au

Lodging your application:	1) Complete the online summary sheet at: 
		http://www.science.org.au/internat/exchange/eurovis.htm
		2) Electronically in Rich Text Format or PDF to is@science.org.au 
		3) Post the original plus three copies (four total) of your application to:

Postal address:
International Programs
Australian Academy of Science
GPO Box 783
Canberra ACT 2601

Courier address:
International Programs
Australian Academy of Science
Ian Potter House, Gordon Street
Acton ACT 2601

PLEASE DO NOT SEND APPLICATION FORMS BY FACSIMILE
NO LATE APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED

SCIENTIFIC VISITS TO EUROPE

NOTES FOR REFEREES

Applicants are responsible for sending this form, a copy of their application and information about the program to a referee who agrees to provide the Australian Academy of Science with a referee report by 14 July 2006.

Referees are asked to complete the Referee Report Form addressing the following points:

1.	Is your field of research the same as the applicant’s?  Please explain.

2.	Please discuss the scientific merit of the proposal.

3.	The objective of the program is to improve Australian access to global science and technology.  Will this proposed visit improve Australian access to science and technology in the nominated country (e.g. establish links with researchers; gain access to equipment, knowledge and skills not available in Australia)?

4.	Please describe the benefits of conducting this research project in the nominated country rather than in another country, including Australia.

5.	What personal qualities does the applicant have that would make him/her successful in establishing or expanding contacts in the nominated country? 
 
6.	Would the proposed visit contribute to the development of the applicant’s field of research and/or career?

How to send the referee report:
The referee report should be sent by 14 July 2006 either;
•	electronically in Rich Text Format or PDF with an electronic signature to is@science.org.au 
•	by fax to +61 2 6201 9494

Contact details:
International Programs
Australian Academy of Science
GPO Box 783, Canberra ACT 2601
Fax: +61 2 6201 9494,  E-mail:  is@science.org.au

Thank you for your consideration of the proposal.