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Call for Ph.D. position
Project title: World ontologies versus classification systems
Location: CRIM (Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal), in cooperation
with Polytechnique Montréal
Submission Deadline: February 5th, 2012
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The DETI research group, at CRIM (Centre de recherche informatique de
Montréal),and WeST Laboratory, at Polytechnique Montréal, are seeking
candidates for a 3-year PhD project related to the general theme of Ontology
Modelling and Ontology-driven Classification. This research is part of a project
supported by NSERC Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) Grants program.
FINANCIAL CONDITIONS:
The PhD studentship amounts roughly to 19000$CAD per year. The project
activities will take place mainly at CRIM, but the student academic affiliation
will be at Polytechnique Montréal. Tuition fees are not included in the
studentship (for more information on admission consult Polytechnique web site:
http://www.polymtl.ca/futur/esen/). Polytechnique is a French-speaking
institution, but non French-speaking students are allowed to write comprehensive
exam and thesis in English.
ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA:
Master’s degree or equivalent.
The ideal candidate should have a good background in knowledge engineering or
conceptual modelling. Experience in natural language processing is an asset.
APPLICATION:
Please send the following documents to the contact persons given at the end of
this announcement:
- Statement of interest
- Full CV
- University transcripts
- Master dissertation (final copy or draft)
- Name of two references
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
The project is realized in collaboration with a company that has been developing
automated commodity classification software for many years. At this time, they
specialize in classification toward HS codes (Harmonized Commodity Description
and Coding System). The Harmonized System (HS) is a comprehensive product
classification system, which covers all merchandise imported by World Trade
Organization member countries.
The company has built a large ontology containing concepts associated to a
multitude of products in all domains, and for each concept they have encoded
various terms for expressing it. But still, language is so rich that they
cannot anticipate and encode all possible variations used by exporters, such as
"frame wood photo pc bamboo", "candy gummi choice l'il bears", “gloves faux
leather brown” or "sharpener pencil sport ball". The main problem is to match
the various product descriptions to the terms present in their ontology.
A major problem the company faces is to link the two different views of the
commodity world as given on one side by the exporters describing their products
and on the other side by classification systems, such as the HS, imposing their
arbitrary division of the commodity world often for customs and tariff
purposes.
This Ph.D. will address this question: Is it possible to provide a single
“world ontology” for product description and a mapping approach toward
different “classification ontologies” for different classification systems?
The research will be divided into 3 steps:
1. Investigate expressiveness of ontologies and triple stores for product
descriptions
2. Investigate independence between a “world” ontology and HS ontology
3. Choose a domain proof of concept
IMPORTANT DATES:
Closing date for applications is February 5th, 2012.
Deadline for registration at Polytechnique Montréal is March 1st 2012.
CONTACT PERSONS:
Caroline Barrière (caroline.barriere@crim.ca)
Researcher
Développement et technologies internet (DETI)
Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal
405, avenue Ogilvy, bureau 101
Montréal (Québec)
H3N 1M3
Tel: 514 840-1235, poste 7673
http://www.crim.ca/en/r-d/technologie_internet/equipe/fiche22.html
Michel Gagnon (michel.gagnon@polymtl.ca)
Professor
Département de génie informatique et génie logiciel
École Polytechnique de Montréal
http://www.professeurs.polymtl.ca/michel.gagnon |