Terminology and natural language processing are at the basis of many computer applications dealing with domain knowledge, from text generation, information retrieval, machine-assisted translation, and ontology-based language annotation, to ontology localization to mention just a few. In all these areas, the final aim is to allow people to communicate with computers. This communication can be seen from a wide perspective in the new Semantic Web where ontologies have achieved its highest point as the knowledge representations that can be shared by users and machines. In this respect, one of the most challenging issues nowadays is the task of adapting domain ontologies to users of different languages and cultures while preserving the generality of a domain model. Another important issue is derived from the ever-increasing need of improving cross-lingual information extraction methods by means of new innovative approaches that exploit web-based resources (lexica, corpora, translation services, etc.).

The linguistic model (Linguistic Information Repository, LIR) developed in our group to represent the linguistic knowledge necessary in ontology localization as well as the tool that implements this model and semi-automates the ontology localization process (LabelTranslator) are two important advances that will be further improved in the near future.

Apart from the research developed in other areas, such as natural language generation, ontological formalization of linguistic resources, standardization of linguistic annotation tag sets, and interoperation of linguistic annotation tools and other annotation linguistic resources by means of ontologies, our team is now involved in a new EU project, MONNET, Multilingual Ontologies for Networked Knowledge (FP7-248458). At this stage, our aim is to obtain a new model integrating different linguistic and multilingual aspects that up to now have been partially approached. We also aim at offering an automatic and adaptive localisation of ontologies by building on and enhancing available models for associating linguistic and multilingual data to ontologies.

Some of the innovative aspects will deal with scalability and adaptability to new application domains and languages through a web-based approach that will leverage the increased availability of linguistic resources as well as semantic and linked data.

Projects

Some of the results obtained in the European project NeOn (FP6-027595) related to multilinguality in ontologies will be applied to Monnet (FP7-248458), a new EU project that started in March 2010.

Miembros

This research area is led by Guadalupe Aguado de Cea, Associate Professor, and the team is formed by the following members:

• Asunción Gómez-Pérez, Full Professor
• Inmaculada Alvarez de Mon, Full Professor at the EUITT
• Mari Carmen Suárez-Figueroa, Teaching Assistant
• Rosario Plaza Arteche, Associate Professor
• Elena Montiel-Ponsoda, PhD student
• José Ángel Ramos Gargantilla, PhD student
• Mauricio Espinoza, PhD student
• Socorro Bernardo Galindo, Associate Professor
• Jorge Gracia, senior researcher
• Antonio Pareja-Lora, Assistant Professor

Main results

Some of the most important publications in these areas are:

• [2010] E. Montiel-Ponsoda, G. Aguado de Cea, A. Gómez-Pérez, W. Peters. Enriching Ontologies with Multilingual Information En Journal of Natural Language Engineering, Cambridge (en prensa).
• [2010] P. Cimiano, E. Montiel-Ponsoda, P. Buitelaar, M. Espinoza, A. Gómez-Pérez. A Note on Ontology Localization. En Journal of Applied Ontology, IOS Press (en prensa)
• [2010] E. Montiel-Ponsoda y G. Aguado de Cea.: Using natural language patterns for the development of ontologies. En Researching specialized languages. V. Bhatia, P. Sánchez Hernández and P. Pérez Paredes (eds.), John Benjamins,     ISBN: 978-84-691-5718-3.
• [2009] G. Aguado de Cea, I. Álvarez de Mon, E. Montiel-Ponsoda From linguistic patterns to ontology structures. En Proceedings of the International Conference on Terminology and Artificial Intelligence (TIA 2009).
• [2009] M. Espinoza, E. Montiel-Ponsoda, and A. Gómez-Pérez. Ontology Localization In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP2009) pp. 33-40, (ISBN: 978-1-60558-658-8), California, USA.
• [2009] M. Espinoza, A. Gómez-Pérez, E. Montiel-Ponsoda. Multilingual and Localization Support for Ontologies. En Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2009), Demostración, pp. 821-825 (ISBN 978-3-642-02120-6), Heraklion, Grecia.

A complete list of publications can be found [link to UPM ePrints].

Job opportunities

There are currently no job offers or studentships available in this research area. For offers in other areas of the group, please check in our job opportunities section.