*Semantics for Biodiversity Symposium -- Call for Abstracts *http://semantics4biodiversity.nceas.ucsb.edu

at TDWG Conference 2013 October 28 - November 1, 2013 - Florence, Italy.

*Symposium Description and Scope * This Symposium includes a series of three, 90 minute sessions at TDWG that together constitute a "Semantics for Biodiversity" track, focused on --

Ontologies and formal models Technologies, Reasoning and Annotation methods Interoperability with genomic and ecological semantics

These sessions are not parallel tracked and they are placed on separate days to avoid saturation on the topic. Additionally, there will be an initial "primer/tutorial" session of 60 minutes, to provide basic background for TDWG participants about semantic technologies, and how these can help inform biodiversity research.

The conveners of this Symposium will be soliciting participation from diverse communities, including those from the biodiversity informatics and standards-development community per se, but also researchers interested in knowledge modeling and semantic application development in the biodiversity sciences, including relevant linkages to investigations in the ecological, genomic and phylogenetic sciences. *These thematic areas recommend a stronger-than-usual outreach to the computer science community, as researchers in that community will be particularly attracted by the prospects of reporting their work in a planned (and approved) special issue of the Semantic Web Journal on "Semantics for Biodiversity"*. Multiple groups of informaticians and technologists are currently developing semantic technologies to enhance discovery, interpretation, and interoperability of biodiversity data, so the upcoming meeting will provide a signal opportunity to present and discuss these activities in a coordinated fashion before perhaps the most relevant community who can inform, critique, and contribute to these efforts. Further, it's anticipated that these sessions will significantly raise awareness among computer scientists and engineers relative to the informatics challenges confronting the biodiversity community, particularly among those developing generalized knowledge representation and reasoning technologies, and machine-learning approaches.

*Important Dates * Submission due: September 4, 2013 Acceptance Notification: September 11, 2013 Symposium dates: October 29 - November 1, 2013

*Symposium Format and Submissions*

We invite abstract submissions (500 words maximum) for the three sessions, which will be dedicated to short presentations on the topics described in abstracts. We anticipate presentations will be for 20 minutes, with the possibility that these times will change depending on the number of quality submissions.

Please visit http://semantics4biodiversity.nceas.ucsb.edu for additional information on each of the sessions. Questions for the organizers can be directed to semantics4biodiversity@nceas.ucsb.edu

Submission site: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=s4bdtdwg2013

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