27-05-2016
"Reasoning combining Non-monotonic and Ontologies Rules for the Semantic Web" is the title of Matthias Knorr work, winner of the 26th edition of IBM Scientific Award.
The work of Matthias Knorr constitutes a step forward in the field of artificial intelligence, more specifically in Knowledge and Reasoning Representation (RCR), and in Semantic Web, through the intelligent use of the structured information distributed in the Web, enabling systems with a vast knowledge about the world.
Currently, the Web provides huge amounts of information and knowledge in different formats and levels of complexity, ranging from hierarchical knowledge to knowledge that enables representing and reasoning with exceptions. A large share of this knowledge is represented in standardized languages that ease the creation of such knowledge and its reuse between applications, companies and throughout society. These standardized languages have been applied successfully, for example, in product development, air plane design, in the biomedical area, and even by IBM Watson when winning Jeopardy.
This work advances the state of the art by developing the necessary theory and methods and a tool that allows reasoning over the integration of various knowledge bases in a highly efficient way, which is crucial, given the huge amounts of information and knowledge available.
Matthias Knorr, 35 years old, holds a PhD in Informatics by FCT NOVA and he is a researcher from the Knowledge-Based Systems Group at NOVA LINCS.
"It is an honor for me to receive the IBM Award and to contribute in this way to the dissemination of the research work we develop, increasing its impact," stressed Matthias Knorr, this year’s prize winner.