[iaoa-general] ISAO 2023, July 10-14 - Call for Participation (Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology held in Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada)

[Frank Loebe]

In case you follow ISAO 2023 already, key additions/updates concern:

- Program overview and further details, cf. also [1]
- Registration - still open [2]    (! 'early' until Sun, June 11 !)


= ISAO 2023 [1] - Call for Participation =

The Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology (ISAO) is the premier 
educational forum for acquiring and deepening knowledge in ontology - 
its foundations, applications, and interconnections with related areas. 
Generously sponsored by the AIJ [3].

July 10-14, 2023
University of Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
(in person only, _no_ online participation)

[1] https://fois2023.griis.ca/isao-2023/


Target audience
- PhD students
- PostDocs and researchers
- Ontology practitioners from business, industry and society

Leading experts in applied ontology (AO), formal ontology, modeling, 
semantics and neighboring fields teach various basic courses as well as 
engage in interactive formats for deepening the knowledge of all 
participants, providing a full immersion experience in AO for all levels 
of expertise. The facilitators Michael Gruninger, Nicola Guarino, 
Giancarlo Guizzardi, Robert Hoehndorf, Maria Keet, Oliver Kutz, Asiyah 
Yu Lin and Barry Smith organize their sessions in four threads and a 
shared, self-contained tutorial (see below and [1,4]):

- Ontological Analysis
- Logical Foundations
- Cognitive Aspects and Ontology
- Methods and Applications
    +
- Introduction to the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)
   (shared session, self-contained tutorial)

The last 1.5 days stress interaction further in up to three parallel 
tracks of barcamp sessions.


== Important Dates & Schedule ==

- Registration open since: May  01, 2023 (Monday)
- Early registration ends: June 11, 2023 (Sunday, EDT applies [5])
- Late registration ends:  July 11, 2023 (Tuesday; during ISAO)
- Event on July 10-14
   -- 3.5 days (July 10-13) of courses (rather introductory)
   -- 1.5 days (July 13-14) of interactive formats (introductory to 
advanced)
   -- see program info below and at [1]

We offer 5-day and 2-day registrations (via [2]), the latter aiming at 
additional networking and exchange during July 13-14, right before FOIS 
2023 [6]. Early student fees amount to
- 320 CAD|225 EUR|240 USD for all 5 days and
- 250 CAD|175 EUR|190 USD for the last 2 days.
Please find all fees below (student - academic - industry) or at [1,4]. 
Cheap accommodation options ease expenses preferentially, but 
non-exclusively for student participants.

Invitation letters (e.g. for visa purposes) will be issued on request to 
[7] (include your full work address).

With any other issues regarding ISAO 2023, please contact us at
[8] iaoa.isao2023 at gmail.com

Please feel invited to read more details below and to spread the word 
within your network. We are looking forward to seeing you join us in 
July!  :-)

Best regards,
Frank Loebe and Daniele Porello






= Details as of end of May 2023 =


== Program Content ==

A tabular program overview/schedule is available at [1,4].

=== Ontological Analysis ===
[Nicola Guarino, Giancarlo Guizzardi]

- Methods of formal ontological analysis
- Top-level ontological distinctions, categories and relations
- Foundational ontologies
- OntoUML hands-on

=== Introduction to the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) ===
[Barry Smith]

- Self-contained tutorial
- Shared session with the EINS summer school [9]

=== Logical Foundations ===
[Michael Gruninger, Oliver Kutz]

- Introductory
   -- Writing first-order logic (FOL) sentences
   -- Proofs and models
   -- Description logics (DLs), incl. relations to the Semantic Web
- Advanced
   -- Ontology verification
   -- Concept combination, debugging, weakening in DL

=== Cognitive Aspects and Ontology ===
[Nicola Guarino, Giancarlo Guizzardi, Oliver Kutz]

- Conceptual modeling and applied ontology
- Concepts in cognitive science, semantics and philosophy

=== Methods and Applications ===
[Robert Hoehndorf, Maria Keet, Asiyah Yu Lin]

- Methods
   -- Developing good ontologies
   -- Building ontologies hands-on
   -- Machine learning/neuro-symbolic AI, semantic similarity and ont.
   -- Ontology reviewing
- Applications
   -- Introduction to biomedical ontologies and their use
   -- Bio-ontology tool demonstration
   -- Ontology-based data access

=== Special Session ===

- What are good applied ontology papers? (panel)

=== Social Program ===

- Social dinner
- Excursion
- Pub quiz



== Facilitators ==

Michael Gruninger
(Semantic Technologies Lab, University of Toronto, Canada)
http://stl.mie.utoronto.ca/

Nicola Guarino
(Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA), ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy)
https://www.istc.cnr.it/people/nicola-guarino

Giancarlo Guizzardi
(Semantics, Cybersecurity and Services, University of Twente, The 
Netherlands)
https://people.utwente.nl/g.guizzardi

Robert Hoehndorf
(Bio-Ontology Research Group, King Abdullah University of Science and 
Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi-Arabia)
https://cemse.kaust.edu.sa/borg/people/person/robert-hoehndorf

Maria Keet
(Knowledge Engineering, University of Cape Town, South Africa)
http://www.meteck.org/

Oliver Kutz
(Cognitive and Conceptual Modeling Research Group, Free University of 
Bozen-Bolzano, Italy)
https://www.inf.unibz.it/~okutz/

Asiyah Yu Lin
(Office of Data Science and Emerging Technologies, NIAID, NIH, 
Rockville, Maryland, USA)
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/office-data-science-and-emerging-technologies

Barry Smith
(National Center for Ontological Research, Buffalo, New York, USA)
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/



== Fee Schedule ==

Fees are valid and payable in CAD. To indicate them in EUR/USD, fees 
have been approximated assuming 0.70 EUR/0.75 USD per 1 CAD (and 
rounding up).
See [1,4] for a colored, tabular version.

Early registration [2] ends on Sunday, June 11, 23:59 EDT/UTC-4 [5].

=== student fees ===
5 days = July 10-14
- early  320 CAD | 225 EUR | 240 USD
- late   390 CAD | 275 EUR | 295 USD

last 2 days = July 13-14
- early  250 CAD | 175 EUR | 190 USD
- late   300 CAD | 210 EUR | 225 USD

=== academic fees ===
5 days = July 10-14
- early  525 CAD | 370 EUR | 395 USD
- late   625 CAD | 440 EUR | 470 USD

last 2 days = July 13-14
- early  280 CAD | 200 EUR | 210 USD
- late   330 CAD | 235 EUR | 250 USD

=== industry fees ===
5 days = July 10-14
- early  700 CAD | 490 EUR | 525 USD
- late   850 CAD | 595 EUR | 640 USD

last 2 days = July 13-14
- early  425 CAD | 300 EUR | 320 USD
- late   525 CAD | 370 EUR | 395 USD


== Expenses & Grants ==

- budget accommodation available
   -- in university student housing below 50 CAD/35 EUR/40 USD per
      night per person (+ local taxes)
   -- single or double rooms; bathrooms shared with 2-3 rooms; WiFi
   -- information about reserving rooms follows after registration
- as of May 2023, grants are limited to waiving or reducing ISAO fees


== Location Details ==

University of Sherbrooke
2500, boulevard de l'Université
Sherbrooke, Québec
Canada J1K 2R1


== Associated Events ==

Co-located with and
- preceding FOIS 2023 [6],
  the International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems
  held from July 17-20 in person and September 18-20 online
- sharing the tutorial 'Introduction to BFO' with EINS 2023 [9]
  the first Interdisciplinary Summer School in Digital Health
  (École d'été interdisciplinaire en numérique de la santé; primarily in 
French)

Complementing ESAO [10], the Educational Series of Applied Ontology, a 
continuous series of virtual educational sessions.


== Sponsors ==

As yet we very much thank as sponsors
- the Artificial Intelligence Journal (AIJ) [3] as well as
- ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig [11]
for their contributions.


== Organization ==

The ISAO series is run by the International Association for Ontology and 
its Applications (IAOA) [12] and is held jointly with FOIS every two 
years, typically in the week just before. ISAO 2023 is the 5th instance, 
after 2012/14/16/18 [13] and 5 years of an undesired gap, and is hosted 
by the University of Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada.

Thanks to local organization support in 2023 by
- Jean-François Ethier
- Christina Khnaisser
- Anne-Marie Cloutier
- Angèle Gosselin
- Sarah Bilodeau
- Maryse Couture
- Karine Gagnon
- Jeanne Morin

General Chairs
- Frank Loebe     (University of Leipzig, Germany)
- Daniele Porello (University of Genoa, Italy)


== Contact ==

[8] iaoa.isao2023 at gmail.com


== References ==

[1] ISAO 2023 website
https://fois2023.griis.ca/isao-2023/

[2] ISAO 2023 registration system
https://event.fourwaves.com/isao2023/pages

[3] Artificial Intelligence Journal
https://aij.ijcai.org/

[4] ISAO 2023 advertising slide set (fwd to Google Doc Presentation)
https://tinyurl.com/isao2023ad

[5] end of early registration deadline (EDT/UTC-4 applies to the date)
https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20230612T0359

[6] FOIS 2023 website
https://fois2023.griis.ca/

[7] ISAO & FOIS 2023 mail address, incl. for letters of invitation
fois.2023 at usherbrooke.ca

[8] ISAO 2023 contact to chairs by email
iaoa.isao2023 at gmail.com

[9] EINS 2023 website
https://eins.griis.ca/

[10] ESAO series website
https://wiki.iaoa.org/index.php/Edu:ESAO

[11] ScaDS.AI Dresden/Leipzig - Center for Scalable Data Analytics and
Artificial Intelligence, Germany
https://scads.ai

[12] IAOA website
https://iaoa.org/

[13] ISAO history pages
https://iaoa.org/index.php/isao-history/