Dr. Feng (Barry) Tao

Dr Feng (Barry) TAO graduated from School of Computer Science, the Queen's University Belfast, U.K. (1999-2002) with a PhD degree in the subject of Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.

He then joined the University of Southampton as a researcher in ECS working for GEODISE project, one of the e-Science pilot projects in Southampton Regional e-Science center. His main contribution in the project was Geodise Knowledge Management and its intergration within the Engineering Problem Solving Environment. In 2004, he moved to LSL in ECS, working in Semantic Web based Technology Enhanced Learning.

He is now a consultant in ECS but working full-time as a Data and Knowledge Engineer for National Oceanography Centre, Southampton in the area of Geospatial data managment and semantic web application for multiuse of oceanographic data.

Bsc in Computer Science,
PhD in Computer Science

New paradiam of Geodise Knowledge Management for 3Clix

Three main activies of the Semantic Web based knowledge management in Geodise Knowledge are ontology modelling, semantic annotation and its reuse and intergration in PSE. Ontology forms the conceptual structure of the knowledge base and the semantic annotation populates the knowledge base by semantic instances. Knowledge reuse is then done through semantically analysing these instances to generate knowledgeable decisions and integrate intelligent interaction within the PSE. In e-Science practice, it is quite often that the activities of generating and reusing the instances are conducted by different parties (human and computers), in different locations, time and environments. For example, in Geodise, Various Grid services and domain software components are being used, such as Java Cog in Globus toolkit and OPTIONS design exploration package for EDSO, etc. They are wrapped as Matlab functions which form the key resource in Grid enabled engineering problem solving. Semantic instances of these resources can be generated by knowledge engineers using knowledge acquisition tools such as Protégé and Function Annotator. Semantics acquired in either way can be represented in Web Ontology Language (OWL), which is a standard in W3C aiming to help machine understanding of data. Third-party programs can be used to process the instances in the knowledge base for different knowledge reuse purposes. This allows that the knowledge to be used potentially outside the awareness of its providers. In Geodise, the purpose of knowledge support is to help engineers exploit reusable resources. We use Jena semantic toolkit to process the semantic information of these existing resources and make advice on activities of domain script editing and workflow assembly that require appropriate manipulation on these resources.

Advantages and Limitations

Geodise Knowledge is a ontology driven Semantic Web model where knowledge are represented in a knowledge repository as ontologies and semantic annotations, in the form of W3C RDF triples. At the moment, ontology engineering and its population through semantic annotation acitivities are all carried out by knowledge engineers outside the Matlab PSE, through manually processing the KA results with knowledge engineering tools such as OilEd, Protege and Function Annotator. EDSO Domain experts/users can only reuse these semantic annotations, in a stand-along SW driven matlab function query application, within the Matlab PSE through the Knowledge Toolbox or through the intergration of a knowledge advisor in EDSO workflow editor. The limitation of this paradiam is that Knowledge engineers need to regularly receive feedbacks from the domain experts and users in order to drive the improvement of the knowledge model and its population. This makes it difficult for collaberative knowledge evolution where domain experts/users are enpowered with ability to more directly participant activities in knowledge modeling and populations to make available resource for knowledge reuse.

Possible solutions - Collaberative Agile Knowledge Engineering (AKE)

Web2.0 technologies that support the Semantic Web, such as Semantic MediaWiki and OntoWiki, can be used to enable this collaberative knowledge evolution. Knowledge Engineers can provide a start-kit of ontology and a few instances, along with KA documents (from PC-PACK) of the domain, all of which are wiki based (editable and version controled). Domain experts and users follow this as a blueprint to collaberatively add more resources into the knowledge base, either on the web, or witin the Matlab PSE via a command-based toolbox.

This enables domain experts, end users (including software agents such as a sensor proxy) and knowledge engineers to collaberatively contribute to the construction of a knowledge base. Similar approaches are Agile development method in Software engineering and Wiki in collaberative Web Content authoring.

The AKE emphasis

        distributed contribution of knowledge as semantics encoded statements

        change logging and versioning - the wiki philosophy (make it easy to correction mistake rather than hard to make the mistake)

        intuitive rendering/representation of knowledge

        Persistent and scalable data storage

Within the 3Clix context, improvement based on Geodise Knowledge can be made by switching to this Web2.0 paradiam and adding command-based toolbox in Geodise knowledge toolbox. Data interopobility is another important factor - all knowledge data should be stored as OWL and RDF triples in a scalable and persistant storage with facilities like import/export so that data won't be locked into any one semantic web appliction. 

Chen, L. and Tao, F. (2007) An Intelligent Recommender System for Web Resource Discovery and Selection. (Edited by Edited by Da Ruan, Frank Hardeman eds.), The Springer, accepted and in press

Tao, F., Millard, D., Zalfan, M., Chen, L. and Davis, H. (2007) Knowledge based Learning Experience Management on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of IADIS International Conference of e-Learning (in press), Lisburn, Portugal. 

Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Goble, C. and Tao, F. (2006) Managing Semantic Metadata for Web Grid Services. International Journal of Web Services Research 3(4) pp. 73-94. 

Millard, D., Tao, F., Doody, K., Woukeu, A. and Davis, H. (2006) The Knowledge Life Cycle for e-learning. International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Lifelong Learning: Special Issue on Application of Semantic Web Technologies in E-learning 16(1/2) pp. 110-121. 

Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Goble, C., Tao, F., Puleston, C. and Cox, S. (2005) Semantics-assisted Problem Solving on the Semantic Grid. Journal of Computational Intelligence, special issue 21(2). 

Tao, F., Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Pound, G. and Cox, S. (2003) Towards the Semantic Grid: Putting Knowledge to Work in Design Optimisation. J.UCS 9(6) pp. 551-562. 

Tao, F., Millard, D., Zalfan, M., Chen, L. and Davis, H. (2007) Knowledge based Learning Experience Management on the Semantic Web. In Proceedings of IADIS International Conference of e-Learning (in press), Lisburn, Portugal. 

Chen, L., Tao, F. and Shadbolt, N. (2006) A Semantic Web Service Based Approach for Augmented Provenance. In Proceedings of IEEE/WIC/ACM Web Intelligent -2006 (in press), Hong Kong.  

Woukeu, A., Millard, D., Tao, F. and Davis, H. (2005) Challenges for Semantic Grid based Mobile Learning. In Proceedings of IEEE SITIS 2005, Yaoundé.  

Millard, D., Woukeu, A., Tao, F. B. and Davis, H. (2005) Experiences with Writing Grid Clients for Mobile devices. In Proceedings of 1st International ELeGI Conference on Advanced Technology for Enhanced Learning BCS Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC), Vico Equense, (Napoli), Italy.  

Tao, F. B., Millard, D., Davis, H. and Woukeu, A. (2005) Managing the Semantic Aspects of Learning using the Knowledge Life Cycle. In Proceedings of The 5th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2005), pp. 575-579, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  

Tao, F., Millard, D., Woukeu,, A. and Davis, H. (2005) Semantic Grid based e-Learning using the Knowledge Life Cycle (Speech). In Proceedings of International Workshop on Applications of Semantic Web Technologies for E-Learning (SW-EL), in conjuction with ICALT2005 and AIED'05 The Proceedings of IEEE ICALT 2005, pp. 954-955, Kaohsiung and Amstdem.  

TAO, F., Neumann, F. and Ritrovato, P. (2005) The ELeGI Project (Speech). In Proceedings of Exhibition in eLearning Conference "Towards a Learning Society", Brussels.  

Millard, D., Woukeu, A., Tao, F. B. and Davis, H. (2005) The Potential of Grid for Mobile e-Learning (Poster). In Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Mobile Learning (MLEARN 2005), Cape Town, South Africa.  

Tao, F., Davis, H., Millard, D. and Woukeu, A. (2005) The Semantic Aspects of e-Learning: Using the Knowledge Life Cycle to Manage Semantics for Grid and Service Oriented Systems (Speech). In Proceedings of 1st International ELeGI Conference on Advanced Technology for Enhanced Learning, Hotel Oriente, Vico Equense - Napoli (Italy).  

Tao, F., Puleston, C., Goble, C., Shadbolt, N., Chen, L., Pound, G. and Cox, S. (2004) Applying the Semantic Web to Manage Knowledge on the Grid. In Proceedings of UK e-Science AHM Conference, Nottingham, UK.  

Chen, L., Cox, S., Tao, F., Shadbolt, N., Goble, C. and Puleston, C. (2004) Empower Resource Providers to Build the Semantic Grid. In Proceedings of 2004 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'04), Beijing, China.  

Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Tao, F., Goble, C., Puleston, C. and Cox, S. (2004) Managing Semantic Metadata for the Semantic Grid (Speech). In Proceedings of Knowledge Grid and Grid Intelligence (KGGI) workshop, Beijing, China.  

Tao, F., Shadbolt, N., Chen, L., Xu, F. and Cox, S. (2004) Semantic Web based Content Enrichment and Knowledge Reuse in e-Science. In Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Ontologies, DataBases, and Applications of Semantics for Large Scale Information Systems (ODBASE), Larnaca, Cyprus.  

Xu, F., Eres, H., Tao, F. and Cox, S. (2004) Workflow Support for Advanced Grid-Enabled Computing. In Proceedings of UK e-Science AHM Conference, Nottingham, UK.  

Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Tao, F., Puleston, C., Goble, C. and Cox, S. (2003) Exploiting Semantics for e-Science on the Semantic Grid. In Proceedings of Web Intelligence (WI2003) workshop on Knowledge Grid and Grid Intelligence, pp. 122-132, Halifax, Canada.  

Tao, F., Chen, L., Cox, S., Shadbolt, N., Puleston, C. and Goble, C. (2003) Semantic Support for Grid-Enabled Design Search in Engineering. In Proceedings of the First GGF Semantic Grid Workshop, the Ninth Global Grid Forum (GGF9), Chicago IL, USA.  

Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Goble, C., Tao, F., Cox, S., Puleston, C. and Smart, P. (2003) Towards a Knowledge-based Approach to Semantic Service Composition. In Proceedings of 2nd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2003) 2870, pp. 319-334, Florida, USA.  

Tao, F., Cox, S., Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Xu, F., Puleston, C., Goble, C. and Song, W. (2003) Towards the Semantic Grid: Enriching Content for Management and Reuse. In Proceedings of Delivering e-Science, UK e-Science All-hand Conference 2003, Nottingham, UK.  

(2003) Towards the Semantic Grid: Putting Knowledge to Work in Design Optimisation. In Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW '03), Graz, Austria. Tao, F., Chen, L., Shadbolt, N., Pound, G. and Cox, S., Eds.  

Tao, F., Chen, L., Shadbolt, N. R., Pound, G. and Cox, S. J. (2003) Towards the Semantic Grid: Putting Knowledge to Work in Design Optimisation. In Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Knowledge Management (I-KNOW '03), Graz, Austria.  

Tao, F., Murtagh, F. and Farid, M. (2003) Weighted Association Rule Mining using Weighted Support and Significance Framework. In Proceedings of The Ninth ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (ACM SIGKDD 2003), pp. 661-666, Washington DC, USA.  

Chen, L., Cox, S. J., Goble, C., Keane, A., Roberts, A., Shadbolt, N. R., Smart, P. and Tao, F. (2002) Engineering Knowledge for Engineering Grid Applications. In Proceedings of Euroweb 2002 Conference, The Web and the GRID: from e-science to e-business, pp. 12-25, Oxford, UK.  

Cox, S. J., Chen, L., Campobasso, S., Duta, M. H., Eres, M. H., Giles, M. B., Goble, C., Jiao, Z., Keane, A. J., Pound, G. E., Roberts, A., Shadbolt, N. R., Tao, F., Wason, J. L. and Xu, F. (2002) Grid Enabled Optimisation and Design Search (Geodise). In Proceedings of UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 1(1), pp. 54-55, Sheffield, UK.  

Cox, S. J., Boardman, R. P., Chen, L., Duta, M., Eres, M. H., Fairman, M. J., Jiao, Z., Giles, M., Goble, C., Pound, G. E., Keane, A. J., Shadbolt, N. R., Tao, F. and Wason, J. (2002) Grid Services in Action: Grid Enabled Optimisation and Design Search. In Proceedings of The 11th IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing HPDC-11 2002 1(1), pp. 413-413, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.  

Taskaya, T., Contreras, P., Tao, F. and Murtagh, F. (2001) Data Visualization for large dataset. In Proceedings of HCI 2001 International conference in human and computer interface, New Orleans, La., USA.  

Tao, F., Contreras, P., Pauer, B., Taskaya, T. and Murtagh, F. (2001) User interest correlation in log data. In Proceedings of HCI 2001 International conference in human computer interface, New Orleans, La., USA.  

Tao, F. and Murtagh, F. (2000) Information self-organization for knowledge discovery. In Proceedings of MIW'2000 International Workshop on Management of Information on the Web - Methodologies and Applications, DEXA 2000, Greenwich, London.  

Tao, F. and Murtagh, F. (2000) Towards knowledge discovery from WWW log data. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing, pp. 302-307, Las Vegas, USA.  

Tao, F., Millard, D., Zalfan, M., Chen, l. and Davis, h. (2006) Semantic Web Assisted Learning Experience Management – Architecture and Strategy for Collaborative Learning Experience Sharing. Technical Report, LTG, ECS.