The European project REWERSE has just had its first anniversary since it commenced on 1st. March 2004. The Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence department is a partner within the consortium made up of 27 European research and industry organisations from 14 European countries and about 100 computer science researchers and professionals playing key roles in applied reasoning. Mr.Michael Rosner, head of CSAI department, Dr.Matthew Montebello, REWERSE local co-ordinator, and Mr.Charlie Abela, Computer Science Researcher, have jsut returned from the Annual Meeting held in Munich where they participated and contributed to the project progress report and European Commission review procedures after an intensive year of research and collaboration.
REWERSE is a research "Network of Excellence" (NoE) on "Reasoning on the Web" that is funded by the EU Commission and Switzerland within the "6th Framework Programme" (FP6), Information Society Technologies (IST), Priority 2 under the project reference number 506779. REWERSE addresses the IST strategic action line "Semantic-based knowledge systems".
The objective of REWERSE is to establish Europe as a leader in reasoning languages for the Web by networking and structuring a scientific community that needs it, and by providing tangible technological bases that do not exist today for an industrial software development of advanced Web systems and applications. The community networked and structured by REWERSE will develop a coherent and complete, yet minimal, collection of inter-operable reasoning languages for advanced Web systems and applications; test these languages on context-adaptive Web systems and Web-based decision support systems selected as test-beds for proof-of-concept purposes; bring the proposed languages to the level of open pre-standards amenable to submissions to standardisation bodies such as the W3C.
REWERSE will develop Education and Training activities targeted at Universities as well as Technology Transfer and Awareness activities targeted at the European industry on reasoning languages for Web systems and applications.
The impact that REWERSE aims to produce fall mainly within the area of Reasoning Languages. Reasoning languages for the Web are an emerging technology that does not exist today. This technology will soon represent an essential breakthrough for Web systems and applications. Thus, REWERSE will promote research on an issue of a considerable economical importance. Doing so, REWERSE will contribute to the international competitiveness of the European industry in an essential field of today's Information Technologies.
REWERSE will establish itself as the world leading virtual research centre on reasoning languages and methods for the Web. REWERSE will ensure that this novel technology is fully exploited and translated into real competitive advantages for the European industry.
REWERSE is co-ordinated by the University of Munich (research group of the professors François Bry and Hans Jürgen Ohlbach). The EU Commission and Switzerland will support REWERSE with more than 5 million Euro over 4 years.
REWERSE activities can be followed at http://rewerse.net.
Dr.Matthew Montebello CSAI dept., Univ. of Malta Malta