International Workshop on
Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Life Sciences (SWAT4LS)
28th November 2008, Edinburgh, UK

http://www.swat4ls.org/

Overview
--------
The workshop is organized in sessions and open discussions. Invited speakers
will present state-of-the-art, provocative lectures on the workshop's main
topic, while a number of submissions will be accepted as oral presentations
and posters on all workshop's topics.

Keynote Speakers
------------------------
+ Semantic web technology in translational cancer research,
Michael Krauthammer, Department of Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine, USA

+ Using Ontologies to bring Web Services on to the Semantic Web
Mark Wilkinson, Dept. of Medical Genetics, University of British Columbia, Canada

Workshop Description
--------------------
Semantic Web technologies, tools and applications are starting to emerge in
Life Sciences. In recent years, systems have been introduced and an
increasing interest among researchers is arising. This workshop will provide
a venue to present and discuss benefits and limits of the adoption of these
technologies and tools in biomedical informatics and computational biology.
It will showcase experiences, information resources, tools development and
applications. It will bring together researchers, both developers and users,
from the various fields of Biology, Bioinformatics and Computer Science, to
discuss goals, current limits and some real use cases for Semantic Web
technologies in Life Sciences.


Topics of Interest
------------------

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:


* Standards, Technologies, Tools for the Semantic Web
o Semantic Web standards (RDF, OWL, ...)
o RDF/OWL, SKOS, .... and their applicability ot bioinformatics
o RDF Schemas and Query systems
o Biomedical Ontologies and related tools
o Formal approaches to large biomedical controlled terminologies
and vocabularies
* Systems for a Semantic Web for Bioinformatics
o Bio-ontologies, RDF stores, Semantic web Services
o RDF repositories and query systems for life sciences
o Semantically aware biomedical Web Services
o Semantic Biological Data Integration Systems
* Existing and perspective applications of the Semantic Web for
Bioinformatics
o Semantic browsers, Semantic collaborative research
o Case studies, use cases, and scenarios
o Semantic Web applications in life sciences



Workshop Venue and Format
------------------------

The workshop will take place in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 28 November 2008,
and is hosted by the UK's National e-Science Centre (NeSC).

SWAT4LS will be a one-day workshop and will consist of two invited talks,
regular paper and poster presentations. The workshop will conclude with a
panel discussion on the strength and weaknesses of the Semantic Web for the
Life Sciences.


Type of contributions
----------------------

The following possible original contributions are sought:

* Oral communications (regular papers)
* Posters
* Software demos

All accepted oral communications and posters will be published with CEUR.


Deadlines
---------

* Submission deadline (both papers and posters): 30 September 2008
* Notification of acceptance: 20 October 2008
* Camera-ready submission: 3 November 2008



Instructions
-------------

All papers and posters must be in English and must be submitted through the
EasyChair review system at
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swat4ls. Please upload all
submissions as PDF files in LNCS format
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). To ensure high quality,
submitted papers will be carefully peer-reviewed by at least three members
of the Scientific Committee.

- Submissions for Oral communications should be between 10 and 15 pages.
- Posters submissions should be between 4 and 8 pages.
- Software demo proposals should be between 4 and 8 pages.

Furthermore, a selection of papers will be published in a special issue of the BMC Bioinformatics journal devoted to the SWAT4LS workshop.
To this end, a special Call will be launched shortly after the workshop, for extended and revised versions of contributions submitted to the workshop and accepted either as oral communication or poster.

Workshop Chairs
----------------
Albert Burger, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt
University, and Human Genetics Unit, Medical Research Council, Edinburgh,
Scotland, United Kingdom

Adrian Paschke, Biotechnology Centre, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Paolo Romano, Bioinformatics, National Cancer Research Institute, Genova,
Italy

Andrea Splendiani, Medical Informatics Department, University of Rennes 1,
Rennes, France


Program Committee (to be completed)
-----------------------------------
- Christopher Baker, Knowledge Discovery Department, Institute for Infocomm
Research (I2R), Singapore
- Pedro Barahona, Department of Informatics, New University of Lisboa,
Lisboa, Portugal
- Liliana Barrio-Alvers, Transinsight GmbH, Dresden, Germany
- Virendrakumar C, Bhavsar, University of New Brunswick, Canada
- Olivier Bodenreider, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD, United
States of America
- Werner Ceusters, NY CoE in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, University at
Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
- Marie-Dominique Devignes, LORIA, Vandoeuvre les Nancy, France
- C. Maria Keet, Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of
- Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy
- Ludwig Krippahl, Department of Informatics, New University of Lisboa,
Lisboa, Portugal
- Patrick Lambrix, Department of Computer and Information Science, Link?ping
University, Link?ping, Sweden
- Stephan Philippi, Institute for Software Technology, University of
Koblenz-Landau, Koblenz, Germany
- Scott Marshall, Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
- Alan Ruttenberg, Science Commons, Boston, USA
- Kei Cheung, Yale Center for Medical Informatics, Yale, New Haven, USA
- Tetsuro Toyoda, Bioinformatics And Systems Engineering (BASE) division,
RIKEN, Yokohama, Japan
- Luca Toldo, Research Knowledge Management, MerckSerono, Darmstadt, Germany
- Nigam Shah,Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, Stanford, USA
- Michael Dumontier, Department of Biology, School of Computer Science,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- Matthias Samwald, DERI Galway, Galway, Ireland and Semantic Web Company,
Vienna, Austria
- Graham Kemp, Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of
Technology, Sweden
- Robert Stevens, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester,
Manchester, United Kingdom
- Michael Schr?der, Biotechnology Centre, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
- Jano van Hemert, National e-Science Centre, University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh, United Kingdom

(... more to be confirmed)

Workshop Web Pages: www.swat4ls.org
Contact Email Address: info@swat4ls.org

=====================================================================
In Co-operation with:

- National Cancer Research Institute, Genova, Italy
- Biotechnology Centre, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany
- School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Universit? de Rennes 1, Rennes, France
- SeaLife Project, European Commission Information Society and Media
- National e-Science Center, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
- Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Technologies in Bioinformatics (LITBIO),
Italy
=====================================================================