C. Maria Keet

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Dr. C. Maria Keet
Senior Lecturer
School of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Westville Campus (block H1)
Durban
South Africa
Tel: (+27) 031 260 1035
Fax: (+27) 031 260 7001
Home: www.meteck.org
Blog: keet blog
email: keet at ukzn.ac.za
linkedIn

CV and publications


1. Research interests and activities
2. Seminars and presentations
3. Organisational activities, reviewing etc
4. Teaching and tutorials

 

1a. Research Interests

- Logic-based knowledge representation, focussed on representing biological knowledge (biological reality)
     - conceptual modelling & ontology languages (Description Logics (& OWL), Object-Role Modeling, etc.)
     - relations in (bio-)ontologies, such as parthood and other part-whole relations
- Granularity
- Ontology development
- Biological data characteristics

1b. Research Activities

The main thread across my research activities is ontology, ontologies, logic, and conceptual data modelling. They are divided into three paragraphs for presentation convenience, and a final paragraph on participation in funded projects.

Granularity
     The development of a formal theory of granularity (TOG), my PhD thesis topic, covers subtopics such as mereology, indistinguishability, types of granularity, abstraction and expansion, and formal ontology. With the thesis completed, the focus is shifting toward its application in/with modularization, ontologies (elaborating on chapter 5 of the thesis), formal conceptual data models, developing an ontology of granularity (an extension of chapter 2 of the thesis), elaborating on part-whole relations (mainly with Alessandro Artale and Nicola Guarino), and exploring its relation with rough sets.

CS and logic-based bio-ontologies
     In this strand of investigation, I consider automated reasoning for formal (FOL, DL and OWL-ized) bio-ontologies, formal properties of relations in bio-ontologies (e.g. part-of and transformation-of), ontology engineering, and biological data characteristics. Some of those CS & bio problems feed into the granularity research activities so as to solve real problems. In addition, I was involved in OBDA testing with bio-ontologies and bio-databases for the EU FP6 FET TONES Project and I coordinated and contributed to an extension of this work to achieve in silico hypothesis testing using the horizontal gene transfer database (HGT-DB) as case study (with Mark van Passel, Santi Garcia-Vallve, Werner Nutt, Diego Calvanese, Mariano Rodriguez, and Giorgio Stefanoni)

Formal and ontology-driven conceptual data modeling
     Automated reasoning over conceptual data models that have a formalization in Description Logics in the background, mainly focussed on the DLR flavours and properties of Object-Role Modeling languages and various extensions, such as formal temporal conceptual data modelling. One of the application scenarios for the TOG is to add most of it to formal conceptual data models and/or to the language (and then also to, say, OWL 2). I am the PI on the South African side of the DST/MINCyT-funded bi-lateral South Africa/Argentina Joint Science and Technology Research cooperation project with Argentina, entitled Ontology-driven unification of conceptual data modelling languages, with Pablo Fillottrani at Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, as Argentinian PI. In addition, I was involved in the project "Technologies for Conceptual Modelling and Intelligent Query Formulation" between the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy (coordinator Enrico Franconi) and the Meraka Institute at CSIR in Pretoria South Africa (coordinator Thomas Meyer), 2008-2012.


Participation in funded projects

- Principal Investigator of the project entitled Ontology-driven unification of conceptual data modelling languages of the bi-lateral "South Africa / Argentina Joint Science and Technology Research" funded by SA's Department of Science and Technology and Argentina's MINCyT, with as co-PI in Argentina Pablo Fillottrani, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina. Project duration: 2012-2014.

- Participation (external expert, as ontologist) in the EU PF7 collaborative project e-LICO: An e-Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research in Data Mining and Data-Intensive Science. Project duration: 2009-2012.

- Participation (researcher) in the Marie Curie action funded by the EC under ICT Call 3 FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IRSES on a Network for Enabling Networked Knowledge (NET2). Project duration: 2010-2012.

- Participation (researcher) in the Italy-South Africa collaboration project Technologies for Conceptual Modelling and Intelligent Query Formulation, within the Executive Programme of Scientific and Technological Co-Operation between the Italian Republic and Republic of South Africa 2008-2010.

- Participation (tester and report writing) in the EU FP6 FET TONES Project (nr FP6-7603) concerning Ontology-Based Data Access for databases in the subject domain of people with disabilities and of horizontal gene transfer. Project duration: 2006-2008.



2. Seminars and Presentations

Invited talks Other talks
  • Toward an ontology-driven unifying metamodel for UML class diagrams, EER, and ORM2. Presentation given at the Ontology and Conceptual Modelling Workshop, Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa, d.d. 15-16 Nov, 2012.
  • Ontology-driven formal conceptual data modelling for biological data analysis. Presentation given at the Research Session of the Masters Artificial Intelligence spring School 2011 (MAIS'11), Durban, South Africa, d.d. 27 Sept., 2011.
  • Ontology engineering with rough concepts and vague instances. KRDB Lunch Seminar, 15 June 2010.
  • Comparing and unifying industry-grade conceptual data modelling languages. KRDB Lunch Seminar, 2 December 2008.
  • Some logical and ontological aspects of part-whole relations. KRDB Lunch Seminar 19 February 2008.
  • Current characteristics and historical perspective on 'CS and IT with/for Biology'. Presentation given on 20 October 2005 at the KRDB Research Centre, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. An introductory overview for the thematical Seminar Series CS and IT with/for Biology.
  • Factors affecting ontology development in ecology. Presentation given on 1 July 2005 at the KRDB Research Centre, Free university of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy.
  • Ontologising Bioscience: a niche. Presentation given on 1 July 2004 at the Laboratory of Applied Ontology, Trento, Italy.
  • Development of ontologies for the sciences. ISTC-CNR Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento, Italy, 10 March 2004.

  • Talks of accepted papers at conferences and workshops: Interjoven04, MIE05, DILS05, ORM05, KWEPSY06, WSPI06, GrC06, ORM06, OWLED07, SeS07, AI*IA07, DL07, GrC07, DL08, WORM08, EMMSAD08, KR08, OWLED08, Geomatics09, RST09, GrC09, MTSR09, ORM09, AI*IA09, DL10, EKAW10, ORM10, ESWC11, AFRICON11, SAICSIT'11, ESWC'12, EKAW'12, SAARMSTE'13.

3. Organisational activities, reviewing etc

4. Teaching

Teaching at UKZN:
  • Ontologies and Knowledge Bases (COMP720, previously COMP718). 16 credits BSc in CS Honours course, 2011, 2012, semester 1; 2013 semester 2; Lecturer, including course development.
  • Database Systems [link to CS Moodle page] (COMP306), 16 credits, 3rd year BSc in CS module, UKZN, 2012, 2013, semester 1; Lecturer.
  • Computing for Natural Scientists (COMP106), 16 credits, semester 2, 2013; Lecturer.
  • Theory of Computation [link to CS Moodle page] (COMP314). 16 credits 3rd year undergraduate core module, UKZN, 2nd semester 2011, 2012; Lecturer, including course development.
Previous teaching:


Information on earlier education
This has been moved to a separte page, here, and contains summaries of, and links to, the PhD, MSc, MA, and BSc(hons) theses and papers resulting from them.

In case you are wondering about the difference in given name that appears in publications, C. Maria, and my 'regular' name, Marijke: this is due to some odd naming conventions in the country I grew up (the Netherlands); Marijke is derived from Maria. I use my official name for scientific publications, and (used to use) the other one for other activities.


For comments:
send an email to keet at ukzn dot ac dot za.

This page was last updated on December 14, 2012