Mobile platforms, such as 'smartphones' are repositories of various types of information:
However, this information is, in general, not interoperable: one application cannot take advantage of the information collected by other applications in a transparent way. At best, they may query the other applications but need to know which application provides which type of data and what is their format.
Semantic web technologies [1] provide different languages for expressing information (RDF), describing its organisation (OWL), querying it (SPARQL) and expressing relations between different data sources (Alignments [2]). They would thus be particularly suited for information expression and interchange within and across mobile devices. Indeed, OWL may be used for describing data formats, alignments for transforming them and SPARQL for obtaining answers in RDF.
So far, efforts to leverage semantic web technologies on mobile platforms have focussed on application specific solutions [3,4]. One goal of this work is the design of a semantic architecture for such communicating devices, which is not specific to a particular use of the information. This requires to consider how semantic technologies would be used so that an application can take advantage of available information; i.e., how to expose data in a sufficiently flexible manner so that applications may be aware of them and query them efficiently. On may think that the GPS may disclose its information in various format and/or granularity (indicating the exact position, the address or the city).
In addition, providing access to such sensitive information may be a threat to privacy. We aim at providing better control to users on the information that is communicated by applications on their devices. Semantic technologies may also contribute to solve this problem by allowing users to define more precise and more flexible policies for disclosing information, e.g., information about availability may be given to a colleague involved in a particular project for the purpose of setting up a project meeting (not to a provider for scheduling a promotional meeting). They may allow for context-dependent policies which consider situations globally before disclosing information, i.e., how urgent is the request, from whom it originates and when the user is expected to answer [5].
For reaching this goal, it is necessary to design, on top of the above mentioned semantic technologies, an easy to understand way to express policies. For instance, authorised persons may be found in users phonebooks and phonebook categories. In addition, the evaluation of such policies with respect to incoming requests may be interpreted rigorously based on the semantics of the used languages. Other interesting questions may arise from here such as the compatibility of policies expressed as a satisfiability problem.
We already have experimented on RDFContentProviders as the lower layer of this architecture under the Android platform [6], but this has to be completed with mechanisms for the full integration of publicising available data, query transformation and semantic access control (and eventually negociation). The successful candidate is expected to consider these problems under their architectural, semantic, human, and social facets. We plan to develop such a system in cooperation with other teams in Europe.
Références:
[1] Pascal Hitzler, Markus Krötzsch, Sebastian Rudolph, Foundations of
semantic web technologies, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009
[2] Jérôme Euzenat, Pavel Shvaiko, Ontology
matching, Springer-Verlag, Heildelberg (DE), 2007
[3] Tudor Groza, Siegfried Handschuh, Knud Möeller, Gunnar
Grimnes, Leo Sauermann, Enrico Minack, Cedric Mesnage,
Mehdi Jazayeri, Gerald Reif, Rosa Gudjonsdotti, The Nepomuk
Project - On the way to the Social Semantic Desktop,
Proc. I-Semantics, pp201-211, 2007
[4] Sebastian Boehm, Johan Koolwaaij, Marko Luther, Betrand Souville, Matthias Wagner, Martin Wibbels, Introducing IYOUIT, Proc. 7th ISWC, Karlsruhe (DE), pp804-817, 2008
[5] Jérôme Euzenat, Philipp Cimiano, John Domingue, Siegfried Handschuh, Hannes Werthner, Personal infospheres, in: John Domingue, Dieter Fensel, James Hendler, Rudi Studer (eds), Proc. Dagstuhl seminar on Semantic web reflections and future directions, Wadern (DE), pp12-17, 2010
[6] Jérôme David, Jérôme Euzenat, Linked data from your pocket: The Android RDFContentProvider, in: Proc. 9th demonstration track on international semantic web conference (ISWC), Shanghai (CN), pp129-132, 2010 (see also http://swip.inrialpes.fr).
Please be sure to apply on INRIA online application system before May 4th, 2012 AND contact us
Qualification: Master or equivalent in computer science.
Researched skills:
Environnement: The doctoral work is to be carried out in the Exmo team, a reputed team within the semantic web research area and particularly on ontology matching. We are in contact with the most important teams in France and Europe on these topics.
Doctoral school: Doctoral school MSTII, Grenoble.
Advisor: Jérôme David (Jerome:David#inria:fr) & Jérôme Euzenat (Jerome:Euzenat#inria:fr)
Group: Exmo, INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes
Hiring date: October 2012.
Place of work: The position is located at INRIA Grenoble Rhône-Alpes, Montbonnot (near Grenoble, France) a main computer science research lab, in a stimulating research environment. Research will be carried out in the Exmo team under the supervision of Jérôme David and Jérôme Euzenat. It will require the involvement of the candidate in related projects.
Duration: 36 months
Salary: 1596 EUR/month net (including full health insurance and social benefits, 1957 EUR gross) upgraded to 1676 EUR/month the 3rd year.
Contact: For further information, contact Jerome:David#inria:fr.
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