Organisations

NEMO – Ontology & Conceptual Modeling Research Group

The Ontology & Conceptual Modeling Research Group NEMO (Núcleo de Estudos em Modelagem Conceitual e Ontologias) investigates the application of domain and foundational ontologies as well as ontology-based techniques in various aspects of conceptual modeling such as information modeling, enterprise modeling, agent-based systems and the Semantic Web.

Two scientific contributions that are at the core of NEMO’s research program are the foundational theory UFO (Unified Foundational Ontology) and the ontologically and cognitively well-founded conceptual modeling language OntoUML.

CORE – Conceptual and Cognitive Modeling Research Group

The objective of this group is to develop theoretical foundations and engineering tools for advancing a discipline that supports the representation of conceptualizations of reality (i.e., conceptual models) that are both: (i) ontologically and cognitively adequate and truthful to the phenomena being represented; (ii) pragmatic and efficient for supporting human as well as artificial agents in tasks such as domain learning and understanding, semantic interoperability, problem-solving and meaning negotiation.

Key Technologies:

• Description Logics and other Ontology Representation Languages
• Enterprise Architecture Approaches (e.g., Archimate, DEMO)
• Conceptual Modeling Languages (OntoUML, ORM)
• Foundational Ontologies (e.g., UFO, DOLCE)

BDI – Banco de Dados Inteligente

The Intelligent Databases Group (BDI) was established in 1993 at the Institute of Informatics, UFRGS, focusing on research and development of information systems with capacities of semantic representation and reasoning. Recently, the contribution of the group has been in Knowledge Enginering within the following topics:

• Conceptual modeling and
• Ontologies
• Visual knowledge
• Knowledge representation and reasoning
• Cognitive computing

Centre for Conceptual Modelling and Implementation

CCMi is a research group at FIT CTU in Prague focusing on applying conceptual modelling in business and software engineering. The activity of group consists of various courses for local students and supervising Master’s and Bachelor’s thesis, industry projects and intensive research of conceptual modelling (both process and structure – OntoUML, BORM, BPMN, DEMO, …) and programming languages. CASE tools (including OpenPonk) and many more interesting projects are being developed by members of this group.

Knowledge-based and Software Systems Group

Knowledge-based software systems (KBSS) group at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering (FEE), CTU in Prague focuses on basic and applied research in the field of formal ontology design, semantic web and linked data. The group has successfully disseminating its research results in the industry in the fields of aviation safety, urban planning, as well as legal domain. Main focus includes

• Formal Ontology Design (description logics, UFO, OntoUML)
• Semantic Web (RDF(S), OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, SPARQL-DL, Ontology comparison)
• Enterprise Information Systems (Enterprise Java, OO programming, UML, Web & mobile technologies)
• Linked Data & Open Data (Data Quality, Semantic Data Description)

Menthor

Menthor is a spin-off of the Ontology & Conceptual Modelling Research Group (NEMO) founded in 2015. The company’s mission is to bring to the market state-of-the-art ontology-based technologies to help customers overcome challenges related to information modelling and semantic interoperability.

Menthor maintains the Menthor Editor (a branch of the OLED editor), an open-source modelling tool for OntoUML. The editor aggregates a number of research results published in international conferences and journals, and supports a series of ontology engineering activities, including, design, verification, validation, verbalization and implementation.

SWOE – The Semantic Web and Ontological Engineering

The Semantic Web and Ontological Engineering (SWOE) group is an informal group within the Department of Information and Knowledge Engineering (KIZI), University of Economics, Prague. The group researches on ontology design patterns, ontology visualization, ontology matching, as well as on data modeling for linked (especially, government) data, and linked data mining. SWOE’s topic particularly relevant for OntoUML is PURO, an ontological background language that serves for sketching the knowledge structures that can be semi-automatically transformed to a skeleton of a lightweight OWL ontology.