Combining Natural Language Processing with the Semantic Web for Competitive Intelligence

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

02:30 PM - 03:00 PM

Level:	Practical Experience
Location:	Franciscan A

Although Natural Language Processing and Semantic Web technologies are both “Semantic Technologies,” they are, in a way, opposites. NLP tools focus on unstructured information, such as long-form documents, emails, and web pages, while Semantic Web tools typically deal with more structured information on a much more granular level.

However, there are many important problems that span the two worlds of structured and unstructured information where the combination of NLP and Semantic Web tools is highly complementary. In fact, the flexibility of the Semantic Web’s data model is a particularly good fit for problems involving lots of unstructured information, making the combination particularly powerful.

This talk will present:
• A business case for combining NLP with Semantic Web technologies
• A high-level technical architecture combining the two families of technologies
• A real-world case study in Competitive Intelligence

While the case study presented will specifically be in the pharmaceutical industry, the talk will focus on the overall pattern of combining NLP and Semantic Web technologies, using Competitive Intelligence primarily for illustrative purposes.

Sean Martin has been on the leading edge of Internet technology innovation since the early nineties. His greatest strength has been the identification and pioneering of next-generation software & networking technologies and techniques. Prior to founding Cambridge Semantics, he spent fifteen years with IBM Corporation where he was a founder and the technology visionary for the IBM Advanced Internet Technology group. Sean invented and implemented both IBM's first Web application server and content-manager, WOM, along with its distributed Web application hosting environment, the Womplex. Sean led the invention and implementation of IBM's Sash Weblication Manager and played a key role in Sash, including IBM's first ever Web Service SOAP & XML-RPC client stacks and associated developer tooling. At IBM, Sean was honored with many awards including IBM's Outstanding Technical Innovation award, the Chairman's Award, the IBM Corporation International Star Award, IBM Europe's Technical Excellence