Curtin Sarawak Research Institute research fellow among distinguished speakers at KTW 2012

Miri – 2 October 2012 – Dr. Amandeep S. Sidhu, a research fellow from Curtin Sarawak Research Institute (CSRI) of Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak) and a pioneer in the development of protein ontology, was among the speakers at the Knowledge Technology Week 2012 (KTW 2012), a 5-day conference organised by Mimos Berhad in Kuching recently.

Dr. Sidhu presented a paper on ‘Designing Structured Vocabularies for Biomedicine’ during an Artificial Intelligence Special Session on ‘Semantic Technology Applications in Education’ held as part of KTW 2012.

The special session served as a platform for artificial intelligence and semantic technology research communities from around the world to share and exchange ideas and experiences.

In his presentation, Dr. Sidhu discussed the need for a biomedical information infrastructure framework with data integration capabilities at the core. According to him, this would ensure increased agility of stakeholders and organisations involved in exploiting biomedical data.

The presentation also introduced the attendees to the concepts of structured vocabulary, ontologies and semantic web tools; strategies and tools used to design biomedical vocabularies and ontologies from heterogeneous structured, semi-structured and unstructured data sources; submission and visualisation of the ontologies to NCBO BioPortal; and the do’s and don’ts of building biomedical vocabularies.

Billed as Asia Pacific’s largest artificial intelligence and semantic technology conference, KTW 2012 attracted hundreds of participants and renowned speakers from Europe, America and Asia. The conference was officiated by Sarawak Minister of Housing and Tourism Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg.

It was also attended by Mimos Chairperson Datuk Suriah Abd Rahman, Mimos President and Chief Executive Officer Datuk Abdul Wahab Abdullah, Mimos Chief Technology Officer Thillai Raj and KTW 2012 General Chair Dr. Dickson Lukose.

Professor Dieter Fensel from Semantic Technology Institute, University of Innsbruck, Austria; and Dr. Sheng-Chuan Wu from Franz Inc., USA were the event’s two keynote speakers.

Dr. Sidhu specialises in high-throughput computing, real-time data streams, semantic web, data management, bioinformatics and e-Health. His research work in the fields of bioinformatics, ontologies, data integration, data mining and cloud computing have resulted in over 50 publications that have been cited over 250 times to date.

For more information on CSRI, including its Early Career Development Fellowships, Senior Research Fellowships and Visiting Fellowships, visit its website at www.curtin.edu.my/csri/index.htm or call +60 85 443 939.

Research fellow at CSRI Dr. Amandeep S. Sidhu.