MIMOS-UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA SABAH CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE TO SUPPORT GROWTH OF SABAH DEVELOPMENT CORRIDOR

MIMOS-University Sabah Centre of Excellence to develop domain experts in Semantic Technology

KOTA KINABALU, SABAH, 27 APRIL 2009 ─ MIMOS recently launched its Centre of Excellence in Semantic Agents (CoE) in collaboration with Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) to support the growth and development of Sabah Development Corridor (SDC).

The CoE is designed to help develop local talents into domain experts in Semantic Technology particularly Semantic Multi-Agent Technology as part of MIMOS’ efforts to further build human capital competency for SDC in line with the country’s Knowledge-economy drive.
“There is huge potential for Semantic technology and we will soon see it coming out of MIMOS research labs and being applied in real business verticals. The penetration of Semantic Web technology in industries and in services, will accelerate once organisations begin to realise the potential for economic growth and well being,” said Dato’ Abdul Wahab Abdullah, President & CEO, MIMOS.

MIMOS is collaborating with UMS to develop:
· Semantic Agent Communication Language - agents communicate with each other in a multi-agent environment by using “Agent Communication Language”. Joint research between MIMOS and UMS will move the sophistication of this communication language from “syntax-level” to “semantic-level”.
· Semantic Agent Components - an agent is made up of many components. Different agent architecture is determined by different sets of interconnecting components. This joint research attempts to move the syntax based agent components to semantic based agent components, thus enabling the agent to perform knowledge level processing.
· Semantic Multi – Agent Platform – To accommodate Semantic Agents with semantic technology based components that utilizes Semantic Agent Communication Language to interact with each other, we are required to develop Semantic Technology Based Multi-Agent

“The establishment of the Centre of Excellence in Semantic Agent at UMS is a further demonstration of MIMOS’ efforts in empowering local universities as our virtual researchers towards growing globally competitive indigenous industries,” he said.

MIMOS’ ultimate aim is to ensure the global competitiveness of the indigenous information and communications technology (ICT) industry within SDC as well as the other four identified economic corridors namely Iskandar Malaysia in Johor, Northern Corridor Economic Region (NCER), East Coast Economic Region (ECER) and Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE).

“The research collaboration between UMS and MIMOS is a win-win partnership for both parties providing an opportunity for both parties to leverage in their respective expertise i.e. in the area of Semantic and Agent Technology. The setting up of this centre will open up more research opportunities not only for ICT researchers but also for other UMS researchers in the area of biotechnology, agriculture and biodiversity. I am confident this synergy will result in cutting edge technology and enabling UMS to achieve its vision to be an innovative University of global standing,” said UMS’s Vice Chancellor, Kol. Prof. Datuk Dr. Kamaruzaman Haji Ampon.

MIMOS Semantic Technology Platform
MIMOS has been in close collaboration with various local and foreign universities and organizations to drive the Semantic Technology industry for the nation in its efforts to ensure Malaysia is recognised as the first Web 3.0 society in the world.

Towards this end, MIMOS has also established a joint research lab at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and is specifically working with UNIMAS’ Faculty of Computing Science and Information Technology and the Faculty of Cognitive Science on Multimodal Understanding and Semantic Augmented Reality.

MIMOS partners in the area of Semantic include foreign universities and organizations such as German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Germany; KNOW-CENTRE, University Technology Graz, Austria; Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong; University Montpellier II, France; University of Calgary, Canada; Franz Inc., USA; Vivomind Inc., USA; and Knowledge Networks Inc, Australia.

In addition, MIMOS is a full member of Semantic Technology Institute International (STI - International) and a member of The World Wide Web (W3C) Advisory Committee.
Semantics is the study of meaning; while Semantic Technologies include software standards and methodologies that are aimed at providing more explicit meaning for the information at one’s disposal. Semantic technology enables computers to achieve a higher degree of ‘understanding’ the meaning of the information they process; thereby providing users with better opportunities to navigate through the vast amount of information and to find facts in unlimited volumes of documents, Internet resources and services. The Semantic Web allows publishing of structured data, the meaning of which is described and understandable by people and computers alike. In this way it is possible to publish and share databases in the same way as this is possible for texts today.