prof. dr. P.T.J.M. (Piek) Vossen

Office hours: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays: VU, Fridays at home.

Curriculum Vitae

External webpage: www.vossen.info

Research interests

Wordnets, Terminology, Computational Lexicon, Ontologies, Lexicon and Ontology Acquisition, Computational Linguistics, Language Technology and Computer-Applications. 

Teaching

General
Because of my Research Professorship I only teach one Master Course: (College Wordnets, College Ontologies, Colllege Kyoto): Theme Language Acquisition & Documentation: Multilingual Lexical Framing, MA, Faculty of Arts, VU University Amsterdam.

 PhD supervision

• fc: promotor of Agata Cybulska, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• fc: co-promotor Roxane Segers, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• fc: Promotor of Isa Maks, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• fc.: Promotor of Bertie Kaal, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• fc: Co-promotor of Francesco Ronzano, Pisa, Italy / Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• fc: Member of the PhD Committee of Marcel Thelen: " TCM, Terminology and Translation", Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• 2009: Member of the PhD Committee of Nicole Grégoire, Utrecht, the Netherlands, November 10, 2009.
• 2009: Member of the PhD Committee of Ismail Fahmi: "Automatic Term and Relation Extraction"", Groningen, May 14, 2009.
• 2009: Member of the PhD Committee of Willem Robert van Hage: "Evaluating Ontology-Alignment Techniques"", Amsterdam, January 19, 2009
• 2008: Member of the PhD Committee of Lonneke van der Plas,: "Automatic lexico-semantic acquisition for question answering"", Groningen, October 23, 2008
• 2008: Member of the PhD Committee of Ales Horac: "Computer Processing of Czech Syntax and Semantics", Masaryk, Czech Republic, September 10, 2008.
• 2003: Member of the PhD Committee of Frank Joosten, KU Leuven, October, 2003.
• 2002: Member of the PhD Committee of Anselmo Peñas, Dpto. Lenguajes y Sistemas Informáticos, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
• 1999: Member of the PhD Committee of Eneko Agirre, University of Bilbao.
• 1998: Member of the PhD Committee German Rigau, University Polytecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona.
• 1998: Member of the PhD Committee Henny van der Vliet, Faculty of Arts, Free University, Amsterdam.

Research

My research focuses on WordNets and Computational Lexicons, both within a single language but also from a multilingual perspective. I am interested in the relation between lexicons and ontologies, both from a theoretical point of view as well as from their usage in computer-applications in which meaning and interpretation play a role. I see the lexicon as a fundamental resource to anchor meaning and interpretation in useful computer behaviour. Computer behaviour can make use of communicative models and insights from communication science. The organization of the lexicon and the knowledge stored in it needs to take that usage as a starting point.

Current projects

• Kyoto, Coordinator of the International 7th Framework EC-project "Kyoto".
• Cornetto, Coordinator of the TaalUnie/Stevin-project "Cornetto".
• DutchSemCor, Coordinator of the NWO-project "DutchSemcor".
• From Text to Politics, Co-coordinator of the CAMeRA-project "From Text to Politics".
• Semantics of History, Co-coordinator of the CAMeRA-project "Semantics of History".
• Global WordNet Grid, Founder of the building of a complete free worldwide Global Wordnet Grid. This grid will be build around a shared set of concepts, such as the Common Base Concepts used in many wordnet projects. These concepts will be expressed in terms of Wordnet synsets and SUMO definitions. People from all language communities are invited to upload synsets from their language to the Grid. Gradually, the Grid will then be represented by all languages. The Grid will be available to everybody and will be distributed completely free.

Old projects

• EuroWordNet
• Cornetto
• Arabic Wordnet
• Meaning
• Euroterm
• BalkaNet
• Pidgin
• Sift
• Acquilex I & II
• Links

Publications

Forthcoming

• Vossen, P., C. Fellbaum, P. Bhattacharyya (Eds.)(fc.): "Proceedings of the Fifth Global WordNet Conference" (GWC2010), Mumbai, India, January 31-February 4, 2010.
• Vossen P., E. Agirre, F. Bond, W. Bosma, C. Fellbaum, A. Hicks, S. Hsieh, H. Isahara, Ch. Huang, K. Kanzaki, A. Marchetti, G. Rigau, F. Ronzano, R. Segers, M. Tesconi (fc.): "KYOTO: a Wiki for Establishing Semantic Interoperability for Knowledge Sharing across Languages and Cultures", in: Handbook of Research on Culturally-Aware Information Technology: Perspectives and Models. Ed. Dr. E. Blanchard (Mc Gill University Canada) and Dr. D. Allard (Dalhousie University), IGI Global USA.
• Vossen P. (fc.): "WordNet: principles, developments and applications", in: Handbook of Linguistics and Communications (HSK), volume Dictionaries, an International Encyclopedia of Lexicography, Supplementary volume: Recent developments with special focus on computational lexicography. Eds. R.H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard, H.E. Wiegand, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, Germany.

2009

• Vossen P., Fellbaum C. (in press): "Universals and Idiosyncracies in Multilingual WordNets", in: Handbook Multilingual Lexicography, Oxford University Press
• Vossen P., Hielkema F.: Search Engine Client, Research Report Deliverable 9.2, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), September 27, 2009, EU.
• W. Bosma, Vossen P., Soroa A., Rigau G., Tesconi M., Marchetti A., Monachini M., Aliprandi C: "KAF: a generic semantic annotation format", in: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon (GL 2009). Pisa, Italy, September 17-19, 2009.
• Aliprandi C., Neri F., Marchetti A., Ronzano F., Tesconi M., Soria C., Monachini M., Vossen P., Bosma W., Agirre E., Artola X., Diaz de Ilarraza A., Rigau G., Soroa A.: Database Models and Data Formats, Research Report Deliverable 2.1, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), July 6, 2009, EU.
• Agirre E., O. Lopez de Lacalle, Ch. Fellbaum, A. Marchetti, A. Toral, Vossen P.: "All-words Word Sense Disambiguation on a Specific Domain (SemEval-2010 Task 17), in: Proceedings of the workshop SEW-2009: Semantic Evaluations: Recent Achievements and Future Directions at the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics - Human Language Technologies (NAACL HLT 2009 conference, June 4, 2009, Boulder, Colorado, USA, p. 123-129, Ed. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), ISBN 978-1-932432-31-2.
• Vossen P., K. de Boom, L. Jones-Walters, A.Torre-Marín: "1st Kyoto Workshop", Deliverable 11.2, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), February 28, 2009, EU.
• Soria C., M. Monachini, P. Vossen: "Wordnet-LMf: fleshing out a standardized format for wordnet interoperability", in: Proceedings of IWIC2009, Stanford, USA, February 20-21, 2009, p. 139-146, Ed. ACM Press, New York, ISBN 978-1-60558-198-9.

2008

• Vossen P., E. Glaser: "Capture Module", Research Report Deliverable 3.1, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), December 24, 2008, EU.
• Fellbaum Ch., A. Hichs, L. Jones-Walters, A. Marchetti, G. Rigau, C. Soria, P. Vossen: "Accumulated Knowledge", Research Report Deliverable 6.1, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), December 24, 2008, EU.
• Vossen P., K.de Boom, A. Schrauwen: "User Scenarios", Research Report Deliverable 9.1, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), October 30, 2008, EU.
• Vossen P.: "Related but don’t supply: de automatische extractie van producttermen", paper in volume for Emeritus Prof.Dr. Willy Martin, October 25, 2008, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
• Vossen P., W. Bosma, A. Marchettti: "Overall System Design", Research Report Deliverable 2.2, Kyoto project (ICT-211423), September 29, 2008, EU
• Bosma W., Vossen P.: "Fact Annotation for KYOTO", Research Report Working Paper 2, TR006, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), September 16, 2008, EU.
• Vossen P.,: "Bellen met een pratende computer" on Gemeenteconnect, Vakpagina Taalwetenschappen, Kennislink. September 3, 2008, Stichting Nationaal Centrum voor Wetenschap en Technologie
• Aliprandi C., Marchettti A., C. Soria, P. Vossen, W. Bosma, E.Aggire, G. Rigau: "Database Models and Data Formats", Research Report Deliverable 2.1, Kyoto project (ICT-211423), August 31 2008, EU.
• Horák A., I. Maks, A. Rambousek, R. Segers, H. van der Vliet, P. Vossen: "Cornetto Tools and Methodology for Interlinking Lexical Units, Synsets and Ontology", in: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Linguists (CIL18), Seoul, Republic of Korea, July 21-26, 2008.
• Marchettti A., F, Ronzano, M. Tesconi, C. Soria, M. Monachini, P. Vossen, W. Bosma: "XML Schema for WordNet and Ontology", Research Report Deliverable 7.1, Kyoto project (ICT-211423), July 1, 2008, EU
• Pease A., C. Fellbaum, P. Vossen: "Building the Global WordNet Grid", in: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Linguists (CIL18), Seoul, Republic of Korea, July 21-26, 2008.
• Vossen P., W.Bosma: "The representation of Terms" , Research Report Working Paper 2, TR004, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), June 23, 2008, EU
• Vossen P.: "User Scenarios Wikyoto", Research Report Working Paper 2, TR001, Kyoto project (ICT-2114 23), June 19, 2008, EU.
• Fellbaum, C., Vossen, P.: "Challenges for a Global WordNet. In: Online Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Global Interoperability for Language Resources(ICGL 2008), City University of Hongkong, January 8-12, 2008, p. 75-82, online published by Ed. Webster J., N.Ide, A.Chengyu Fang.
• Horak A., P. Vossen, A. Rambousek: "A Distributed Database System for Developing Ontological and Lexical Resources in Harmony", in: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics: CICLing 2008, February 17-23, 2008, Haifa, Israel.
  Also published as a Lecture Notes in Computer Science Lectures Notes Volume 4919/2008 "Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing", p. 1-15, ISSN 0302-9743 (Print) 1611-3349 (Online), Ed. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-540-78134-9.
• Vossen P., E. Agirre, N. Calzolari, C. Fellbaum, S. Hsieh, C. Huang, H. Isahara, K. Kanzaki, A. Marchetti, M. Monachini, F. Neri, R. Raffaelli, G. Rigau, M. Tesconi: "KYOTO: A system for Mining, Structuring and Distributing Knowledge Across Languages and Cultures", in: Proceedings of LREC 2008, Marrakech, Morocco, May 28-30, 2008, Ed. European Language Resources Association (ELRA). ISBN 2-9517408-4-0
• Vossen P., Maks I., Segers R., Van der Vliet H.: "Integrating lexical units, synsets and ontology in the Cornetto Database", in: Proceedings of LREC 2008, Marrakech, Morocco, May 28-30 May 2008, Ed. European Language Resources Association (ELRA). ISBN 2-9517408-4-0.
• Maks I., P. Vossen, R. Segers, H. van der Vliet: "Adjectives in the Dutch semantic lexical database CORNETTO, in: Proceedings of LREC 2008, Marrakech, Morocco, May 28-30 May 2008, Ed. European Language Resources Association (ELRA), ISBN 2-9517408-4-0.
• Agirre E, Lopez de Lacalle O., Magnini B., Otegi A., Rigau G., Vossen P.: SemEval-2007 Task 01: Evaluating WSD on Cross-Language Information Retrieval", in: Lecture Note (LNCS Volume 5152/2008) in Computer Science "Advances in Multilingual and Multimodal Information Retrieval", p. 908-917, ISSN 0302-9743 (Print) 1611-3349 (Online), Ed. Springer Berlin/Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-540-85759-4.
• Elkateb. S., Black, W., Farwell, D., Rodroguez, H., Alkhalifa, M., Pease, A., Vossen, P., and Fellbaum, C.: "Challenges of Building an Arabic WordNet",in: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Language Engineering, Cairo, Egypt, March 27-28, 2008.
• Horak A., Vossen P., Rambousek A: "The Development of a Complex-Structured Lexicon based on WordNet", in: Proceedings of the Fourth International GlobalWordNet Conference - GWC 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25, 2008, p. 200-209., Proceedings Editors: A.Tanács, D.Csendes, V.Vincze, C.Fellbaum, P. Vossen, Publisher: University of Szeged, Department of Informatics, ISBN 978-963-482-854-9.
• Rodriguez H., D. Farwell, J. Farreres, M. Bertran, M. Alkhalifa, M. Marti, W. Black, S. Elkateb, J. Kirk, A. Pease, P. Vossen, C. Fellbaum: "Arabic WordNet: Current State and Future Extensions", in: Proceedings of the Fourth International GlobalWordNet Conference - GWC 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25, 2008, p. 387-406 Proceedings editors: A.Tanács, D.Csendes, V.Vincze, C. Fellbaum, P. Vossen, publisher: University of Szeged, Department of Informatics, ISBN 978-963-482-854-9.
• Vossen P., E.Agirre, N.Calzolari, C. Fellbaum, S.Hsieh, Ch. Huang, H. Isahara, K.Kanzaki, A.Marchetti, M.Monachini, F.Neri, R.Raffaelli, G.Rigau, M.Tesconi: "KYOTO: A System for Mining, Structuring, and Distributing Knowledge Across Languages and Cultures", in: Proceedings of the Fourth International GlobalWordNet Conference - GWC 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25, 2008, p. 474-485, Proceedings editors: A.Tanács, D.Csendes, V.Vincze, C. Fellbaum, P. Vossen, publisher: University of Szeged, Department of Informatics, ISBN 978-963-482-854-9.
• Vossen P., I.Maks, R.Segers, H. van der Vliet, H. van Zutphen: "The Cornetto Database: the architecture and alignment issues", in: Proceedingsof the Fourth International GlobalWordNet Conference - GWC 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25, 2008, p. 485-506., Proceedings editors: A.Tanács, D.Csendes, V.Vincze, C. Fellbaum, P. Vossen, publisher: University of Szeged, Department of Informatics, ISBN 978-963-482-854-9.
• Tanács A., D.Csendes, V. Vincze, Ch. Fellbaum, Vossen P. (editors): Proceedings of the Fourth International GlobalWordNet Conference - GWC 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25, 2008, p. 1-545, Publisher: University of Szeged, Department of Informatics, ISBN 978-963-482-854-9.
• Vossen, P.: Linguistic knowledge for more precision, richer answers and flexible systems", in Special Issue of Revue Francaise de Linguistique Appliquee (RFLA) on "Extraction d'Information: l'apport de la linguistique", Vol XIII 2008-1, June 2008, pp. 23-39, Ed. Revue Française de Linguistique appliquée, Paris, ISSN: 1386-1204.

Extensive list of publications

Professional activities

Memberships and Scientific Committees

• Co-Founder and Co-President of the Global WordNet Association.
• Member of the Advisory Board of the Taalbank (GTB) of the Institute of Dutch Lexicography (INL).
• Member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of CAMeRA: the Interfaculty research institute. The Scientific Advisory Board consists of prominent members from the four (i.e. Sociology, Computer Science, Clininal Psychology and Language & Communcation) participating faculties and research groups.
• Member of the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics LOT (Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap).
• Member of the committee for the Nederlandse TaalUnie to revise the Referentie Bestand Nederlands.
• Member of FLaReNet (Fostering Language Resources Network), 7th EU Framework Project.
• Member of the National Advisory Panel of CLARIN-NL.
• Member of the Research Committee STEVIN (Spraak-en Taaltechnologische Essentiële Voorzieningen In het Nederlands); a Flemish/Dutch research programm for the Dutch speech and language technology by SenterNovem in collaberation with the Nederlandse Taalunie, NWO, AWI, FWO en IWT.
• Member of the Program Committee of IMIX (Interactieve Multimodale Informatie Extractie), NWO.

Extensive list of Program Committees and Advisory Boards and Scientific Committees

Recent Invited Talks

• Invited Keynote Speaker on "Kyoto" at eLexicography in the 21st century: new challenges, new applications, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, October 22-24, 2009
• Invited Speaker on "Division of semantic labor over vocabulary and ontology layers", FLaReNet/SILT Workshop on Lexicon-Ontology Relationship in connection with GL 2009 - 5th International Conference on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon, Pisa, Italy, September 17-19, 2009.
• Presentation on "KAF: a generic semantic annotation format", 5th International Conference on Generative Approaches to the Lexicon (GL 2009). Pisa, Italy, September 17-19, 2009.
• Invited Keynote Speaker on "Kyoto" at the 25th Annual Conference of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing 2009 (SEPLN´09), San Sebastian, Spain, September 8-10, 2009
• Invited Speaker on "Kyoto" at EU-Japan ICT Cooperation Forum on ICT, Brussels, Belgium, July 2, 2009.
• Invited Speaker on "Kyoto" at the EU Information and Networking Event for the 5th Call (ICT FP7 SO 4.3) on Intelligent Information Management, Luxemburg, May 12, 2009
• Invited Keynote Speaker on "Kyoto" at the Asian Language Resource Summit (ALRS), Phuket, Thailand, March 20-21, 2009
• Guest Lecture "From WordNet to Global WordNet for language technology", Course Language Engineering Applications, Center for Computational Linguistics, University of Leuven, Belgium, February 26, 2009
• Presentation on "The Semantics of History", Seminar over Semantisch Netwerk Technologie, VU University Amsterdam, January 22, 2009

Extensive list of invited talks

Recent Conference Organization

• Co-Organizer of the SemEval-2010: 5th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations on Kyoto's subtask WSD17: All-words Word Sense Disambiguation on a Specific Domain
• Organizer of the 1st Workshop of Kyoto, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, February 2-3, 2009.
• Organizer of the Workshop on "Linguistic Studies of Ontology: From Lexical Semantics to Formal Ontologies and Back" at the 18th International Congress of Linguists (CIL18), Seoul, Republic of Korea, July 21-26, 2008.
• Organizer of the Ontolex workshop at LREC 2008, Marrakech, Turkey, May 31, 2008.
• Organizer of the DutchSemCor Workshop, Vrije University Amsterdam, May 16, 2008.
• Organizer of the workshop on L&TC WordNet Special Track :the development of new WordNets, related tools and WordNet applications in AI, during the 3rd Language & Technology Conference: Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for Computer Science and Linguistics, Poznan, Poland, October 5-7, 2007.
• Organizer of the workshop on Evaluating WSD on Cross-Language Information Retrieval on Sem-Eval 2007, the 4th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluations, during the ACL, Prague, Czech Republic, June 23-30, 2007.
• Organizer of the Cornetto workshop, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, June 7, 2007.
• Organizer of the the "African Languages WordNet Workshop/Training" for the Department African Languages of the University of South Africa, Unisa, Pretoria, South Africa, March 19-23, 2007.
• Organizer of the The First International Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration (IWIC 2007), Kyoto, Japan, January 25-26, 2007.
• Organizer of the Global Wordnet Conferences
  • 5th GWA Conference 2010, Mumbai, India, January 31 - February 4, 2010
  • 4th GWA Conference 2008, Szeged, Hungary, January 22-25,2008
  • 3rd GWA Conference 2006, Jeju Island, South Jeju (Seogwipo), Korea, January 22-26, 2006
  • 2nd GWA Conference 2004, Brno, Czech, 20-23 January 2004
  • 1st GWA Conference 2002, Mysore, India, 19-23 January 2002