Lecturer: Michael Wurst, University of Dortmund Date: 30.07.2003

Abstract

In the recent years, powerful methods for domain specific search and Knowledge Management have been developed to support homogeneous expert communities. As will be argued, these methods are not always well suited in settings, in which experts from different domains work together. Such settings are becoming more and more popular, as the need for interdisciplinary cooperation grows.

The aim of the project Awake is to develop an experimental, agent-based platform, making it possible to explore and to compare different methods for knowledge sharing and information search in heterogeneous expert communities. We focus especially on the question of how to capture and to visualize implicit knowledge of individual users or user groups, as to make it accessible to others. The paradigm of agents is used on the one hand as a model for our approach, on the other hand it serves as the basis for the system architecture, making it easily extendable and modifiable.

About the lecturer

Michael Wurst has studied computer science and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart and at the Technical University in Prague, graduating with a thesis on Multi-Agent learning. Since 2001 he is a PhD Student at the Artificial Intelligence Unit at the University of Dortmund. His special interests are Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in the context of Collaborative Knowledge Management and Agent-based systems.