1. 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008)
Semantic BBN
Mike Dean
Industry Track
7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008)
Karlsruhe, Germany
29 October 2008

2. Outline
History
Current efforts
Looking forward

3. Introduction to BBN
An advanced technology research and development firm, specializing in Information, Computer, and Physical Sciences
Known for technical excellence and challenging conventions to provide new and fundamentally better solutions to complex technical problems
Providing innovative, real-world solutions and satisfying our customers have been the keys to our success for 60 years
Staff of ~700 professionals
2/3 hold advanced degrees
Principal offices in Cambridge, MA and the Washington, DC area
DARPA is our biggest customer

4. History of Innovation 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 1950s
Acoustic Design for UN General Assembly Hall
AI Pattern Recognition
Program
1960s
1st Time Sharing Demonstration
LOGO Programming Language
ARPANET-First Multi-node Packet Switched Network
1970s
1st Person-to-Person Network
@ Sign for Addresses
Acoustic analysis of JFK Assassination Tapes
Analysis of Nixon Watergate Tapes
First Symmetric Multi-processor
First TCP for UNIX
1980s
1st Electronic Mail
Defense Data Network
National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET)
Natural Language Computer Interface
Intelligent Agents
SimNet
Collaboration Planning Technology
Cronus Distributed Computing Environment
1990s
Secure for DoD
Multi-Gigabit Router
DARPA Information Assurance
Broadband Wireless Technology
Genetic Algorithm Scheduling Tools
Collaborative Planning for Desert Storm
ATM Switch
40K Word Speech Recognition System
Logistics Anchor Desk deployed for Bosnia
Safekeyper Certificate Management
Certification Authority Workstation (CAW)
2000s
Call Director Natural Language Routing
Semantic Web – OWL, SWRL, OWL-S
Asio tools for Net-Centric Data Sharing and Enterprise Web Services
Microthunder Urban Environment Surveillance  System
Cognitive Agent Architecture - Cougaar
Boomerang Acoustic Shooter Detection System
Quantum Cryptographic Network
Early MIT spinoff.
Probably best known for our work on the ARPANET and early Internet.
When I started at BBN Cambridge in 1984, I’d often take visitors to see the Network Operation Center, which was running most of the Internet backbone at that time.

5. Core Technical Expertise
Data Mining and Knowledge Management
Semantic Web, Advanced Database Technologies, Audio Indexing, Information extraction from speech and text
Information Security
Computer and network system architecture, information operations, cyber situation awareness, red teaming
Speech Recognition and Natural Language Processing
Real-time, large vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition, Advanced speech-to-text systems, Audio monitoring and audio indexing, Speech-to-speech translation, Optical character recognition
Intelligent Systems
Genetic algorithms, Agent architectures, Cognitive systems
Advanced Networking
Wireless, ad hoc networks, High performance routers and encryptors, Satellite technology and security, Low power networks
Infrastructure Security
Large scale intelligent sensor networks, Unmanned surveillance
Physical Systems
Acoustic and seismic sensing and analysis systems and technologies
Real-Time Embedded Computing
High performance operational systems, Signal processing and analysis
We work across a wide range of fields, and have about 30 people working on Semantic Web-related projects

6. DAML
BBN was the Integration and Transition Contractor for the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program,
Coordinated the efforts of 25 research teams
Led the Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee, participated in W3C RDF Core and Web Ontology Working Groups
Developed a number of tools, data sets, and applications
Maintained daml.org and SemWebCentral.org
Many people in the Semantic Web community know us from our work on the DARPA Agent Markup Language program, which arguably catalyzed the Semantic Web.

7. SemWebCentral.org Open source software repository based on GForge
145 projects, 854 users
Still maintained at BBN
Hardware and software upgrade in progress
SemWebCentral remains very active.

8. R&D DAML was the first and last large US Semantic Web research program
The DARPA Director thought we were “done” once OWL became a W3C Recommendation
Smaller R&D efforts in other agencies
Several DARPA “seedling” projects
Our focus has shifted to applications using the Semantic Web (explicitly or not)
Government and commercial

9. Data Integration
Many of our applications focus on some aspect of data integration
Diverse databases, web services
Co-reference resolution among incomplete data sets
Which of 500 references to John Smith refer to the same person?
Combining structured and unstructured information (RDF encoding of natural language processing output)
Translation between ontologies using SWRL plays a key role in many of solutions

10. Semantic Query Decomposition (SQD)
AsioTM 1
Query: SPARQL
Snoggle
Query Result Set 6
Query
Decomposition 2
Semantic Query Decomposition (SQD)
Backwards
Rule Chaining 5
Generation of Sub Queries 3
Automapper
We’ve integrated the results of several of our research efforts into the Asio Semantic Web Toolkit. Asio is a genus of OWLs.
Semantic Bridge
Database
Semantic Bridge
Web Service
Semantic Bridge
SPARQL Endpoint 4
Data Access
RDBMS
SOAP/
REST WS
Parliament

11. Open Source Snoggle Parliament SWRL editor for ontology translation
Memory-mapped embedded triple store
Descended from DAML DB
More details in my SSWS 2008 talk
Will soon be released as open source on SemWebCentral

12. Geospatial Semantics Geospatial Semantic Web R&D program at NGA
Geospatial ontologies (including trade study)
Geospatial indexing of knowledge bases
Semantic annotation of georegistered imagery
Active participation in
Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCoP)
Terra Cognita workshop series
US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF)

13. Going Forward Growing business area
“Digital Whitewater” (information deluge)
Video annotation
Active and streaming content
Hope for resurgence in US Semantic Web R&D with the new administration

14. More Information asio.bbn.com snoggle.projects.semwebcentral.org
parliament.projects.semwebcentral.org