International lecturers bolster MOSS09

A number of international guest lecturers once again joined the Meraka Ontologies Spring School of 2009 (MOSS09), an event hosted by the knowledge systems group (KSG) of the CSIR's Meraka Institute. One of them, Dr Anni-Yasmin Turhan of the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden), reported that her two-day lecturing stint on description logics (DL) had been a satisfying experience.

Turhan is a post-doc research and teaching fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science of TU Dresden. This was the first time that she lectured at MOSS, which she viewed as a unique teaching opportunity. "For the first time, I was called upon to teach course attendees who came from the ranks of both postgraduate students and lecturing staff," she noted. "It has been an exciting experience."

MOSS09 drew good attendance from South African universities. In response to the mixed class, Turhan adapted her course content on DL to lead her class from introductory to more advanced content. DLs can be defined as ontology languages, which are particularly useful in capturing information about categories of information (terminological knowledge). "A good understanding of DL is a great asset, as they offer powerful reasoning services that assist one in inferring new facts about what has already been captured in the ontologies," she confirmed.

Turhan's course included both technical content and a focus on applications and was split between morning and afternoon sessions. "The latter allowed me to introduce interactive learning," she explains. "Getting a student up to the whiteboard to do an exercise with the help of the rest of the class is a great way to accelerate learning in a short period of time." Her knowledgeable and encouraging teaching style ensured a good response from the class with all students being coaxed into participation.

She found the research done at KSG a good complement to that done at TU Dresden, "I am very interested in the range of applications that is explored here, which has strong overlaps with my own research. This may in future translate into further collaboration with KSG."

After she concluded her official duties at the Meraka Institute (she arrived at the beginning of September), she was able to enjoy a well-earned break down in KwaZulu-Natal, with only one official engagement at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "This is my fifth visit to South Africa," she revealed. "Each time I come, I enjoy the friendliness of the people I meet and the beauty of the country. I am also encouraged by the small but significant changes I have seen over the years."

The other international lecturers who participated in MOSS09 were Professor Diego Calvanese and Mariano Rodriguez Muro of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.