FieldSites_LP

World Wide Web conference and other international Web conferences such as ISWC)

I will serve as an international volunteer at the World Wide Web conference in Montreal in April. The WWW conference, sponsored by the ACM, brings together key players to plan the future of the World Wide Web. This is the 25th anniversary conference, so some important people will be giving keynotes (Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of WWW, Peter Norvig, who works on Knowledge Representation at Google). At this conference, I will attend the keynotes, panels in the Semantic Web track, and workshops to observe what researchers are presenting and how debates play out. I will identify and interview researchers relevant to the research at this conference.

Tetherless World Constellation

The Tetherless World Constellation is a research constellation on the Rensselaer campus that focuses on developing innovations in Web and data infrastructure. TWC has been the center of several innovations in Semantic Web infrastructure, including ontology creation tools, linked data standards, and Schema.org contributions. Some of the earliest Semantic Web innovators direct the constellation. At this lab, I will interview Jim Hendler, Deborah McGuinness, John Erickson, and Peter Fox.

EPA Office of Information Analysis and Access

As part of the Office of Environmental Information, the EPA Office of Information Analysis and Access is in charge of ensuring public access to quality environmental data. This office develops several tools for public visualization of data, such as myEnvironment and a new cross-agency data analytics and visualization program. One of the projects they manage, the Toxic Release Inventory Program, served as a pilot for future linked data initiatives. I hope to interview Director, Arnold Layne and Deputy Director, Jeff Wells about how they see the Semantic Web changing data access and analysis for the EPA.

EPA Office of Information Collection

As part of the Office of Environmental Information, the EPA Office of Information Collection is in charge of the agency's data standards, management and information infrastructure. Specifically, they manage the System of Registries program - a program that provides users with automated services for accessing and manipulating EPA data. This project is spearheading the EPA's move towards Semantic Web information infrastructure.