Finding Answers and Generating Explanations for Complex Biomedical Queries

Speaker:        Dr. Esra Erdem
                Sabanci University
                Turkey

Title:          "Finding Answers and Generating Explanations for
                 Complex Biomedical Queries"

Date:           Wednesday, 28 May 2014

Time:           11:00am - 12 noon

Venue:          Rm3530 (via lifts 25/26), HKUST

Abstract:

We present new methods to efficiently answer complex queries over
biomedical ontologies and databases conside ring the relevant parts of
these knowledge resources, and to generate shortest explanations to
justify these answers. Both algorithms rely on the high-level
representation and efficient solvers of Answer Set Programmin g. We apply
these algorithms to find answers and explanations to some complex queries
related to drug discove ry, over PHARMGKB, DRUGBANK, BIOGRID, CTD and
SIDER.

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Biography:

Esra Erdem is an associate professor in Computer Science and Engineering
at Sabanci University. She rece ived her Ph.D. in computer sciences at the
University of Texas at Austin (2002), and visited University of To ronto
and Vienna University of Technology for postdoctoral research (2002-2006).
Her research is in the area of artificial intelligence, in particular, the
mathematical foundations of knowledge representation and reaso ning, and
their applications to cognitive robotics and computational biology.