Final Report Summary - SIERA (Integrating Sina Institute into the European Research Area)
Executive Summary:
SIERA project aims to reinforce closer and sustainable scientific cooperation between Palestinian and EU scientists in the field of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. This ambitious goal was planned through well designed activities implemented by the consortium during the project lifetime. In particular, the project specific goals are:
I. Widening and revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute
II. Setting up joint research and cooperation with regional and EU institutes in the field of multilingual technologies.
III. Facilitating PhD students co-supervision
IV. Organizing joint summer courses
V. Building competency and facilitating the participation of BZU Sina Institute in EU funded projects
VI. Increasing the visibility and impact of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and international levels
These objectives are attained through integrating BZU Sina into the European Research Area. BZU Sina institute through SIERA activities has the chance to closely cooperate with four leading European research institutions that are pioneers in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing and have an excellent profile in research cooperation at the European and international levels. This collective expertise and scientific excellence were utilized in helping BZU Sina Institute to enhance its research cooperation capacity. Though the implemented activities the project consortium succeeded to:
1. Revise Sina’s R&D strategy, taking into account the national needs as well as regional and European needs in the field of multilingual knowledge sharing technologies.
2. Enhance the capacity of BZU professors in co-supervision cooperation. One PhD student currently conducting his studies under the co-supervision of UniMiB and BZU.
3. Encourage Sina researchers to co-author scientific articles. During the project lifetime more than seven articles were published including one co-authored paper.
4. Build the know-how and enhance Sina’s staff skills on proposal writing, and encourage BZU Sina researchers and the EU partners to formulate sound proposals. As a result of the close cooperation with the EU partners and the conducted workshops on proposal writing, Sina participated in writing two FP7 projects, one turned to be funded, and currently working on an additional Horizon 2020.
5. Establish a sustainable scientific collaboration between the partners, as well as to build a further research projects between other EU and Arab partners. In this regard, four EU knowledge sharing portals were Arabized. It should be noted that, among others, the partners succeed in establishing a mapping framework through which concepts across different languages (e.g. Arabic and English) can be interlinked.
6. Encourage Multilingual/Arabic technologies research and development in the region, and increase the visibility of BZU Sina Institute and create networking opportunities for the Arab and EU scientists to network among each other and with the international community. For instance, Sina members have organized and participated in several social and scientific national, regional and international events. To mention a few; two symposiums related to multilingual and Arabic technologies were organized at BZU, discussion panel was organized at GWC’14 conference at Estonia, in addition to organizing several workshops for proposal writing at BZU, involving many notable Palestinian academics and researchers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Knowledge sharing has become a key factor and enabler of successful and efficient communication across-cultures and societies. Several efforts, including the FP7 program, attempted to resolve the cultural diversity and language barriers thereby to enable sharing and consuming knowledge globally.
The wide objective of the SIERA project is to reinforce closer scientific cooperation between Palestinian and EU scientists - Sina Institute at Birzeit University and EU institutions - in the field of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies, an area in which all partners at the SIERA consortium have a proven record of research and excellence.
SIERA partners, through which the planned activities were performed, have set up joint activities that lead to sustainable scientific cooperation between the Palestinian partner and EU research institutions. The implemented activities include the organization of joint summer schools, the co-supervision of a PhD student, the setup of joint research cooperation, organizing national and international society-oriented/industrial events, and the participation in proposal writing, among others.
Moreover, SIERA aims at introducing the Arabic language and Arabic content into EU knowledge repositories and tools; in this way, collaboration will lead to the reciprocal facilitation of Arabic language resources in EU societies, and EU resources to Arab societies and markets. In addition to knowledge exchange and capacity building activities, concrete and long-term outputs of the project were established; particularly, home Arabic processing tools, lexical databases, and ontologies developed by BZU Sina have been enhanced and integrated within resources and tools developed by the EU partners (e.g. MICHAEL, KYOTO, OKKAM, and OrganicEduNet portals). These activities indeed helped in tuning and integrating the partners’ technologies, and helped in building Sina capacities and facilitate the exchange of knowledge among the partners and beyond.
In general, SIERA thematic and scientific scope of the project specific goals, can be summarized as follows:
1. Revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute to account for the needs of the Arab and EU societies in knowledge sharing technologies. This was carefully planned at first by selecting the consortium’s partners. UniMiB, among other partners, who is experienced in strategic planning, cooperated with Sina in achieving this goal. UniMiB’s eG4M, a well-defined methodology for strategic planning and implementation schemes, was applied to assess the Palestinian and EU society needs in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing, and to reform Sina’s R&D Strategy in view of this assessment in addition to specifying a long and short term implementation schemes.
2. Setting up joint research and cooperation among the partners and enhancing the cooperation capacity of BZU Sina. Setting up concrete joint research and cooperation in line with the thematic scope of SIERA - multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies, is completely attained by the collective scientific know-how, skills and tools of the consortium as a whole. The partners are experienced in lexical semantics, multilingual knowledge portals, and terminology management. For instance, UNL has developed many resources and tools including the OntoTerminology methodology and tools that have been adopted in many EU projects. In addition, several research projects are hosted by BBAW in the area of digital libraries, natural language processing, and computational linguistics. another important factor to consider is that, BBAW has an excellent profile in lexical databases specially through Prof. Christiane Fellbaum who has developed, through her engagement with Princeton University, the famous WordNet English Lexical Database. In the complementary, UNITN is a worldwide leader in the areas of Semantic Web, knowledge management, Entity identity management, and Linked Data and has developed the OKKAM Entity Name System for Entity management. UNIMIB has an outstanding profile in the area of Data and Information Quality and has developed data quality methodologies and tools, which will be used to control the quality of ontology mappings and the evolution of linked data. Integrating and tuning Sina resources with the resources of the European partners has its direct impact on enriching Sina know-how on the emerging research direction and proposal writing.
3. Facilitating co-supervision of PhD students, which is a concrete and sustainable venue of scientific cooperation between Birzeit University and the EU partner universities. This is guaranteed not only because the EU partners have an excellent profile in PhD students supervision, but also their individual professors as well as at institutionally levels, are quite familiar with co-supervising international PhD students, students exchange, and involving external co-supervisors. This has enhanced the capacity of BZU professors in co-supervision cooperation, especially with EU universities, as well as facilitate future joint diplomas. During the project the EU partners (UNL, UniMiB, and UniTN) signed memorandums of understanding for co-supervising PhD students. In particular, one PhD student is co-supervised by UniMiB and BZU.
4. Organizing joint summer courses to facilitate direct dissemination and exchange of knowledge. These courses will address topics related to computational linguistic and multilingual knowledge sharing issues and technologies. The target audience includes college students, PhD students, researchers, faculty members, and industry practitioners, and also such events serve as networking venues between participants. Two summer courses were organized at BZU during the project, the courses covered topics in multilingual information retrieval, multilingual ontology, terminology management, natural language processing, lexical semantics, Entity identity management and Linked Data, and semantic web.
5. Building competency and facilitating the participation of BZU Sina Institute in FP7 and Horizon 2020. The EU partners used their long and strong experience in EU Programs, know-how and skills in engineering, writing and managing FP7 proposals and projects to build the competency and facilitate the participation of BZU Sina Institute in FP7 research projects and future Framework Programs e.g. H2020.
6. Increasing the visibility and impact of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and international levels. SIERA has a set of planned activities that helped in facilitating and exposing Sina’s knowledge and resources to European and international research communities, as well as facilitating its participation in future EU projects. For instance Sina has participated in two FP7 proposals and currently preparing for a Horizon 2020 proposal, in addition to organizing with the partners international scientific events. Of course this was a fruit of engaging EU partners which are the top research centers in Europe especially in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing, with a world-wide network of researchers and project partnerships in the field.
Project Results:
SIERA project at the design level did not aim to conduct research; rather, the partners carried out preparatory activities which resulted at setting up joint research and future cooperation. However, through the implemented activities, the partners have achieved several scientific & technological results. More particularly, during the project, the following was realized:
1. The R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute was revised and extended, including a set of recommendations and implementation guidelines. Upon these guidelines and recommendations, Sina formed a roadmap for the R&D strategy. This was written as part of the deliverable D1.1 (Revised R&D strategy).
2. Four multilingual knowledge sharing portals (MICHAEL, KYOTO, OKKAM and OrganicEduNet) were localized to Arabic and Arabic content were also imported to the portals.
3. Cross language mapping framework was defined including a mapping algorithm. The framework was initiated in deliverable D2.1 (Intermediate report on research setup). A final and revised version of the framework was presented in deliverable D2.3 (Final report on research setup).
4. One co-authored article and more than six articles were published during the project. Details are provided in deliverable D2.4 (Report on co-authored articles).
5. Sina participated in writing two EU-FP7 funded projects. One called MOSAIC turned to be funded. In addition to the current preparations to submit a Horizon 2020 proposal, among other discussions for other Horizon 2020 consortia. The conducted activities while writing and collaborating with the MOSAIC and other consortia have enhanced Sina’s know-how in writing proposals. Moreover, such activities should encourage and support Sina to establish more research cooperation among the regional and EU partners and beyond. Details are provided in deliverables D3.1 (Report on proposal- preparation and submission) and D3.2 (Report on proposal-2 preparation and submission).
6. Sina and SIERA partners organized more than three scientific events in the computational linguistic and knowledge sharing domains. The second and the third Arabic symposium at BZU, and a discussion panel on the semantic of cross language mapping at GWC’14 conference. Deliverable D4.3 (Third report on dissemination activities) summarizes all the related activities which performed during the project.
7. Success Story: Developing and deploying a SMART multilingual Tourist Guide in Bethlehem. Based on the Arabization of the OKKAM platform, an innovative and pioneering electronic tourist guide in Bethlehem was developed and deployed in 10 heritage sites in the ancient city of Bethlehem. This was a result of successful and close cooperation of SIERA core and associate partners, as well as with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. While walking in the old city, tourists can scan a QR code with smartphones and automatically listen to an audio guidance in their own language, as well as watch video and read further descriptions, about a certain heritage site.
Moreover, details on the achieved S&T results are provided in the following sections:
1. Revised R&D strategy. (Deliverable D1.1)
WP1 aims to widen and revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute according to the needs of the regional and EU societies in the area of Arabic/multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. Accordingly an assessment of both society and local stakeholder needs (Task 1.1: Assess society needs) have been carried out to identify the relevant to final revised R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute (Task 1.2). The deliverable D1.1 has reported the implemented activities regarding: (i) the Society Needs Assessment, (ii) the Local stakeholder needs assessment , and (iii) the revised Sina R&D Strategy.
Regarding the society needs assessment study, challenges has been identified with regard to R&D and IT sector considering the Palestinian context; as for unemployment rate, fulltime employment, and the Palestinian contribution to global research and development (0.0035%). However, these figures represent also an opportunity for Sina Institute to build a research infrastructure, on one hand, promoting higher education and absorbing its graduate and post graduate as specialized workforce; on the other hand, acting as an innovation hub connecting Palestinian R&D expertise to European academic and related practitioners networks.
As for the Local stakeholder needs assessment study, among the identified priorities, a specific relevance has been associated to the need for a more cooperative atmosphere/environment when it comes to research and integrating technological solutions to societal problems. In order to be more effective in the undertaking of any research projects, a cooperative spirit must be present between the Sina Institute, and other universities or institutions focusing on the usage and promotion of the Arabic language in many different related matters, such as using solutions to assist in fields such as education, healthcare, research, social media, and so on. Moreover, the framework for assessing the local needs of the Palestinian market showed core items used in terms of goal setting to enhance the current landscape and build towards future expansion. To this end, the results have been further clustered in four dimensions, representing needs or challenges to be considered by the strategy of Sina Institute: innovation, knowledge based staff, awareness of global trends and technology, entrepreneurial spirit.
Regarding the revised strategy and action plan, it is worth noting the relevance of the potential contribution of the Palestinian women labor force to Sina activities. Considering their actual high rates of education, Palestinian women represent a significant asset for research and development activities. In addition to this, the high number of female entrepreneurs in Ramallah makes it an attractive target for cooperative efforts in addition to its proximity to Birzeit University and Sina Institute, not to mention the high rates of participation in services and education which further suggests an appropriate match to Sina's needs for more research and cooperation. Taking these issues into account and the priority areas resulting from a SWOT analysis, the subsequent action plan is comprised of four levels of analysis for the Sina Institute. The first level is the strategic objective, which is intended to implement and realize the vision of the Sina Institute. The second level is the annual objective, which enables the Sina Institute to achieve this strategic objective. The third level is the key performance indicator (KPI) to be used as a measurement instrument in achieving this annual objective. The fourth and final level is the target, which serves as the desired level of effort regarding the KPI.
(2) Extending multilingual knowledge sharing portals. (Deliverable D2.3)
The main scientific & technological results regarding this activity can be summarized in the following subtasks.
1. Arabization of MICHAEL: which is a thesaurus-oriented portal for the promotion and valorization of digital cultural content. This cultural heritage portal provides a multilingual service to explore digital collections from museums, archives, libraries, etc. Unfortunately, MICHAEL was not full Arabized, as the source code of MICHAEL portal was not available during the project, hence only some related tasks were carried out, such us partial translation of MICHAEL’s thesaurus. The project board decided to Arabize the two other portals: OKKAM and Organic.Edunet.
2. Arabization of KYOTO: which is an ontology-oriented wiki-portal in ecology and environment domain. Unlike other portals, KYOTO supports SPARQL queries over structured data and using a rich ontology. Thus, KYOTO ontology has been mapped to the top and core concepts of Arabic Ontology, which is the important step toward integration into the KYOTO architecture, and the potential to facilitate integration with large-scale knowledge bases such as DBPedia and GeoNames.
3. Arabization of OKKAM: which is an entity management system, and a spin off by UNITN. OKKAM was Arabized (its Interface, Ontology, content, an searching functionality) to facilitate the disambiguation and linkage of Arabic entities with different languages. The entities that were considered include people, organizations, products, places, and events. Such entities have different names (lexical labels) in different languages, which is a major challenge faced when integrating knowledge from different sources, cultures, and languages. SIERA partners have defined a set of activities in task that aim at resolving and linking Arabic entities with entities in multilingual portals to leverage the knowledge across such multilingualism and culture diversities that the portals support. In particular, resolving and linking Arabic entities to other Web entities across different languages through OKKAM ENS.
4. Arabization of Organic.Edunet which is a learning portal that provides access to thousands of quality multilingual digital learning resources on organic agriculture, agroecology and other green topics, such as ecology, sustainability, biodiversity, environment and energy. Organic.Lingua has been Arabized (its ontology, content, and searching and translation functionalities) to support Arabic search and retrieval.
5. Success Story: SMART Multilingual Tourist Guide in Bethlehem. Based on the Arabization of the OKKAM platform, an innovative and pioneering electronic tourist guide in Bethlehem was developed and deployed in 10 heritage sites in the ancient city of Bethlehem. This was a result of successful and close cooperation of SIERA core and associate partners, as well as with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. While walking in the old city, tourists can scan a QR code with smartphones and automatically listen to an audio guidance in their own language, as well as watch video and read further descriptions, about a certain heritage site. This idea had big impact on the media: it was covered by 35 newspapers and radio stations, as well as through social media. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities promised to expand this idea into more touristic and cultural places in Palestine.
(3) Mapping Framework Between Arabic Ontology and WordNet.(Deliverable D2.3)
The main objectives of the conducted activities in this task is to investigate a mapping framework that will be used in mapping concepts across different languages, in particular considering the scenario of mapping Arabic concepts to their equivalent English concept in WordNet. This mapping framework includes: the representation of the mappings, a theoretical interpretation of the meaning (semantic) of these mappings, and a description of a mapping algorithm and its components.
In this regard, to establish the mapping framework several activities were implemented by SIERA partners within the project lifetime. The first version of the mapping framework was initiated in the first phase of the project and introduced in the deliverable D.2.1. The aim of the deliverable D.2.1 was to investigate a mapping framework that will be used in Cross Language Ontology Matching (CLOM) area. In particular, the deliverable layouts the basis for one of the research activities that have to be set up within the SIERA project: the problem of creating (in a semi-automatic way) an Arabic Ontology mapped to WordNet. In the deliverable D.2.1 we defined our problem by:
● providing a broad definition of ontology that considers lexical (linguistic) ontologies,
● discussing the state-of- the-art in the CLOM area, and provide a comprehensive analytical comparison of the currently used ontology matching techniques, and
● introducing a classification-based mapping semantics for cross-language ontology mapping. Practically, we defined what is the semantics of a correspondence for CLOM, taking into account the lexicalization in the definition of the mapping.
In the second phase of the project, the partners continued their efforts to establish, at the greatest possible generality, a common framework that can be used in future work in the domain of cross-language ontology matching. Moreover, the main activities in the project lifetime and their results regarding this task can be summarized as follow:
● SIERA partners demonstrated their in-house tools in details during SIERA Kick-off Conference[1]. This was followed by several online discussions, emails, and meetings which were co-located with other SIERA events (e.g. lexical meetings in Trento[2], and the 7th GWC).
● The partners succeeded to establish and to define a mapping framework that map the Arabic Ontology to WordNet.
● Partners BZU, UniMiB, and BBAW have organized a discussion panel[3] on “Cross-Lingual Mapping Semantics” at the 7th GWC, in Tartu, Estonia in January 25th, 2014.
● A co-authored paper titled “Towards Building Lexical Ontology via Cross-Language Matching”[Abu Helou et al, 2014a] was presented at 7th GWC’14. The paper presents a classification-based mapping for cross-language ontology mapping, and defined an evaluation experimental for cross-language mapping semantics, through which a gold standard dataset can be constructed.
● A cross-language mapping algorithm was also defined. The algorithm semi-automates the mapping process; by providing the users with the most appropriate candidate mappings. The algorithm and a preliminary evaluation were presented in D2.3 as well as a co-authored paper submitted to OM’14 –ISWC’14[4].
[1]http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/featured-news/news-events/siera-kick-off-conference/.
[2]http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/featured-news/news-events/siera-wp2-meeting-in-trento-italy/.
[3]http://gwc2014.ut.ee/index.php?v=panel
[4]http://om2014.ontologymatching.org/
(4) Co-authoring scientific articles. (Deliverable D2.4)
Although no research activities are funded in the SIERA project, the results of the project were presented into several articles: one co-authored article were published as a joint research activities between BZU, UniMiB and BBAW, in addition six articles were presented in different conferences. Moreover, details are presented in D2.4
(5) Writing FP7 Proposals. (Deliverables D3.1 & D3.2)
As part of the SIERA project activities under WP3, Sina organized two workshops on proposal writing. The first proposal writing workshop was organized at BZU. More than Six insightful talks and long discussions were provided. During the workshop, prior successful experiences in writing EU (such as the Tempus program) and FP7 proposals and project management were showcased, FP7 guidelines, structure and terminology were explained, and key factors and successful tips regarding writing a competitive proposal were presented. Many topics were introduced and discussed, including how to write competitive proposals, especially FP7 proposals, the best practices and experiences in project management and proposal writing, in addition to funding programs, such as TEMPUS and others.
The second proposal writing workshop discussed the competencies required for a successful research project proposal, and introducing Horizon2020 as the new EU research framework program. The workshop was presented by highly experienced professionals in managing EU funded projects; Mr. Ruben Riestra from Spain, and Prof Paolo Bouquet, from the University of Trento Italy. The workshop also included a number of private consultation sessions for BZU staff, and an in-depth session for BZU Sina staff. The workshop sessions covered many topics of high importance regarding successful EU projects management. In addition to discussing BZU’s and Sina’s visions and strategies for Horizon2020. Finally, Mr. Riestra’s and Prof. Bouquet’s visit included several important meetings and discussions with potential stakeholders and partners for upcoming projects proposals and opportunities.
Furthermore, Sina Institute is currently working on a project proposal for Horizon 2020, in addition to the fulfilled task of submitting two FP7 projects (agriMUSE project and MOSAIC project) that were reported at D3.1. Details on the ongoing Horizon 2020 proposals can be found in the deliverable D3.2.
(6) Organizing Scientific Events. (Deliverable D4.3)
As a result of the implemented activities related to WP4 which are undertaken by the SIERA consortium can be summarized by the following points:
● Two summer courses were organized at BZU. The courses covered topics in multilingual information retrieval, multilingual ontology, natural language processing, lexical semantics, Entity identity management and Linked Data, and semantic web.
● The two workshop on proposal writing was organized in BZU.
● The 2ndand 3rd Palestinian Symposium on Computational Linguistics and Arabic Content was organized in BZU.
● A discussion panel on “cross-lingual mapping semantics” was organized at the 7th Global WordNet conference, in Tartu, Estonia.
● Two international workshops were organized: the 8th and 9th International Workshop on Ontology Content (OnToContent).
More details are provided in deliverable D4.3
Potential Impact:
The thematic scope of SIERA is in the domain of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. In this regards, both Arab and EU communities are showing a great interest at providing more concrete and efficient knowledge linking and sharing, which further attracts many researchers and research communities.
However, in spite of the remarkable efforts conducted by different research communities across the world, this domain still has many open-ended challenges, particularly, regarding linking knowledge expressed in different languages and across different cultures need more effort and strong collaboration across the different communities.
The Arabic language research community has multiple viable contributions in developing Arabic language repositories and tools to access and retrieve Arabic content. For instance, Sina Institute has build one of the largest lexical databases for the Arabic language, as part of the Arabic Ontology project. Consequently, reinforcing sustainable cooperation between the Arab and EU scientists is called for at this stage to integrate and extend Arab and EU research efforts in this scope. Hence, this project is expected to have a good impact and visibility at least at the Arab and EU levels. In this regards, several activities and actions have been implemented during the project to increase the visibility and enhance the cooperation capacity of BZU Sina. The following is a list of the activities that contributes towards the expected impacts listed in the work program:
WP1:Research Strategy:
Revising Sina’s R&D strategy considering the national, regional and European needs has not only reformed Sina’s research and aligned it with modern research trends in the field, but also has increased the institute's visibility at the international level. Especially when implementing the strategic recommendations and guidelines, details are provided in deliverable D1.1.
WP2:Research Strategy:
1. PhD co-supervision has a direct impact and is one of the most concrete and sustainable venues of scientific cooperation between Birzeit University and other EU partners. Through SIERA project one PhD student has been co-supervised by BZU and UniMiB. As a result of this supervision several future research directions have been defined, details are provided in deliverable D2.3.
2. Encouraging partners to co-author scientific articles from ideas that may emerge through their interactions and visits is a direct scientific impact as it increases the visibility of the partners cooperation. For instance, a co-authored paper which presents a cross-language mapping framework was presented in GWC’14. This paper also demonstrate the impact of supervising PhD student, as this paper was a result of the co-supervised PhD research activities. Details are provided in deliverable D2.4.
3. Setting a sustainable scientific collaboration between SIERA partners while tuning and integrating the resources and tools necessary to enable Arab-EU knowledge sharing. This has a great impact in enforcing and setting up a sustainable scientific collaboration between the partners. Moreover this will facilitate exchanging knowledge, know-how, and enhancing the scientific cooperation capacity of Sina, as well as facilitating further research projects between other EU and Arab partners. This indeed was achieved through the project while tuning and integrating the resources and tools necessary that will enable Arab-EU knowledge sharing. This include among the expected impact of the conducted research setup: (i) an extension of the mapping between WordNet and Arabic Ontology, using the established mapping framework, is expected to be used in many multilingual applications. (ii) exchanging knowledge and know-how and tuning BZU Sina’s tools to support Arabic Entity Resolution will be exposed to further research and cooperation in an ongoing initiative to use OKKAM Entity management system, where Arabic content will be used.
WP3:Capacity Building in FP7
1. Enhancing the cooperation capacity of Palestinian researchers in general and BZU Sina staff, also to sustain the scientific cooperation between the partners and ensure Sina’s continued engagement in credible and high profile scientific activities with diverse partners.
2. Preparing FP7 proposals. The idea of having “FP7 proposal preparation” as a separate task (and having two proposals as a deliverable) is intended not only to build the capacity and facilitate BZU Sina’s participation in FP7, but also to sustain the scientific cooperation between the partners and ensure Sina’s continued engagement in credible and high profile scientific activities with diverse partners.
3. Preparation for the new EU funding program, Horizon 2020, in an effort to engage with the new calls smoothly, Sina Institute worked on multiple levels to engage Sina Instiute, BZU, and the local Palestinian researchers and academics to the new program. In addition to dedicating the second proposal writing workshop to the new details affiliated to Horizon 2020 specifically. These preparations paid off, where Sina is currently preparing a Horizon 2020 proposal, among a few other consortia discussions. More details on the preparations can be found at D3.2.
WP4:Dissemination and Exchange of Knowledge
To further disseminate knowledge and increase visibility and impact, several activities and actions were implemented during the project. This include:
1. The organization of two summer courses on topics related to multilingual knowledge sharing at Birzeit University. This increased the level of the dissemination and exchanging of knowledge, and more importantly, this activity create excellent networking opportunities and forums to contemplate new ideas. The audience of these courses include college students, faculty members, researchers, and industry practitioners.
2. Organizing society-oriented/ industrial conference has a great impact on sharing and disseminating knowledge, networking with industry, enabling cooperation opportunities, increasing the visibility of Sina Institute and its socioeconomic and socio-cultural impact at the regional and EU levels. Sina has organized during the project the Arabic symposium for two consecutive years.
3. Organizing International Scientific Conference directly contributes in disseminating knowledge, networking with the research community, enabling cooperation opportunities, and increasing the visibility of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and EU levels. For instance, Sina has organized with SIERA partners a discussion panel at GWC’14 conference in Estonia. The Panel discussed topic related to cross-language mapping and present Sina developments in the field.
4. Distributing leaflets and posters in addition to developing a dynamic website were also implemented in SIERA. This activates have a great contribution in publishing and disseminating the project’s results and events, and would grab the attention of the society on the project objectives and partners. This was conducted in conjunction with other publicity in highly accessible local venues, which Sina members participated in, to increase the reach and solicit more interest and involvement.
Moreover, SIERA has also engaged number of associate partners. SIERA partners together with the associate partners were involved in providing or uptaking knowledge which not only helped in increasing visibility and impact, but also facilitating networking opportunities at the regional and international levels.
It is worth noting that SIERA was planned to run over a period of three years was intended for creating a higher impact. This has enabled long-term collaboration among the partners; by providing the partners with more time to reach more possibilities for further collaboration, as well as helping them in networking and disseminating knowledge at wider levels.
List of Websites:
Project Website:
● http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/
Contact Information:
● Sina Institute, Birzeit University, P.O. Box 14-Birzeit, Palestine.
● Tel:+970(0)2982917
● Fax:+970(0)2982935
Coordinator: Dr. Mustafa Jarrar, mjarrar@birzeit.edu
SIERA project aims to reinforce closer and sustainable scientific cooperation between Palestinian and EU scientists in the field of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. This ambitious goal was planned through well designed activities implemented by the consortium during the project lifetime. In particular, the project specific goals are:
I. Widening and revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute
II. Setting up joint research and cooperation with regional and EU institutes in the field of multilingual technologies.
III. Facilitating PhD students co-supervision
IV. Organizing joint summer courses
V. Building competency and facilitating the participation of BZU Sina Institute in EU funded projects
VI. Increasing the visibility and impact of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and international levels
These objectives are attained through integrating BZU Sina into the European Research Area. BZU Sina institute through SIERA activities has the chance to closely cooperate with four leading European research institutions that are pioneers in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing and have an excellent profile in research cooperation at the European and international levels. This collective expertise and scientific excellence were utilized in helping BZU Sina Institute to enhance its research cooperation capacity. Though the implemented activities the project consortium succeeded to:
1. Revise Sina’s R&D strategy, taking into account the national needs as well as regional and European needs in the field of multilingual knowledge sharing technologies.
2. Enhance the capacity of BZU professors in co-supervision cooperation. One PhD student currently conducting his studies under the co-supervision of UniMiB and BZU.
3. Encourage Sina researchers to co-author scientific articles. During the project lifetime more than seven articles were published including one co-authored paper.
4. Build the know-how and enhance Sina’s staff skills on proposal writing, and encourage BZU Sina researchers and the EU partners to formulate sound proposals. As a result of the close cooperation with the EU partners and the conducted workshops on proposal writing, Sina participated in writing two FP7 projects, one turned to be funded, and currently working on an additional Horizon 2020.
5. Establish a sustainable scientific collaboration between the partners, as well as to build a further research projects between other EU and Arab partners. In this regard, four EU knowledge sharing portals were Arabized. It should be noted that, among others, the partners succeed in establishing a mapping framework through which concepts across different languages (e.g. Arabic and English) can be interlinked.
6. Encourage Multilingual/Arabic technologies research and development in the region, and increase the visibility of BZU Sina Institute and create networking opportunities for the Arab and EU scientists to network among each other and with the international community. For instance, Sina members have organized and participated in several social and scientific national, regional and international events. To mention a few; two symposiums related to multilingual and Arabic technologies were organized at BZU, discussion panel was organized at GWC’14 conference at Estonia, in addition to organizing several workshops for proposal writing at BZU, involving many notable Palestinian academics and researchers.
Project Context and Objectives:
Knowledge sharing has become a key factor and enabler of successful and efficient communication across-cultures and societies. Several efforts, including the FP7 program, attempted to resolve the cultural diversity and language barriers thereby to enable sharing and consuming knowledge globally.
The wide objective of the SIERA project is to reinforce closer scientific cooperation between Palestinian and EU scientists - Sina Institute at Birzeit University and EU institutions - in the field of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies, an area in which all partners at the SIERA consortium have a proven record of research and excellence.
SIERA partners, through which the planned activities were performed, have set up joint activities that lead to sustainable scientific cooperation between the Palestinian partner and EU research institutions. The implemented activities include the organization of joint summer schools, the co-supervision of a PhD student, the setup of joint research cooperation, organizing national and international society-oriented/industrial events, and the participation in proposal writing, among others.
Moreover, SIERA aims at introducing the Arabic language and Arabic content into EU knowledge repositories and tools; in this way, collaboration will lead to the reciprocal facilitation of Arabic language resources in EU societies, and EU resources to Arab societies and markets. In addition to knowledge exchange and capacity building activities, concrete and long-term outputs of the project were established; particularly, home Arabic processing tools, lexical databases, and ontologies developed by BZU Sina have been enhanced and integrated within resources and tools developed by the EU partners (e.g. MICHAEL, KYOTO, OKKAM, and OrganicEduNet portals). These activities indeed helped in tuning and integrating the partners’ technologies, and helped in building Sina capacities and facilitate the exchange of knowledge among the partners and beyond.
In general, SIERA thematic and scientific scope of the project specific goals, can be summarized as follows:
1. Revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute to account for the needs of the Arab and EU societies in knowledge sharing technologies. This was carefully planned at first by selecting the consortium’s partners. UniMiB, among other partners, who is experienced in strategic planning, cooperated with Sina in achieving this goal. UniMiB’s eG4M, a well-defined methodology for strategic planning and implementation schemes, was applied to assess the Palestinian and EU society needs in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing, and to reform Sina’s R&D Strategy in view of this assessment in addition to specifying a long and short term implementation schemes.
2. Setting up joint research and cooperation among the partners and enhancing the cooperation capacity of BZU Sina. Setting up concrete joint research and cooperation in line with the thematic scope of SIERA - multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies, is completely attained by the collective scientific know-how, skills and tools of the consortium as a whole. The partners are experienced in lexical semantics, multilingual knowledge portals, and terminology management. For instance, UNL has developed many resources and tools including the OntoTerminology methodology and tools that have been adopted in many EU projects. In addition, several research projects are hosted by BBAW in the area of digital libraries, natural language processing, and computational linguistics. another important factor to consider is that, BBAW has an excellent profile in lexical databases specially through Prof. Christiane Fellbaum who has developed, through her engagement with Princeton University, the famous WordNet English Lexical Database. In the complementary, UNITN is a worldwide leader in the areas of Semantic Web, knowledge management, Entity identity management, and Linked Data and has developed the OKKAM Entity Name System for Entity management. UNIMIB has an outstanding profile in the area of Data and Information Quality and has developed data quality methodologies and tools, which will be used to control the quality of ontology mappings and the evolution of linked data. Integrating and tuning Sina resources with the resources of the European partners has its direct impact on enriching Sina know-how on the emerging research direction and proposal writing.
3. Facilitating co-supervision of PhD students, which is a concrete and sustainable venue of scientific cooperation between Birzeit University and the EU partner universities. This is guaranteed not only because the EU partners have an excellent profile in PhD students supervision, but also their individual professors as well as at institutionally levels, are quite familiar with co-supervising international PhD students, students exchange, and involving external co-supervisors. This has enhanced the capacity of BZU professors in co-supervision cooperation, especially with EU universities, as well as facilitate future joint diplomas. During the project the EU partners (UNL, UniMiB, and UniTN) signed memorandums of understanding for co-supervising PhD students. In particular, one PhD student is co-supervised by UniMiB and BZU.
4. Organizing joint summer courses to facilitate direct dissemination and exchange of knowledge. These courses will address topics related to computational linguistic and multilingual knowledge sharing issues and technologies. The target audience includes college students, PhD students, researchers, faculty members, and industry practitioners, and also such events serve as networking venues between participants. Two summer courses were organized at BZU during the project, the courses covered topics in multilingual information retrieval, multilingual ontology, terminology management, natural language processing, lexical semantics, Entity identity management and Linked Data, and semantic web.
5. Building competency and facilitating the participation of BZU Sina Institute in FP7 and Horizon 2020. The EU partners used their long and strong experience in EU Programs, know-how and skills in engineering, writing and managing FP7 proposals and projects to build the competency and facilitate the participation of BZU Sina Institute in FP7 research projects and future Framework Programs e.g. H2020.
6. Increasing the visibility and impact of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and international levels. SIERA has a set of planned activities that helped in facilitating and exposing Sina’s knowledge and resources to European and international research communities, as well as facilitating its participation in future EU projects. For instance Sina has participated in two FP7 proposals and currently preparing for a Horizon 2020 proposal, in addition to organizing with the partners international scientific events. Of course this was a fruit of engaging EU partners which are the top research centers in Europe especially in the area of multilingual knowledge sharing, with a world-wide network of researchers and project partnerships in the field.
Project Results:
SIERA project at the design level did not aim to conduct research; rather, the partners carried out preparatory activities which resulted at setting up joint research and future cooperation. However, through the implemented activities, the partners have achieved several scientific & technological results. More particularly, during the project, the following was realized:
1. The R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute was revised and extended, including a set of recommendations and implementation guidelines. Upon these guidelines and recommendations, Sina formed a roadmap for the R&D strategy. This was written as part of the deliverable D1.1 (Revised R&D strategy).
2. Four multilingual knowledge sharing portals (MICHAEL, KYOTO, OKKAM and OrganicEduNet) were localized to Arabic and Arabic content were also imported to the portals.
3. Cross language mapping framework was defined including a mapping algorithm. The framework was initiated in deliverable D2.1 (Intermediate report on research setup). A final and revised version of the framework was presented in deliverable D2.3 (Final report on research setup).
4. One co-authored article and more than six articles were published during the project. Details are provided in deliverable D2.4 (Report on co-authored articles).
5. Sina participated in writing two EU-FP7 funded projects. One called MOSAIC turned to be funded. In addition to the current preparations to submit a Horizon 2020 proposal, among other discussions for other Horizon 2020 consortia. The conducted activities while writing and collaborating with the MOSAIC and other consortia have enhanced Sina’s know-how in writing proposals. Moreover, such activities should encourage and support Sina to establish more research cooperation among the regional and EU partners and beyond. Details are provided in deliverables D3.1 (Report on proposal- preparation and submission) and D3.2 (Report on proposal-2 preparation and submission).
6. Sina and SIERA partners organized more than three scientific events in the computational linguistic and knowledge sharing domains. The second and the third Arabic symposium at BZU, and a discussion panel on the semantic of cross language mapping at GWC’14 conference. Deliverable D4.3 (Third report on dissemination activities) summarizes all the related activities which performed during the project.
7. Success Story: Developing and deploying a SMART multilingual Tourist Guide in Bethlehem. Based on the Arabization of the OKKAM platform, an innovative and pioneering electronic tourist guide in Bethlehem was developed and deployed in 10 heritage sites in the ancient city of Bethlehem. This was a result of successful and close cooperation of SIERA core and associate partners, as well as with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. While walking in the old city, tourists can scan a QR code with smartphones and automatically listen to an audio guidance in their own language, as well as watch video and read further descriptions, about a certain heritage site.
Moreover, details on the achieved S&T results are provided in the following sections:
1. Revised R&D strategy. (Deliverable D1.1)
WP1 aims to widen and revise the R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute according to the needs of the regional and EU societies in the area of Arabic/multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. Accordingly an assessment of both society and local stakeholder needs (Task 1.1: Assess society needs) have been carried out to identify the relevant to final revised R&D strategy of BZU Sina Institute (Task 1.2). The deliverable D1.1 has reported the implemented activities regarding: (i) the Society Needs Assessment, (ii) the Local stakeholder needs assessment , and (iii) the revised Sina R&D Strategy.
Regarding the society needs assessment study, challenges has been identified with regard to R&D and IT sector considering the Palestinian context; as for unemployment rate, fulltime employment, and the Palestinian contribution to global research and development (0.0035%). However, these figures represent also an opportunity for Sina Institute to build a research infrastructure, on one hand, promoting higher education and absorbing its graduate and post graduate as specialized workforce; on the other hand, acting as an innovation hub connecting Palestinian R&D expertise to European academic and related practitioners networks.
As for the Local stakeholder needs assessment study, among the identified priorities, a specific relevance has been associated to the need for a more cooperative atmosphere/environment when it comes to research and integrating technological solutions to societal problems. In order to be more effective in the undertaking of any research projects, a cooperative spirit must be present between the Sina Institute, and other universities or institutions focusing on the usage and promotion of the Arabic language in many different related matters, such as using solutions to assist in fields such as education, healthcare, research, social media, and so on. Moreover, the framework for assessing the local needs of the Palestinian market showed core items used in terms of goal setting to enhance the current landscape and build towards future expansion. To this end, the results have been further clustered in four dimensions, representing needs or challenges to be considered by the strategy of Sina Institute: innovation, knowledge based staff, awareness of global trends and technology, entrepreneurial spirit.
Regarding the revised strategy and action plan, it is worth noting the relevance of the potential contribution of the Palestinian women labor force to Sina activities. Considering their actual high rates of education, Palestinian women represent a significant asset for research and development activities. In addition to this, the high number of female entrepreneurs in Ramallah makes it an attractive target for cooperative efforts in addition to its proximity to Birzeit University and Sina Institute, not to mention the high rates of participation in services and education which further suggests an appropriate match to Sina's needs for more research and cooperation. Taking these issues into account and the priority areas resulting from a SWOT analysis, the subsequent action plan is comprised of four levels of analysis for the Sina Institute. The first level is the strategic objective, which is intended to implement and realize the vision of the Sina Institute. The second level is the annual objective, which enables the Sina Institute to achieve this strategic objective. The third level is the key performance indicator (KPI) to be used as a measurement instrument in achieving this annual objective. The fourth and final level is the target, which serves as the desired level of effort regarding the KPI.
(2) Extending multilingual knowledge sharing portals. (Deliverable D2.3)
The main scientific & technological results regarding this activity can be summarized in the following subtasks.
1. Arabization of MICHAEL: which is a thesaurus-oriented portal for the promotion and valorization of digital cultural content. This cultural heritage portal provides a multilingual service to explore digital collections from museums, archives, libraries, etc. Unfortunately, MICHAEL was not full Arabized, as the source code of MICHAEL portal was not available during the project, hence only some related tasks were carried out, such us partial translation of MICHAEL’s thesaurus. The project board decided to Arabize the two other portals: OKKAM and Organic.Edunet.
2. Arabization of KYOTO: which is an ontology-oriented wiki-portal in ecology and environment domain. Unlike other portals, KYOTO supports SPARQL queries over structured data and using a rich ontology. Thus, KYOTO ontology has been mapped to the top and core concepts of Arabic Ontology, which is the important step toward integration into the KYOTO architecture, and the potential to facilitate integration with large-scale knowledge bases such as DBPedia and GeoNames.
3. Arabization of OKKAM: which is an entity management system, and a spin off by UNITN. OKKAM was Arabized (its Interface, Ontology, content, an searching functionality) to facilitate the disambiguation and linkage of Arabic entities with different languages. The entities that were considered include people, organizations, products, places, and events. Such entities have different names (lexical labels) in different languages, which is a major challenge faced when integrating knowledge from different sources, cultures, and languages. SIERA partners have defined a set of activities in task that aim at resolving and linking Arabic entities with entities in multilingual portals to leverage the knowledge across such multilingualism and culture diversities that the portals support. In particular, resolving and linking Arabic entities to other Web entities across different languages through OKKAM ENS.
4. Arabization of Organic.Edunet which is a learning portal that provides access to thousands of quality multilingual digital learning resources on organic agriculture, agroecology and other green topics, such as ecology, sustainability, biodiversity, environment and energy. Organic.Lingua has been Arabized (its ontology, content, and searching and translation functionalities) to support Arabic search and retrieval.
5. Success Story: SMART Multilingual Tourist Guide in Bethlehem. Based on the Arabization of the OKKAM platform, an innovative and pioneering electronic tourist guide in Bethlehem was developed and deployed in 10 heritage sites in the ancient city of Bethlehem. This was a result of successful and close cooperation of SIERA core and associate partners, as well as with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. While walking in the old city, tourists can scan a QR code with smartphones and automatically listen to an audio guidance in their own language, as well as watch video and read further descriptions, about a certain heritage site. This idea had big impact on the media: it was covered by 35 newspapers and radio stations, as well as through social media. The Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities promised to expand this idea into more touristic and cultural places in Palestine.
(3) Mapping Framework Between Arabic Ontology and WordNet.(Deliverable D2.3)
The main objectives of the conducted activities in this task is to investigate a mapping framework that will be used in mapping concepts across different languages, in particular considering the scenario of mapping Arabic concepts to their equivalent English concept in WordNet. This mapping framework includes: the representation of the mappings, a theoretical interpretation of the meaning (semantic) of these mappings, and a description of a mapping algorithm and its components.
In this regard, to establish the mapping framework several activities were implemented by SIERA partners within the project lifetime. The first version of the mapping framework was initiated in the first phase of the project and introduced in the deliverable D.2.1. The aim of the deliverable D.2.1 was to investigate a mapping framework that will be used in Cross Language Ontology Matching (CLOM) area. In particular, the deliverable layouts the basis for one of the research activities that have to be set up within the SIERA project: the problem of creating (in a semi-automatic way) an Arabic Ontology mapped to WordNet. In the deliverable D.2.1 we defined our problem by:
● providing a broad definition of ontology that considers lexical (linguistic) ontologies,
● discussing the state-of- the-art in the CLOM area, and provide a comprehensive analytical comparison of the currently used ontology matching techniques, and
● introducing a classification-based mapping semantics for cross-language ontology mapping. Practically, we defined what is the semantics of a correspondence for CLOM, taking into account the lexicalization in the definition of the mapping.
In the second phase of the project, the partners continued their efforts to establish, at the greatest possible generality, a common framework that can be used in future work in the domain of cross-language ontology matching. Moreover, the main activities in the project lifetime and their results regarding this task can be summarized as follow:
● SIERA partners demonstrated their in-house tools in details during SIERA Kick-off Conference[1]. This was followed by several online discussions, emails, and meetings which were co-located with other SIERA events (e.g. lexical meetings in Trento[2], and the 7th GWC).
● The partners succeeded to establish and to define a mapping framework that map the Arabic Ontology to WordNet.
● Partners BZU, UniMiB, and BBAW have organized a discussion panel[3] on “Cross-Lingual Mapping Semantics” at the 7th GWC, in Tartu, Estonia in January 25th, 2014.
● A co-authored paper titled “Towards Building Lexical Ontology via Cross-Language Matching”[Abu Helou et al, 2014a] was presented at 7th GWC’14. The paper presents a classification-based mapping for cross-language ontology mapping, and defined an evaluation experimental for cross-language mapping semantics, through which a gold standard dataset can be constructed.
● A cross-language mapping algorithm was also defined. The algorithm semi-automates the mapping process; by providing the users with the most appropriate candidate mappings. The algorithm and a preliminary evaluation were presented in D2.3 as well as a co-authored paper submitted to OM’14 –ISWC’14[4].
[1]http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/featured-news/news-events/siera-kick-off-conference/.
[2]http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/featured-news/news-events/siera-wp2-meeting-in-trento-italy/.
[3]http://gwc2014.ut.ee/index.php?v=panel
[4]http://om2014.ontologymatching.org/
(4) Co-authoring scientific articles. (Deliverable D2.4)
Although no research activities are funded in the SIERA project, the results of the project were presented into several articles: one co-authored article were published as a joint research activities between BZU, UniMiB and BBAW, in addition six articles were presented in different conferences. Moreover, details are presented in D2.4
(5) Writing FP7 Proposals. (Deliverables D3.1 & D3.2)
As part of the SIERA project activities under WP3, Sina organized two workshops on proposal writing. The first proposal writing workshop was organized at BZU. More than Six insightful talks and long discussions were provided. During the workshop, prior successful experiences in writing EU (such as the Tempus program) and FP7 proposals and project management were showcased, FP7 guidelines, structure and terminology were explained, and key factors and successful tips regarding writing a competitive proposal were presented. Many topics were introduced and discussed, including how to write competitive proposals, especially FP7 proposals, the best practices and experiences in project management and proposal writing, in addition to funding programs, such as TEMPUS and others.
The second proposal writing workshop discussed the competencies required for a successful research project proposal, and introducing Horizon2020 as the new EU research framework program. The workshop was presented by highly experienced professionals in managing EU funded projects; Mr. Ruben Riestra from Spain, and Prof Paolo Bouquet, from the University of Trento Italy. The workshop also included a number of private consultation sessions for BZU staff, and an in-depth session for BZU Sina staff. The workshop sessions covered many topics of high importance regarding successful EU projects management. In addition to discussing BZU’s and Sina’s visions and strategies for Horizon2020. Finally, Mr. Riestra’s and Prof. Bouquet’s visit included several important meetings and discussions with potential stakeholders and partners for upcoming projects proposals and opportunities.
Furthermore, Sina Institute is currently working on a project proposal for Horizon 2020, in addition to the fulfilled task of submitting two FP7 projects (agriMUSE project and MOSAIC project) that were reported at D3.1. Details on the ongoing Horizon 2020 proposals can be found in the deliverable D3.2.
(6) Organizing Scientific Events. (Deliverable D4.3)
As a result of the implemented activities related to WP4 which are undertaken by the SIERA consortium can be summarized by the following points:
● Two summer courses were organized at BZU. The courses covered topics in multilingual information retrieval, multilingual ontology, natural language processing, lexical semantics, Entity identity management and Linked Data, and semantic web.
● The two workshop on proposal writing was organized in BZU.
● The 2ndand 3rd Palestinian Symposium on Computational Linguistics and Arabic Content was organized in BZU.
● A discussion panel on “cross-lingual mapping semantics” was organized at the 7th Global WordNet conference, in Tartu, Estonia.
● Two international workshops were organized: the 8th and 9th International Workshop on Ontology Content (OnToContent).
More details are provided in deliverable D4.3
Potential Impact:
The thematic scope of SIERA is in the domain of multilingual and multicultural knowledge sharing technologies. In this regards, both Arab and EU communities are showing a great interest at providing more concrete and efficient knowledge linking and sharing, which further attracts many researchers and research communities.
However, in spite of the remarkable efforts conducted by different research communities across the world, this domain still has many open-ended challenges, particularly, regarding linking knowledge expressed in different languages and across different cultures need more effort and strong collaboration across the different communities.
The Arabic language research community has multiple viable contributions in developing Arabic language repositories and tools to access and retrieve Arabic content. For instance, Sina Institute has build one of the largest lexical databases for the Arabic language, as part of the Arabic Ontology project. Consequently, reinforcing sustainable cooperation between the Arab and EU scientists is called for at this stage to integrate and extend Arab and EU research efforts in this scope. Hence, this project is expected to have a good impact and visibility at least at the Arab and EU levels. In this regards, several activities and actions have been implemented during the project to increase the visibility and enhance the cooperation capacity of BZU Sina. The following is a list of the activities that contributes towards the expected impacts listed in the work program:
WP1:Research Strategy:
Revising Sina’s R&D strategy considering the national, regional and European needs has not only reformed Sina’s research and aligned it with modern research trends in the field, but also has increased the institute's visibility at the international level. Especially when implementing the strategic recommendations and guidelines, details are provided in deliverable D1.1.
WP2:Research Strategy:
1. PhD co-supervision has a direct impact and is one of the most concrete and sustainable venues of scientific cooperation between Birzeit University and other EU partners. Through SIERA project one PhD student has been co-supervised by BZU and UniMiB. As a result of this supervision several future research directions have been defined, details are provided in deliverable D2.3.
2. Encouraging partners to co-author scientific articles from ideas that may emerge through their interactions and visits is a direct scientific impact as it increases the visibility of the partners cooperation. For instance, a co-authored paper which presents a cross-language mapping framework was presented in GWC’14. This paper also demonstrate the impact of supervising PhD student, as this paper was a result of the co-supervised PhD research activities. Details are provided in deliverable D2.4.
3. Setting a sustainable scientific collaboration between SIERA partners while tuning and integrating the resources and tools necessary to enable Arab-EU knowledge sharing. This has a great impact in enforcing and setting up a sustainable scientific collaboration between the partners. Moreover this will facilitate exchanging knowledge, know-how, and enhancing the scientific cooperation capacity of Sina, as well as facilitating further research projects between other EU and Arab partners. This indeed was achieved through the project while tuning and integrating the resources and tools necessary that will enable Arab-EU knowledge sharing. This include among the expected impact of the conducted research setup: (i) an extension of the mapping between WordNet and Arabic Ontology, using the established mapping framework, is expected to be used in many multilingual applications. (ii) exchanging knowledge and know-how and tuning BZU Sina’s tools to support Arabic Entity Resolution will be exposed to further research and cooperation in an ongoing initiative to use OKKAM Entity management system, where Arabic content will be used.
WP3:Capacity Building in FP7
1. Enhancing the cooperation capacity of Palestinian researchers in general and BZU Sina staff, also to sustain the scientific cooperation between the partners and ensure Sina’s continued engagement in credible and high profile scientific activities with diverse partners.
2. Preparing FP7 proposals. The idea of having “FP7 proposal preparation” as a separate task (and having two proposals as a deliverable) is intended not only to build the capacity and facilitate BZU Sina’s participation in FP7, but also to sustain the scientific cooperation between the partners and ensure Sina’s continued engagement in credible and high profile scientific activities with diverse partners.
3. Preparation for the new EU funding program, Horizon 2020, in an effort to engage with the new calls smoothly, Sina Institute worked on multiple levels to engage Sina Instiute, BZU, and the local Palestinian researchers and academics to the new program. In addition to dedicating the second proposal writing workshop to the new details affiliated to Horizon 2020 specifically. These preparations paid off, where Sina is currently preparing a Horizon 2020 proposal, among a few other consortia discussions. More details on the preparations can be found at D3.2.
WP4:Dissemination and Exchange of Knowledge
To further disseminate knowledge and increase visibility and impact, several activities and actions were implemented during the project. This include:
1. The organization of two summer courses on topics related to multilingual knowledge sharing at Birzeit University. This increased the level of the dissemination and exchanging of knowledge, and more importantly, this activity create excellent networking opportunities and forums to contemplate new ideas. The audience of these courses include college students, faculty members, researchers, and industry practitioners.
2. Organizing society-oriented/ industrial conference has a great impact on sharing and disseminating knowledge, networking with industry, enabling cooperation opportunities, increasing the visibility of Sina Institute and its socioeconomic and socio-cultural impact at the regional and EU levels. Sina has organized during the project the Arabic symposium for two consecutive years.
3. Organizing International Scientific Conference directly contributes in disseminating knowledge, networking with the research community, enabling cooperation opportunities, and increasing the visibility of BZU Sina Institute at the regional and EU levels. For instance, Sina has organized with SIERA partners a discussion panel at GWC’14 conference in Estonia. The Panel discussed topic related to cross-language mapping and present Sina developments in the field.
4. Distributing leaflets and posters in addition to developing a dynamic website were also implemented in SIERA. This activates have a great contribution in publishing and disseminating the project’s results and events, and would grab the attention of the society on the project objectives and partners. This was conducted in conjunction with other publicity in highly accessible local venues, which Sina members participated in, to increase the reach and solicit more interest and involvement.
Moreover, SIERA has also engaged number of associate partners. SIERA partners together with the associate partners were involved in providing or uptaking knowledge which not only helped in increasing visibility and impact, but also facilitating networking opportunities at the regional and international levels.
It is worth noting that SIERA was planned to run over a period of three years was intended for creating a higher impact. This has enabled long-term collaboration among the partners; by providing the partners with more time to reach more possibilities for further collaboration, as well as helping them in networking and disseminating knowledge at wider levels.
List of Websites:
Project Website:
● http://sina.birzeit.edu/SIERA/
Contact Information:
● Sina Institute, Birzeit University, P.O. Box 14-Birzeit, Palestine.
● Tel:+970(0)2982917
● Fax:+970(0)2982935
Coordinator: Dr. Mustafa Jarrar, mjarrar@birzeit.edu