Acquisition and Understanding of Process Knowledge Using Problem Solving Methods

At the defense of his PhD thesis (Madrid, April 23rd 2009), Jose Manuel talks about process knowledge and how it is possible to enable users without any kind of IT skills to i) model processes and ii) analyze the provenance of process executions, without the intervention of software or knowledge engineers. Jose Manuel proposes the utilization of Problem Solving Methods (PSMs) as key enablers for the accomplishment of such objectives and demonstrates the solutions developed, evaluated in the contexts of Project Halo and the Provenance Challenge, respectively. Jose Manuel concludes the talk with a process-centric overview on the challenges raised by the new web-driven computing paradigm, where large amounts of data are contributed and exploited by users on the web, requiring scalable, non-monotonic reasoning techniques as well as stimulating collaboration while preserving trust. Jose Manuel’s advisors Oscar Corcho (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and Richard Benjamins (Telefónica) were present at the defense, whose PhD committee comprised the following members: Manuel Hermenegildo (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), Asunción Gómez-Pérez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), Mark Greaves (Vulcan Inc.), Luc Moreau (University of Southampton), and Bert Bredeweg (University of Amsterdam).