The National Science Foundation (NSF) has approved seed funding for an industry-university Semantic Computing (SC) consortium, which currently involves UC-Irvine, UC-Los Angeles and UC-San Diego and is inviting companies, other universities and individuals to join. The collaborative project, supported by the NSF Industry & University Cooperative Research Program (I/UCRC), will encourage universities and industry to work together on developing technologies that allow users to search, understand and connect resources (including texts, images, videos, devices, tools, people) for problem solving based on semantics (meaning, intentions). The goal is to facilitate the transition of the Internet into its next generation and develop new and more efficient business models to stimulate, strengthen, and grow the economy. An important outcome of the Consortium is a Semantic Problem Solving Engine (SPSE, or "Semantic Machine") which is an integration of the resources from all domains.

This talk will introduce the operations of the Consortium, the architecture of the SPSE, how companies, universities and individuals can join or be affiliated with the Consortium and the SPSE, and how everyone can benefit.

Phillip C.-Y. Sheu is a professor of EECS, Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He received his B.S. degree in EE from National Taiwan University, and MS and Ph.D degrees in EECS from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Sheu’s current research interests include semantic computing and complex biomedical systems. He is a fellow of IEEE, a founder of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Semantic Computing (TCSEM), IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing(ICSC), International Journal of Semantic Computing (IJSC), the NSF I/UCRC (Industry University Cooperative Research Center) for Semantic Computing (ISC), and a main author of the book Semantic Computing (IEEE and Wiley, 2010).