IFOW 2020: Integrated Food Ontology Workshop Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Bolzano, Italy, September 16, 2020 |
Conference website | https://foodon.org/icbo-2020-food-workshop/ |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ifow2020 |
Abstract submission deadline | July 7, 2020 |
Notification of acceptance | July 30, 2020 |
Building the farm to fork digital highway: Integrated food ontology development for agricultural, food science and public health domains
This is a virtual conference beginning September 16th, 2020 presented as part of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO) presence within JOWO 2020 (see https://icbo2020.inf.unibz.it/accepted-workshops/). We will be having 2 hour virtual conferences, once a week, for each of the sessions outlined below.
Note: In light of the coronavirus crisis, the conference is being held virtually, with a commitment by ICBO that all main-conference paper submissions can be presented in person a year later in Bolzano, in addition to whatever virtual conference participation that may occur this year. More details on that will be available in June 2020. Our own IFOW workshop will continue regardless of paper submissions to the main conference, in other words you may submit your work to us for presentation this fall, in addition to participating in ICBO and its conference proceedings. IFOW itself will not itself be producing conference proceeding-related publications.
Controlled vocabulary standardization efforts covering agricultural and food domains are evolving since their inception decades ago thanks to the mandates and continued support of institutional caretakers. Popular examples are FoodEx2, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) food classification and description system, the Global Language of Business GS1 product categorization scheme, the EUROFIR promoted LanguaL food composition thesaurus, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s AGROVOC SKOS-based vocabulary, and its support of the International Network of Food Data Systems (INFOODS) vocabulary for food nutrition testing. These vocabularies are used in a growing interconnected food database landscape but suffer from format issues like textual or spreadsheet formats, unresolvable identifiers, and inconsistent category semantics.
Ontologies are new entrants into the food vocabulary domain, bringing a wave of Semantic Web technology and philosophy to bear on the issue of data sharing and modelling of food-related activity and research which are becoming critical in the face of rapid change to our environment and anthroposphere. Examples range from BBC’s Food Ontology, driving its culinary media universe, to recently published research laboratory initiated ontologies like OBOFoundry members FoodOn, the Food Biomarker Ontology (FOBI), and the Ontology for Nutritional Studies (ONS), and related ontologies like the Medical Action Ontology (MAxO) and the Environmental Conditions, Treatments and Exposures ontology (ECTO) that are under development. Underpinning these mid-level, model-focused ontologies are environmental, chemical, biological, anatomical, disease and phenotype ontologies.
Academic, agricultural and public health agencies are considering the benefits and complexities of adopting ontology in their research and data management and reporting infrastructure. How can ontologies interface to legacy datasets and online databases described by existing vocabularies? What vocabulary, tool ecosystem and data models are needed to correlate agricultural treatments, nutritional data, eating patterns, biomarkers, pathogens, and phytochemical levels with disease and health phenotypes? This workshop seeks to define the coverage of the different ecological, agricultural, nutritional, dietary, public health, one health surveillance, food security, and trade domains that food-related ontologies are modelling, and the use of data translation tools for bringing legacy data into the ontology fold.
Workshop are forecast to have roughly 2 hour sessions split into presentations of relevant ontologies / projects and their scope in the first hour, in 10-15 minute slots + 5 for a few questions, followed by 1 hour discussion and a break as schedule allows.
Submission Guidelines
Submit a 2-4 page abstract describing the focus of your ontology presentation or other workshop proposal, targeting at least one of the four topic areas:
- In the food: Food component modelling
- In the body: Modelling metabolic transformation of food and exposure to food-borne toxicants
- In the field: Agricultural production modelling
- In the agency: Ontology ecosystem to support research and operational adoption
See https://foodon.org/icbo-2020-food-workshop/ for a more detailed description of topic areas.
Presentation abstract must be original and may also be submitted to ICBO (for presentation in main conference track and for publishing in conference proceedings). It should be submitted electronically in English through the EasyChair abstract submission system (at https://easychair.org/cfp/IFOW-2020). If the abstract presentation/workshop proposal is accepted, the presenter(s) must register for ICBO 2020 and deliver the presentation via video conference (in English). More information for ICBO 2020 registration will be posted soon (it is anticipated registration will be free). If an abstract has more than one author, please make sure you list all the authors (including the presenting author).
Deadline for abstract submission: June 30, 2020 July 7, 2020 Deadline extended for a week!
Notification of presentation abstract acceptance: July 27, 2020
We will followup with respect to virtual conference presentation platform details.
Organizing committee
- Damion Dooley, Department of Pathology, University of British Columbia
- Duccio Cavalieri, Department of Biology - University of Florence
- Melissa Haendel, Translational and Integrative Sciences Lab, Oregon State University
- Lynn Schriml, University of Maryland
- Tarini Naravane, University of California, Davis
- Leigh Carmody, Robinson Lab / Jackson Laboratory
- Robert Warren, Myra Analytics
- Jessica Singer, Myra Analytics
Venue
The workshop will be held virtually. It is associated with ICBO 2020 (https://icbo2020.inf.unibz.it/)
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to Damion Dooley, damion.dooley@bccdc.ca