ScienceOrganizer: A Collaborative Information Management Tool for Scientific Teams (slides - PDF)

Presenter: Richard M. Keller, Senior Computer Scientist, NASA Ames

Abstract: ScienceOrganizer is a specialized Web-based information repository designed to support distributed scientific project teams. With ScienceOrganizer, users can upload, download, and centrally organize project information -- including data, documents, images, and scientific records associated with laboratory and field experiments. A key feature of ScienceOrganizer is that stored information is "threaded" or interlinked to enable users to locate, track, and organize interrelated pieces of scientific data. Linkages capture important semantic relationships among information resources in the repository, and these assist users in navigating through the information space. In essence, the system is a hybrid of a document management system, a database, a hypermedia system, and a semantic network. ScienceOrganizer is being used by several groups of NASA scientists.

Bio: Dr. Keller is currently a senior computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. He serves as technical lead for the Information Sharing and Integration Group within the Collaborative and Assistant Systems technical area of the Computational Sciences Division. Keller has worked at NASA for over ten years, specializing in the design and development of intelligent software tools to support scientific work, including tools for scientific modeling-building, information access, and collaborative remote science.

Dr. Keller is currently involved in two main projects: the ScienceDesk project developing specialized tools and infrastructure to support collaboration among distributed scientific teams; and the Aviation Data Integration Project (ADIP) developing new techniques for fusing data from multiple sources to assist in safety-related assessment of aircraft operations. From 1989-1995, he led the SIGMA project aimed at developing AI techniques to support scientific modeling. He also participated in development of the WebTagger system, a tool for indexing and organizing Web links (i.e., "bookmarks" or "favorites").

Prior to his current position, Dr. Keller served as a research associate at Stanford University's Knowledge Systems Laboratory, where he headed up a project investigating the application of knowledge-sharing and knowledge compilation techniques to engineering device modeling. He received an A.B. in mathematics from Cornell University, an M.S. in computer science from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in computer science from Rutgers University in 1987. Dr. Keller's thesis research focused on the development of analytical machine learning techniques. Dr. Keller is the author of numerous conference papers and journal articles, and has been the recipient of awards for the best conference papers in the area of machine learning and knowledge-based software engineering.

His current research interests include collaborative environments, computer-supported cooperative work, digital libraries, semantic web, knowledge management technology, and information integration.