FSCI 2022

Rhiannon Cameron, Damion Dooley, William Hsiao, Emma Griffiths, Anoosha Sehar

Abstract: The ways in which people encode meaning into text are complex. It is difficult to know for sure what one means without additional context. Semantic ambiguity can impede the sharing of knowledge and impact the comparability and interoperability of datasets.

This course covers how we can use ontologies to improve the consistency and communication of ideas. Ontologies are data structures that are composed of controlled vocabularies, and the relations between them, that represent a piece of knowledge in a subject area. They are being used to support a variety of academic research, government, and commercial projects by providing findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) data annotations that computers can reason over.

This is a course not on how to develop an ontology, nor on the underlying data models, but rather on how a data curator can engage in ontology practices to support their FAIR data objectives. Over three sessions we will cover what ontologies are, how to access and explore ontologies, finding and evaluating appropriate ontology terms, annotating spreadsheet data, and how to make new term requests.

We will introduce users to the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) foundry community and their founding principles, as well as explore practical examples and applications using the Genomic Epidemiology Ontology (GenEpiO) and the Food Ontology (FoodOn). That being said, this course is not limited to individuals who work within genomic and epidemiological frameworks – our aim is to support users in solving practical data-quality problems using open access ontologies across disciplines.

Several free and/or open-source tools will be introduced throughout the course, including but not limited to: Ontobee, EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service, Protégé, and OntoMaton.

Audience: Researchers, data curators.

LIVE ZOOM SESSION SCHEDULE (All times Pacific UTC-7)
Tuesday, July 26
4-5PM
Wednesday, July 27
4-5PM
Thursday, July 28
4-5PM