MODULARITY, as studied for many years in software engineering, allows 
mechanisms for easy and flexible reuse, generalization, structuring, 
maintenance, design patterns, and comprehension. Applied to ontology 
engineering, modularity is central not only to reduce the complexity of 
understanding ontologies, but also to facilitate ontology maintenance and 
ontology reasoning.

Recent research on ontology modularity shows substantial progress in 
foundations of modularity, techniques of modularization and modular 
development, distributed reasoning and empirical evaluation. These results 
provide a foundation for ongoing multi-disciplinary research and 
development.

The workshop follows a series of successful events that have been an 
excellent venue for practitioners and researchers to discuss latest work 
and current problems, and is this time organised as a satellite workshop 
of ESSLLI 2011 (week 2, see http://esslli2011.ijs.si/?p=306 ), following 
an introductory ESSLLI course on notions of modularity in ontologies (week 
1, see http://esslli2011.ijs.si/?p=310 ).

TOPICS include, but are not limited to:

- What is Modularity: Kinds of modules and their properties; modules vs. 
contexts; design patterns; granularity of representation;

- Logical/Foundational Studies: Conservativity and syntactic 
approximations for modules; modular ontology languages; reconciling 
inconsistencies across modules; formal structuring of modules; networks of 
ontologies; heterogeneity;

- Algorithmic Approaches: distributed reasoning; modularization and module 
extraction; (selective) sharing and re-using, linking and importing; 
hiding and privacy; evaluation of modularization approaches; complexity of 
reasoning; reasoners or implemented systems;

- Applications: Semantic Web; life sciences; bio-ontologies; natural 
language processing; ontologies of space and time; ambient intelligence; 
collaborative ontology development; etc.

The workshop is open to all members of the ESSLLI community. Workshop 
speakers will be required to register for the Summer School; however, they 
will be able to register at a reduced rate to be determined by the Local 
Organizers.

IMPORTANT DATES (Tentative)

Paper Submission: February 15, 2011
Notification:  April 15, 2011
Camera ready: June 1, 2011
Workshop: August 8-12, 2011

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

The workshop welcomes submission of high quality original and previously 
unpublished papers.

Contributions should not exceed 13 pages in length and must be formatted 
according to IOS Press style (see 
http://www.iospress.nl/authco/instruction_crc.html ). Contributions should 
be prepared in PDF format and submitted not later than February 15, 2011, 
through the EasyChair Submission System (see 
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=womo2011 ).

Submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by members of the program 
committee. Accepted papers may be extended up to 16 pages and are expected 
to be published as chapters in an IOS Press book in the series 'Frontiers 
in Artificial Intelligence and Applications'.

(Find the WoMO 2010 proceedings here 
http://www.booksonline.iospress.nl/Content/View.aspx?piid=16268 )

INVITED SPEAKERS: TBA

WORKSHOP CO-CHAIRS:

Oliver Kutz (Research Center on Spatial Cognition (SFB/TR 8), Bremen, Germany)
Thomas Schneider (Saarland University, Saarbruecken, Germany)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Jie Bao (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA)
Simon Colton (Imperial College, London, UK)
Melanie Courtot (BC Cancer Care & Research, Vancouver, Canada)
Bernardo Cuenca Grau (University of Oxford, UK)
Faezeh Ensan (University of New Brunswick, Canada)
Fred Freitas (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil)
Silvio Ghilardi (University of Milan, Italy)
Janna Hastings (European Bioinformatics Institute, Cambridge, UK)
Robert Hoehndorf (University of Cambridge, UK)
Joana Hois (University of Bremen, Germany)
C. Maria Keet (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa)
Roman Kontchakov (Birkbeck College, London, UK)
Frank Loebe (University of Leipzig, Germany)
Till Mossakowski (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Bremen, Germany)
Leo Obrst (MITRE, McLean, VA, USA)
Bijan Parsia (University of Manchester, UK)
Daniel Pokrywczynski (University of Liverpool, UK)
Anne Schlicht (University of Mannheim, Germany)
Marco Schorlemmer (Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain)
Andrei Tamilin (FBK-IRST, Trento, Italy)
Dirk Walther (Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain)