The University of Greenwich is located in London, founded in 1890, its predecessor is WOOLWICH Polytechnic (WOOLWICH), is the second polytechnic founded in the United Kingdom, built near the site of the 18th century Royal Armouries. In the early 1990s, Woolwich Polytechnic, together with a large number of comprehensive polytechnics in the UK, was approved by the British government to be upgraded to a university, becoming one of more than 90 regular universities. At present, the University of Greenwich is one of the 10 largest universities in the UK, one of the universities with the highest research income and consulting income in the UK, and one of the universities recommended by the Ministry of Education to study abroad. The university has a multi-level talent training system for undergraduate, master and doctoral students.

Prof. Jixin Ma

BIO: Dr Jixin Ma is a Full Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at University of Greenwich, U.K. He has been the Director of the Centre for Computer and Computational Science and is the Director of the School’s PhD/MPhil Programme. Professor Ma is also a Visiting Professor of Beijing Normal University, Hainan University, Anhui University, Zhengzhou Light Industrial University and Macau City University. Professor Ma obtained his BSc and MSc of Mathematics in 1982 and 1988, respectively, and PhD of Computer Sciences in 1994. His main research areas include Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Information Systems, with special interests in Temporal Logic, Information Security, Machine Learning, Case-Based Reasoning and Pattern Recognition. Professor Ma has been a member British Computer Society, American Association of Artificial Intelligence, ICIS/IEEE, World Scientific and Engineering Society, and Special Group of Artificial Intelligence of BCS. He has also been the Editor of several international journals and international conference proceedings, Conference/Program Chair, and Invited Keynote Speakers of many international conferences. Professor Ma has published more than 200 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences.

Title: A Visualised Framework for Temporal Representation and Reasoning

Abstract: Time plays a fundamental role in modelling natural phenomena and human activities concerning the dynamic aspects of the real world. In particular, representing and reasoning about temporal knowledge has been an active and important research task in Information. Such a task, though sounds intuitive, is indeed a nontrivial one due to the facts that: (1) expressions of temporal knowledge could be both absolute and relative; (2) temporal relations among events and activities could be very complicated; (3) default temporal information is usually implicit; (4) temporal duration/granularity could be difficult to deal with; and (5) temporal information could be incomplete and/or ambiguous. 

In terms of a visualise framework, this talk introduces a graphical representation of temporal knowledge in Information Systems. It is hoped that it will raise certain interests in representing and reasoning about the temporal aspects of knowledge in the community of Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence.