FZI

FZI is a technology transfer center for information technologies which is closely linked to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), which is one of the universities of excellence in Germany. FZI covers a broad range of information technology topics. For the project, the Information Process Engineering (IPE) research division will be involved, which is renowned for its research in the area of ontologies, Semantic Web technologies and context-aware systems (e.g., in the fields of AAL, and learning, knowledge management). FZI is W3C member and actively involved in the standardization of the Ontology Web Language (OWL).
FZI has a strong record of transferring research results into industrial practice, both through its spin-off companies and by contract research with industrial partners. FZI additionally is the focal point of a network of more than 100 IT companies within the high-tech region of Karlsruhe.
Relevant skills/experience/technologies: FZI participates in (some of them as coordinator) in several European initiatives in different fields. Among them, the most relevant for CHI are:
• In the project UNIVERSAAL (http://www.universaal.org) FZI is involved in the activities around the semantic configuration of AAL services as well as the ontological representation of concepts for the management of AAL application. Parts of the universAAL project have been used by FZI in the House of Living Labs where different hard- and software have been integrated into the middleware.
• Within the SOPRANO IP (FP6, http://www.soprano-ip.org) on Ambient Assisted Living, FZI has shaped the ontology-centered design approach of SOPRANO, which brought together the diverse stakeholders in the project, has guided the ontology development and plays a major role in the ambient middleware (especially context management under uncertainty as an extended form of user modelling and adaptive system behavior). Together with CAS and the University of Jena, it has initiated an open source ambient middleware project (openAAL), which makes outcomes of the SOPRANO project publicly available.
• The eInclusion FP6 project AGENT-DYSL (http://www.agent-dysl.eu) has built an adaptive reading support application for children with dyslexia. In this project, FZI is work package leader for the ontology development, ontology-based infrastructure and adaptation.