Thought process
Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:04:00 BST
Web semantics professor comes to Huddersfield
NEW University of Huddersfield Professor Grigoris Antoniou is carrying out research in the field known as web semantics.
The goal is to enable computers to make more sense of the information that they search for and process on the web, thus providing better services and tools. This requires a description and processing of the meaning of items of information, and some kind of intelligent behaviour. Such advanced functionality is critical at a time where huge amounts of data are added every day to the web, originating from sensors, social networks and government data, among others.
Web semantics is somewhat linked to Artificial Intelligence, another general interest of Professor Antoniou. But the original dream of creating machines, able to behave and think exactly like a human being, has probably gone, or is a longer-term goal.
“We don’t necessarily think so much like that anymore,” says Professor Antoniou. Instead, the aim is to create machines that can model some aspects of human behaviour, and/or provide support in human decision-making.
Born in Greece, Professor Antoniou’s most recent post was as Head of the Information Systems Laboratory at FORTH, the Institute of Computer Science, based in Crete. But before this his academic career had taken him to various countries, and Greece’s financial crisis helped to persuade him and his wife that the time was ripe for another move.
The University of Huddersfield’s School of Computing and Engineering was an attractive option.
“The UK seemed to be one of the best target countries. I know many people who work here so I thought I could fit easily into the academic environment and when I talked to the people at Huddersfield they convinced me how serious they are about building up research at the University.”
It is an exciting challenge to make a contribution to these ambitions, he adds.
Professor Antoniou, who was born in Thessalonica, studied informatics in Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Osnabruck, where his academic career began. For much of the 1990s he was in Australia, becoming Professor of Computing and Information Technology at Griffith University, before returning to Europe as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bremen.
In 2002 he became Professor of Computer Science at the University of Crete and in 2004 began an eight-year spell as Head of Information Systems at FORTH before his relocation to Huddersfield.
There were other UK options, he says, but the University of Huddersfield’s School of Computing and Engineering made an instant and positive impression.
“Sometimes you sense that something is going to be a good fit.”
