[TU Dresden]

Topics for the WS 2015/2016

Technische Universität Dresden
Institut für Theoretische Informatik
Lehrstuhl für Automatentheorie


This semester we will offer the following topics for Forschungspraktika, Masterpraktikum and CL projects:

  1. Implementation of an ontology-based stream processing system
    The task is to implement a processing pipeline for event recognition for stream data based on ontology services. The task involves to identify a freely-available data stream (e.g. weather data) and then implement a databased approach to preprocessing the data such that it can be used as instance data for a description logic query answering system. Furthermore, the background ontology that captures knowledge on the domain the data comes from needs to be crafted.

    Remark: This project is suited for students who need 8 SWS or for a group of students.

    Tutor: Dr. Anni-Yasmin Turhan

  2. Testing Isomorphy of Formal Context with the VF2 algorithm
    Testing isomorphy between two graphs is a well-researched topic and many algorithms have been proposed. A supposedly efficient algorithm for deciding isomorphy is the VF2 algorithm [1]. The task is to understand, describe, and present the VF2 algorithm for testing isomorphy between two given graphs. As an application, the algorithm should be applied to an experiment investigating a statistical relationship between the number of intents and the number of pseudo-intents of a formal context.

    References:

    Tutor: Dr. Daniel Borchmann

  3. Unification in Description logics
    The system UEL can be used to detect redundancies in ontologies by unifying concepts in the description logic EL. In this project this system should be extended by a newly developed rule-based approach which allows to perform unification in regard of negative side conditions.

    Remark: This project requires basic knowledge in description logics and good programming skills.

    References
    Tutor: Dr. Stefan Borgwardt

  4. Extending a system for the computation of logical difference
    Aim of the project is to extend a system for recognizing logical differences between ontologies, which is based on a hypergraph representation of the ontologies [2]. The extension is that not only differences regarding subsumption should be detected, but also regarding instance and conjunctive queries. Additionally, the system should be extended to handle ontologies that are written in the description logic EL plus role inclusions and domain and range restrictions. A description of the extended algorithm is available in [1].

    Remark: This project requires basic knowledge in description logics and in programming, particular in JAVA.

    References: Tutor: Dr. Michel Ludwig

  5. Implementing algorithms to decide (k-)piecewise testability
    A regular language is piecewise testable if its minimal DFA satisfies several structural conditions. Nowadays, there exist two quadratic algorithms to decide whether a minimal DFA represents a piecewise testable language. The first one, quadratic with respect to the number of states of the DFA, is due to A. Trahtman [1], and the second one, quadratic with respect to the size of the input alphabet, is due to L. Polak and O. Klima [2]. The first part of this project is to implement both methods and compare their performance on a suitable selected set of input DFAs. In the case a regular language is piecewise testable, it is possible to find a minimal k (less then or equal to the depth of the minimal DFA) for which the language is k-piecewise testable (k-PT). The algorithms to do so are described in [3] and [4]. The second part of the project is to implement these tests, namely, when checking k=0,1,2,3, the methods from [3], and for k>= 4 the method of [4]. Since the problem for k>=4 is in general coNP-complete, the point here is to look at the practical limits of the algorithm. The input format for DFAs will be specified (XML-like input).

    References:

    Tutor: Dr. Thomas Masopust

  6. Implementing algorithms for piecewise testable separability
    Given two regular langauges (represented by NFAs), the problem to decide whether there exists a piecewise testable (PT) language (a regular language of a special form) that separates the input languages has recently been shown to be decidable in PTIME [1,2]. (More on the motivation can be found there, too.) However, this algorithm is not applicable to compute a PT language that separates the input languages (called a separator). A simple exponential algorithm to compute a separator has been discussed in [3], which in the first phase also decides the existence of a separator.

    The aim of the project is to implement the PTIME algorithm and the algorithm of [3] and to compare their performance on a realistic sample of selected examples. Here the PTIME algorithm should be compared with the first phase of algorithm of [3].

    Then the separator should be computed using the algorithm of [3]. This algorithm however supports implementations based on minimal DFAs, NFAs and AFAs. All three approaches should be implemented and their performance compared. This requires not only to implement the structures to represent DFAs, NFAs and AFAs, but also some of the classical and some of the non-classical operations on languages. The advantage is to keep the representations as small as possible. This is easy for DFAs, but will require some investigation for NFAs and AFAs.

    The input format for NFAs will be specified (XML-like input).

    Remark: This project is suited for students who need 8 SWS or for a group of students.

    References:

    Tutor: Dr. Thomas Masopust

  7. Investigating the complexity of deciding whether a minimal DFA represents a 1-PT language
    AC0 [1] is an important complexity class used in circuit complexity, which is of interest in many fields of theoretical computer science, such as database theory. The aim of this project is to get acquainted with this class and to show that the following problem belongs to this class. The k-piecewise testable (k-PT) languages form a subclass of regular languages that are characterized by a few structural properties on their minimal DFAs. For 1-PT languages, there are two simple structural properties characterizing them [1]. The aim of the project is to show that the problem to decide whether a minimal DFA represents a 1-PT language belongs to AC0. In the case the project goes well, the other question is to decide whether the problem is also AC0-hard.

    References:

    Tutor: Dr. Thomas Masopust

  8. Implementing most specific generalizations w.r.t. general TBoxes in ELGFP
    This project aims at the implementation and evaluation of methods for calculating least common subsumers and most specific concepts in the leight-weight description logic ELGFP, i.e. EL interpreted with greatest fixpoint semantics. In contrast to standard EL with descriptive semantics, those most specific generalizations always exist in ELGFP and can be computed in polynomial time. The student should furthermore make a comparison with most specific generalizations w.r.t. standard descriptive semantics and with role-depth bounded most specific generalizations w.r.t descriptive semantics, both of these approaches have recently been implemented.

    Remark: Basic knowledge in description logics and good programming skills are expected. For an easier handling and integration with existing software (e.g. ELK, Protege etc.), the program should be built on top of the OWL API.

    References:

    Tutor: Francesco Kriegel

  9. Formal concept analysis & propositional logic: from pseudo-intents to implicational bases
    This project’s aim is the formulation of a minimal theory of implications, which holds in a given set of propositional models and furthermore entails all other implications, that hold in the given model set. This requires an isomorphism between propositional model sets and formal contexts, to adapt the existing results for implicational bases of formal contexts. Furthermore the student should give an algorithm to compute the implicational base. The results can be extended to propositional bases.

    Remark: Basic knowledge in propositional logic and set theory is expected. Further knowledge in logic and order theory may be helpful.

    References:

    Tutor: Francesco Kriegel

More topics t.b.a.!

Anni-Yasmin Turhan