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Department of Computing
Name Rolf Schwitter
Email schwitt@ics.mq.edu.au
Room No. E6A 333
Telephone +61-2-9850-9533
Fax +61-2-9850-9551
Address Department of Computing,
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

Position

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing and associated with the Centre for Language Technology at Macquarie University. I am the President of the Australasian Language Technology Association for the period from 2007 to 2008. Between July 2007 and June 2008, I was a NICTA Fellow and worked on the SAIL (Situation Awareness by Inference and Logic) project where we developed techniques for higher level data fusion.

Research Topics

My main research interests are: Natural (and formal) language processing, in particular: controlled natural languages, answer extraction, knowledge representation, automated reasoning and the Semantic Web.

Currently I am working on the PENG (Processable ENGlish) Online project where we are developing a computer-processable controlled natural language that is easy to learn, to write, and to process. To learn more about controlled natural languages, please check the Controlled Natural Languages web page.

Before I came to Australia in late 2000, I have been working in the Institute of Computational Linguistics at the University of Zurich where we developed ExtrAns - a system for extracting precise answers from technical documents. To learn more about the ExtrAns project and answer extraction, please visit our on-line demo. Before I joined the Computational Linguistics Group, I was a member of the Requirements Engineering Research Group at the same institution where I worked on the Attempto Controlled English project and completed my PhD.

If you want to know more about my research interests or have a chat, then please send me an email.

Teaching

In the first semester of 2010, I will be teaching: and in the second semester I will be teaching:

Conferences and Workshops

I usually review for a number of international conferences and workshops each year. In 2008/09 for:

I am one of the co-chairs of this year's Australasian Language Technology Workshop (ALTA). This workshop will be held as part of the HCSNet Summerfest 2009 at the University of New South Wales in Sydney on Thursday 3rd and Friday 4th of December 2009.

Publications

2010

R. Schwitter. Anaphora Resolution Involving Interactive Knowledge Acquisition, to appear in: N.E. Fuchs (ed.), Workshop on Controlled Natural Languages, CNL 2009, LNCS/LNAI 5972, Springer, 2010.

A. Wyner, K. Angelov, G. Barzdins, D. Damljanovic, N. Fuchs, S. Hoefler, K. Jones, K. Kaljurand, T. Kuhn, M. Luts, J. Pool, M. Rosner, R. Schwitter, and J. Sowa. On Controlled Natural Languages: Properties and Prospects, to appear in: N.E. Fuchs (ed.), Workshop on Controlled Natural Languages, CNL 2009, LNCS/LNAI 5972, Springer, 2010.

R. Schwitter. Creating and Querying Formal Ontologies via Controlled Natural Language, to appear in: T. Meyer and M. Orgun (eds.), Applied Artificial Intelligence, 24(1), pp. 1-26, 2010.

2009

R. Schwitter. Let's talk about NLP and Automated Reasoning without Getting Grey Hair, in: S. Clematide, M. Klenner, M. Volk (eds.), Searching Answers, Festschrift in Honour of Michael Hess on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, MV-Wissenschaft, pp. 119-126, 2009.

L. Pizzato, R. Schwitter, (eds.), Proceedings of the 2009 Australasian Language Technology Association Workshop 2009, ALTA, 3-4 December 2009, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

C. White, R. Schwitter. An Update on PENG Light, in: L. Pizzato and R. Schwitter (eds.), Proceedings of ALTA 2009, Sydney, Australia, pp. 80-88, 2009.

F. Baader, A. Bauer, P. Baumgartner, A. Cregan, A. Gabaldon, K. Ji, K. Lee, D. Rajaratnam and R. Schwitter. A Novel Architecture for Situation Awareness Systems, in: M. Giese and A. Waaler, (eds.), Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX 2009), LNAI 5607, pp. 77-92, 2009.

R. Schwitter. Anaphora Resolution Involving Interactive Knowledge Acquisition, in: N. E. Fuchs (ed.), CNL 2009, Pre-Proceedings of the Workshop on Controlled Natural Processing, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 448, 2009.

L. Pretorius, R. Schwitter. Towards Processable Afrikaans, in: N. E. Fuchs (ed.), CNL 2009, Pre-Proceedings of the Workshop on Controlled Natural Language, CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 448, 2009.

2008

T. Kuhn, R. Schwitter. Writing Support for Controlled Natural Languages, in: D. Powers and N. Stockes (eds.): Proceedings of ALTA 2008, December 8-10, Tasmania, Australia, pp. 46-54, 2008.

R. Schwitter. Reconstructing Hard Problems in a Human-readable and Machine-processable Way, in: T.-B. Ho and Z.-H. Zhou (eds.): Proceedings of PRICAI 2008, LNAI 5351, pp. 1046-1052, 2008.

R. Schwitter. Working for Two: a Bidirectional Grammar for a Controlled Natural Language, in: W. Wobcke and M. Zhang (eds.): Proceedings of AI 2008, LNAI 5360, pp. 168-179, 2008.

R. Schwitter. Creating and Querying Linguistically Motivated Ontologies, in: Proceedings of the Knowledge Representation Ontology Workshop (KROW 2008), Conference in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Volume 90, pp. 71-80, 2008.

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Meaningful Web Annotations for Humans and Machines using Controlled Natural Language, in: Expert Systems, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 253-267, July 2008.

R. Schwitter, K. Kaljurand, A. Cregan, C. Dolbear, G. Hart. A Comparison of three Controlled Natural Languages for OWL 1.1, OWL Experiences and Directions, 4th International Workshop, Washington, USA, 1-2 April, 2008, list of OWLED papers.

R. Schwitter. A Controlled Natural Language for the Semantic Web, in: Journal of Intelligent Systems, Vol. 17, No. 1-3, pp. 125-141, 2008.

2007

S. Cassidy, R. Schwitter. An evaluation of portfolio assessment in an undergraduate Web Technology unit, in: Proceedings of the Assessment in Science Teaching and Learning Symposium, Uniserve Science, September 28, 2007, The University of Sydney, Sydney Australia, pp. 16-21, 2007.

A. Cregan, R. Schwitter, T. Meyer. Sydney OWL Syntax - towards a Controlled Natural Language Syntax for OWL 1.1, in: Proceedings of the OWLED 2007 Workshop on OWL: Experiences and Directions, Innsbruck, Austria, 6-7, June 2007, CEUR-WS, Vol. 258, 2007.

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. Web-Annotations for Humans and Machines, in: E. Franconi, M. Kifer, W. May (eds.), The Semantic Web: Research and Applications, Proceedings, 4th European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2007, Innsbruck, Austria, LNCS 4519, pp. 458-472, June 2007.

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Dynamic Semantics at Work, in: A. Sakurai, K. Hasida and K. Nitta (eds.), New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, JSAI 2003 and JSAI 2004 Conferences and Workshops, Niigata, Japan, June 23-27, 2003, Kanazawa, Japan, May 31-June 4, 2004, Revised Selected Papers, LNCS 3609, Springer, pp. 416-426, 2007.

2006

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Annotating Websites with Machine-processable Information in Controlled Natural Language, in: M. A. Orgun and T. Meyer (eds.), Advances in Ontologies 2006, Proceedings of the Second Australasian Ontology Workshop (AOW 2006), Hobart, Australia, 5 December 2006, Australian Computer Society, Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology, Volume 72, pp. 75-84, 2006.

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Writing RSS feeds in a Machine-processable Controlled Natural Language, presented (but not published) at CLAW2006, 5th International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications, Cambridge, MA, USA, 12th August 2006.

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Let's Talk in Description Logic via Controlled Natural Language, in: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (LENLS2006) in Conjunction with the 20th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, Tokyo, Japan, June 5-6, pp. 193-207, 2006.

2005

R. Schwitter. Controlled Natural Language as Interface Language to the Semantic Web, in: B. Prasad (editor), Proceedings of the 2nd Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-05), Pune, India, December 20-22, pp. 1699-1718, 2005.

R. Schwitter. A Controlled Natural Language Layer for the Semantic Web, in: S. Zhang and R. Jarvis (eds.), AI 2005, Advances in Artificial Intelligence: 18th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Australia, December 5-9, LNCS 3809, pp. 425-434, 2005.

R. Schwitter. A Layered Controlled Natural Language for Knowledge Representation, in: S. Cardey, P. Greenfield and S. Vienney (eds.), Machine Translation, Controlled Languages and Specialised Languages: Special Issue of Linguisticae Investigationes, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 85-106, 2005.

R. Schwitter, R. Dale, D. Chan. Delivering Automated Health Monitoring via Telephone, in: S. Rubinelli and J. Haes (eds.), Tailoring Health Messages, Proceedings of the International Conference Monte Verità, July 6-10, pp. 143-147, 2005.

2004

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Controlled Natural Language meets the Semantic Web, in: A. Asudeh, C. Paris, S. Wan (eds.), Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop 2004, Macquarie University, 8th December 2004, pp. 55-62, 2004.

R. Schwitter. Representing Knowledge in Controlled Natural Language: A Case Study, in: M. G. Negoita, R. J. Howlett, L. C. Jain (eds.), Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, 8th International Conference, KES2004, Wellington, New Zealand, September 2004, Proceedings, Part I, Springer LNAI 3213, pp. 711-717, 2004.

R. Schwitter. Dynamic Semantics for a Controlled Natural Language, in: Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA 2004), NLIS'04: 4th International Workshop on Natural Language and Information Systems, 30 August - 3 September 2004, Zaragoza, Spain, pp. 43-47, 2004.

R. Schwitter, M. Tilbrook. Dynamic Semantics at Work, in: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics (in conjunction with the 18th Annual Conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, 2004), in Kanazawa (Japan), May 31, pp. 49-60, 2004.

R. Schwitter. A Layered Controlled Natural Language for Knowledge Representation, Abstract for Journées Linguistiques, Machine Translation, Controlled Languages, and Specialised Languages, Besançon (France), May 5 + 6, p. 20, 2004.

R. Schwitter, F. Rinaldi, S. Clematide. The Importance of How-Questions in Technical Domains, in: Proceedings of TALN 2004 - Workshops, 11th Conference on Natural Language Processing, Question-Answering Workshop, Fès, Morocco, April 19-22, pp. 451-460, 2004.

F. Rinaldi, M. Hess, J. Dowdall, D. Mollá, R. Schwitter. Question Answering in Terminology-rich Technical Domains, in: M. T. Maybury (editor), New Directions in Question Answering, AAAI/MIT Press, pp. 71-82, 2004.

2003

R. Schwitter. Incremental Chart Parsing with Predictive Hints, in: Proceedings of the Australasian Language Technology Workshop 2003, December 10, University of Melbourne, Australia, pp. 1-8, 2003.

F. Rinaldi, J. Dowdall, M. Hess, D. Mollá, R. Schwitter, K. Kaljurand. Knowledge-Based Question Answering, in: V. Palade, R. J. Howlett, L. Jain (eds). Knowledge-Based Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems, 7th International Conference, KES 2003, Oxford, UK, September 3-5, 2003, Proceedings, Part I, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 2773, pp. 785-792, Springer-Verlag, 2003.

R. Schwitter, Md Tawhidul Islam. S-Tutor - A Speech-based Tutoring System, in: U. Hoppe, F. Verdejo, J. Kay (eds), Artificial Intelligence in Education, Shaping the Future of Learning through Intelligent Technologies, IOS Press Ohmsha, pp. 503-505, 2003.

D. Mollá, R. Schwitter, F. Rinaldi, J. Dowdall, M. Hess. Anaphora Resolution in ExtrAns, ARQAS, Anaphora Resolution in Question Answering and Summarization, Proceedings of 2003 International Symposium on Reference Resolution and its Applications to Question Answering and Summarization, Venice, Italy, pp. 67-74, 2003.

D. Mollá, F. Rinaldi, R. Schwitter, J. Dowdall, M. Hess. Answer Extraction from Technical Texts, in: IEEE Intelligent Systems, July/August, pp. 12-17, 2003.

R. Schwitter, A. Ljungberg, D. Hood. ECOLE - A Look-ahead Editor for a Controlled Language, in: Controlled Translation, Proceedings of EAMT-CLAW03, Joint Conference combining the 8th International Workshop of the European Association for Machine Translation and the 4th Controlled Language Application Workshop, May 15-17, Dublin City University, Ireland, pp. 141-150, 2003.

D. Mollá, R. Schwitter, F. Rinaldi, J. Dowdall, and M. Hess. NLP for Answer Extraction in Technical Domains, Proceedings of the EACL 2003, Workshop on Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Questions Answering, April 14, Budapest, Hungary, pp. 5-12, 2003.

K. Böttger, R. Schwitter, D. Mollá, D. Richards. Towards Reconciling Use Cases via Controlled Language and Graphical Models, in: O. Bartenstein, U. Geske, M. Hannebauer, O. Yoshie (eds.), Web-Knowledge Management and Decision Support, Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Applications of Prolog, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2543, pp. 119-132, Springer, 2003.

P. Quaresma, A. Ishikawa, R. Schwitter. Introduction to part II: Knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation, in: O. Bartenstein, U. Geske, M. Hannebauer, O. Yoshie (eds.), Web-Knowledge Management and Decision Support, Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Applications of Prolog, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2543, pp. 67-69, Springer, 2003.

R. Dale, D. Mollá, R. Schwitter. Natural Language Processing in the Undergraduate Curriculum, in: Proceedings of the Fifth Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2003), 4-7 February 2003, Adelaide, Australia, 2003.

2002

R. Schwitter, A. Ljungberg. How to Write a Document in Controlled Natural Language, Proceedings of the Seventh Australasian Document Computing Symposium, Sydney, Australia, December 16, pp. 133-136, 2002.

R. Schwitter. Developing a Behavioral Specification in Controlled English, AI 2002, Workshop Proceedings, Natural Language Processing, 2nd December 2002, Canberra, Australia, pp. 55-62, 2002.

R. Schwitter. English as a Formal Specification Language, Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA 2002), W04: Third International Workshop on Natural Language and Information Systems - NLIS, 2-6 September 2002, Aix-en-Provence, France, pp. 228-232, 2002.

F. Rinalid, J. Dowdall, M. Hess, D. Mollá and R. Schwitter. Towards Answer Extraction: An Application to Technical Domains, ECAI-2002, Lyon, 21-26 July, In F. van Harmelen (ed.): ECAI 2002, Proceedings of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pp. 460-464, 2002.

R. Dale, D. Mollá and R. Schwitter. Evangelising Language Technology: A Practically-Focused Undergraduate Program. In Proceedings of the ACL Workshop on Effective Tools and Methodologies for Teaching NLP and CL, 7th July, University of Pennsylvania, USA, pp. 27-32, 2002.

F. Rinaldi, M. Hess, D. Mollá, R. Schwitter, J. Dowdall, G. Schneider, R. Fournier. Answer Extraction in Technical Domains, in: A. Gelbukh, Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2276, pp. 360-369, Springer, 2002.

2001

R. Schwitter, D. Estival, C. Paris and A. Knott (eds). Proceedings of the 2001 Australasian Natural Language Processing Workshop, Macquarie University, Sydney, 2001.

K. Böttger, R. Schwitter, D. Richards, O. Aguilera, D. Mollá. Reconciling Use Cases via Controlled Language and Graphical Models, INAP 2001, The Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Applications of Prolog, 20-22 October 2001, The University of Tokyo, Japan, pp. 186-195, October 2001.

D. Mollá, R. Schwitter. From Plain English to Controlled English, Proceedings of the 2001 Australasian Natural Language Processing Workshop, 20th April 2001, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, pp. 77-83, April 2001.

2000

W. Vasconcelos, R. Schwitter, D. Mollá, J. Cavalcanti. Implementing Prolog-Run WWW Sites, INAP 2000, The Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Applications of Prolog, 20-22 October 2000, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 60-65, 2000.

D. Mollá, R. Schwitter, M. Hess, R. Fournier. ExtrAns, an Answer Extraction System, Traitement Automatique des Langues, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 495-519, December 2000.

D. Mollá, G. Schneider, R. Schwitter, M. Hess. Answer Extraction using a Dependency Grammar in ExtrAns, in Traitement Automatique des Langues, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 127-156, November 2000.

W. Vasconcelos, R. Schwitter, D. Mollá, J. Cavalcanti. Implementing Prolog-Run WWW Sites, Technical Report 2000.04, Department of Information Technology, University of Zurich, June 2000.

R. Schwitter, D. Mollá, R. Fournier, M. Hess. Answer Extraction: Towards better Evaluations of NLP Systems,  Proceedings of the Workshop on "Reading Comprehension Tests as Evaluation for Computer-Based Language Understanding Systems", ANLP-NAACL, Seattle, Washington, May 4, 2000, pp. 20-27, 2000.

1999

R. Schwitter, D. Mollá, M. Hess. ExtrAns - Answer Extraction from Technical Documents by Minimal Logical Forms and Selective Highlighting. The Third International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation,  Batumi, Georgia,  September 12-16, 1999.

N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel, R. Schwitter. Attempto Controlled English (ACE), Language Manual, Version 3.0, Technical Report ifi-99.03, University of Zurich, August 1999.

N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel, R. Schwitter. Attempto Controlled English - Not Just Another Logic Specification Language, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1559, Springer, pp. 1-20, 1999.

1998

N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel, R. Schwitter. Attempto Controlled English (ACE), Language Manual, Version 2.0, Institut für Informatik, Universität Zürich, 1998.

R. Schwitter. Kontrolliertes Englisch für Anforderungsspezifikationen, Dissertation, Institut für Informatik, Universität Zürich, 1998.

1997

N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel, R. Schwitter. Attempto - Englisch als (formale) Spezifikationssprache, in: F. Bry, B. Freitag, D. Seipel (eds.), Proceedings of the Twelfth Workshop on Logic Programming WLP '97, Munich, September 1997.

1996
R. Schwitter, N. E. Fuchs. Attempto Controlled English (ACE) - A Seemingly Informal Bridgehead in Formal Territory, Abstract, in: M. Maher (ed.), Proceedings of JICSLPī96 (Joint International Conference and Symposium on Logic Programming, Bonn, Germany, September 1996), p. 536, MIT Press, 1996.

R. Schwitter, N. E. Fuchs. Attempto Controlled English (ACE) - A Seemingly Informal Bridgehead in Formal Territory, Extended Abstract, in: N. E. Fuchs, U. Geske (eds.), Proceedings of the Poster Session at JICSLP´96  (Joint International Conference and Symposium on Logic Programming, Bonn, Germany, September 1996), GMD Studien Nr. 296, pp. 169-180, 1996.

R. Schwitter, N. E. Fuchs. Attempto - From Specifications in Controlled Natural Language towards Executable Specifications, GI EMISA Workshop, Natürlichsprachlicher Entwurf von Informationssystemen, Tutzing, Germany, May 1996.

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. Attempto Controlled English (ACE), CLAW 96, First International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications, University of Leuven, Belgium, March 1996.

1995

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. Attempto - Controlled Natural Language for Requirements Specifications, Seventh ILPS '95 Workshop on Logic Programming Environments, Portland, Oregon, December 1995.

Norbert E. Fuchs, Rolf Schwitter. Specifying Logic Programs in Controlled Natural Language, Institutsbericht 95.17, Institut für Informatik, Universität Zürich, 1995.

N. E. Fuchs, B. Hamberger, R. Schwitter. Attempto - Specifications in Controlled Natural Language, Proceedings WLP 95, GLP/ALP/GI Logic Programming Workshop, Technische Universität Wien, September 1995.

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. Attempto - Specifications in Controlled Natural Language, Extended Abstract in 10 Pictures, Proceedings ESPRIT CompulogNet Area Meeting on Program Development, Utrecht, Netherlands, September 1995.

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. Specifying Logic Programs in Controlled Natural Language, Proceedings CLNLP 95, ELSNET/COMPULOG-NET/EAGLES Workshop on Computational Logic for Natural Language Processing, University of Edinburgh, April 1995.

1994

N. E. Fuchs, H. F. Hofmann, R. Schwitter. Specifying Logic Programs in Controlled Natural Language, Institutsbericht 94.17, Institut für Informatik, Universität Zürich, 1994.

Poster Presentation

R. Schwitter, A. Ljungberg. How to Write a Document in Controlled Natural Language, 7th Australasian Document Computing Symposium, Sydney, Australia, December 16, 2002.

R. Schwitter, N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel. Attempto - Controlled English (ACE) for Software Specifications, presented by U. Schwertel at CLAW 98, Second International Workshop on Controlled Language Applications, Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, May 1998.

R. Schwitter, N. E. Fuchs, U. Schwertel. Attempto - Controlled English as a (Formal) Specification Language, ESEC/FSE '97, University of Zurich, September 1997.

N. E. Fuchs, R. Schwitter. ACE - Controlled English for Executable Specifications, INAP'96, 9th Exhibition and Symposium on Industrial Applications of Prolog, Tokyo Japan, October 1996.

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Last modified: 22nd January 2010, Rolf Schwitter