Over the past decade, the World Wide Web has become a major medium for people to share and exchange information and services. However, the tremendous amount of resources available online makes it difficult for people to find the right solutions to their problems. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of software agents that act on behalf of their users to help alleviate the problems of information overload and resource interoperability on the Internet. As much of the existing web has been designed for human consumption, it is hard for computers to utilize such information automatically. We will look at two important recent developments in web technologies: to add meaning to the web, thereby creating a "semantic web", and to add interoperability via various web services standards. This talk will conclude by explaining how software agents can take advantage of the semantic web and web services to help people achieve tasks more easily and effectively.
Jane Hsu received her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1991. She is an associate professor of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University. Her research interests include intelligent agents, data mining, mobile robots, and e-commerce technologies.
Prof. Hsu serves on the editorial board of Intelligent Data Analysis - An International Journal, and is actively involved in many key international conferences as organizers and members of the program committee. She is the Program co-Chair for the 2005 IEEE International conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce, and e-Service. She is a member of AAAI, IEEE, ACM, and the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society, an executive committee member of TAAI, and is working to establish the Asian-Pacific Chapter of the IEEE Technical Committee on E-Commerce.
Return to Santa Clara Valley Chapter IEEE Computer Society page.