This November Helioid has applied for an Information and Intelligent Systems grant valued at $3,000,000 over a 3 year period. On another note, we did not receive the STEM grant but, thankfully there are always more out there, like this IIS grant. We applied to the information integration and informatics program. Below is the project summary which we submitted:
Project Summary
The proposed project will build upon established theory in knowledge representation to develop a set of multi-view clustering algorithms; utilize these algorithms to support a set of graphical search refinement tools; systematically apply these tools to the domains in which they would be of the greatest utility. The project will develop knowledge management tools that will enable users to browse large document collections with increased dexterity, efficiency, and efficacy, by applying novel hybrid clustering/topic-modelling algorithms to the collections. These hybrid clustering algorithms are derived by generating various directed graphs of documents, links between documents (e.g. bibliographical citations, hyperlinks and text similarity), and relative weights of the links, and applying a spectral clustering technique to find the optimal clustering given the different graphs. The project will develop a suite of information visualization schemas which will intuitively represent the topic model structure of a given corpus derived by these algorithms, which will support a set of interactive graphical search refinement tools. The document clusterings and their graphical representations will be continuously refined by feedback generated by user activity. As users interact with the search refinement tools, information regarding their interests and intentions is gleaned from their browsing behavior and is then used to refine the clustering algorithms to reflect the users’ particular needs. These tools will facilitate explorative search and will better enable understanding of the bodies of knowledge encompassed by the document collections.
Intellectual Merit of the Proposed Activity
The knowledge management tools developed by the project expand upon recent innovations in topic modeling and information visualization. Implementations of these innovative approaches to knowledge management have already proven successful in stimulating innovation amongst professionals within specific academic disciplines. A wide range of studies have explored the use of hierarchically structured representations of corpuses of published work and graphic tools such as concept maps or category collages, to detect emerging research paradigms, identify leaders or exemplars within research subject areas, and even point the way to new research topics. These studies accomplish this by using concept maps and category collages to illustrate the conceptual connections between different papers, collections of papers, or different disciplines. The primary problem the project addresses is then to find and deploy an optimal synthesis of these different approaches to knowledge management. The proposed project applies these innovations to collections of scientific publications and the large collections of documents and information available on the web. This enables productive explorative search of these corpuses, and a means of gaining a more substantial understanding of the overarching ideas in a subject area, by graphically representing the conceptual connections between documents pertaining to a given knowledge domain. Moreover, the project increases the involvement of relative novices to given academic subjects by getting educators and students acquainted with and involved in contemporary research relating to a given lesson.
Broader Impact of the Proposed Activity
The project builds a wide network of researchers, students and educators who will use the resources developed by the project to more effectively discover new information or gain an understanding of a subject area through the exploration of a corpus of published work in that area. By enabling researchers to more effectively locate existing research related to their own — of which they were previously unaware — and to familiarize themselves with peripherally related research, the proposed project’s knowledge management tools will facilitate an acceleration in the pace of scientific innovation. By presenting users with an intuitive, navigable representation of the topics studied in a given subject area, and their relationships to one another, these knowledge management tools will allow relative novices to more efficiently gain an understanding of these subject areas. By applying these knowledge management tools to general web search, the project will attract a large user base from the general public. Making the scientific research tools discussed above publicly available, in conjunction with the web search service, will create a means of disseminating information, and more importantly, promoting an understanding of ongoing scientific research.