Ontologies are important tools for structuring the working knowledge of an application domain. They are used to build automated systems that support human domain experts, such as medical practitioners, engineers, and business analysts. Ontology Engineering describes a collection of techniques that support the whole ontology life cycle: the creation of an ontology, forming links with other ontologies, ontology updates, and repairing the ontology.

This lecture introduces students to the field of ontology engineering, from the point of view of the standard ontology language OWL 2, as well as its underlying formalization in description logics. Specifically, we will learn about different techniques that support ontology-engineers throughout the ontology life-cycle.

It is expected that students are acquainted with first-order logic. Knowledge of description logics and the semantic web is helpful, but not required.