The 2^nd Ontoverse Project Workshop took place in Schloss Mickeln, Düsseldorf, on November 20th and 21st 2007. Several expert talks and discussion workshops focused on current questions regarding ontologies, semantic applications and collaborative knowledge management in life sciences.

We thank the keynote speakers, the members of the Scientific Advisory Board and all other guests for fruitful discussions and suggestions!

Keynote talks:

• MorphOntology – A Step towards Formalization of Morphological Descriptions as an Example of Ontologies in Life Sciences.
  Lars Vogt & Peter Grobe (Freie Universität Berlin)
  
  
• Development, Semantic Integration, and Applications of Ontologies:  A Principled Top-Level Approach.
  Heinrich Herre (University of Leipzig)
  

• Semantic Integration of Ontologies – Advantages, Challenges and Importance for Semantic Applications.
  Zharko Aleksovski (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

• Applications of Bio-Ontologies – Current Solutions and Future Trends.
  Stefan Götz (CIPF Valencia)

• Ontologies and the Importance of Collaborative Knowledge Management in Science.
  Andrew Gibson (University of Manchester)

Wokshop/Discussion Topics:

• Collaborative Knowledge Management – Open Innovation in the Life Science Community?
  With expert statement by Matthias Hemmje (Fern-Universität Hagen), moderated by Arndt von Haeseler
  
  
• Practical Ontology Design – Current Ontology Editors, Cognitive Aspects, Methodologies and Best Practice.
  With expert statement by Heinrich Herre (University of Leipzig), moderated by Ullrich Hoppe
  
  
• Automatic Information Extraction – Fuel for Databases and Ontologies?
  With expert statement by Günter Neumann (DFKI) & Katina Bontcheva, moderated by Christof Rumpf
  
  
• Ontologies/Semantic Nets and Wikis in Practice – Between Costs and Benefits.
  With expert statementy by Heiko Haller (FZI Karlsruhe), moderated by Markus Schroll