Semantic Annotation for Process Models: - Department of Computer ...

Preface
This thesis is submitted to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
for the doctoral degree – Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.). The work has been carried out
at the Information System Group (IS-group), Department of Computer and Information
Science (IDI), under supervision of Professor Arne Sølvberg.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my principle supervisor — Professor
Arne Sølvberg. I am grateful that Arne became my supervisor and gave the guidance
in conducting my doctoral research work. I thank Arne for his constant encouragement
and precise advice all the way through. He helped me a lot to clarify the research
issues, especially during the thesis edition phase. His professional working attitudes
have also influenced me, from which I gain the benefits for my future carrier.
I am thankful to my second supervisor — Professor John Krogstie, especially for advising
me on the research topics on process modeling and quality evaluation framework.
He also provided me access to the resources such as process modeling languages and
tools. I also thank Professor Mihhail Matskin, my third supervisor, who enlightened
me with some ideas from the semantic Web services. I would like to thank Professor
Arne Jørgen Berre for hosting my visit at SINTEF in Oslo and providing the working
environment where I finished the implementation of the prototype.
I am lucky to have knowledgeable, friendly and helpful colleagues around during
my work in IS-group. I especially acknowledge Darijus Strašunskas for the productive
collaboration, inspiring and constructive discussions and the generous and sincere help
in reviewing my papers as well as proof reading of the thesis. Thank Jennifer Sampson
for exchanging study and life experiences with me when we shared the office for four
years. I also thank her very much for the proof reading of the final version of the
thesis. I thank Sari Hakkarainen for her constructive advice on the scientific writing.
Many thanks go to Xiaomeng Su for the personal communication and encouragement.
Thanks to Csaba Veres, Peep Küngas, Raimundas Matulevi˘cius, Lillian Hella, Rune
Molden for all the support, talks and discussions.
Thanks to the members of the INTEROP project for providing a platform for the
development and exchange of research issues on ontology and semantic interoperability.
The exemplars in this work were adapted from the INTEROP project.
I appreciate all the people, past and present, at IDI for providing the needed working
environment and atmosphere. Warm thanks to my friends in Norway and abroad for
the joy I shared with them and the help received from them.
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