Chris & Naomi Hathaway Home

Well, I finally finished one application for graduate school (MIT), and here is my "Statement of Purpose:"

Graduate study is a very natural path for me.  

Research and its inherent qualities have intrigued me for many years now; achieving
original solutions to real-world problems gives me motivation for continued learning
and exploring.  My ultimate goal in gaining a doctoral degree is not simply to excel
in an area of expertise, but to learn how to gain expertise and focus in on a particular
challenge.  To be able to grow so familiar with an issue that I can have the capability
to make it better, faster, more efficient, or to synthesize a brand new design is
a skill I strongly desire.  The types of attributes required to do well in graduate
school will correlate strongly with my long term professional goals.  I hope to continue
to perform research throughout my career, either in industry or academia.


Graduate study in the Semantic Web is a very natural path for me.  

My greatest interests lie in the ability to organize and handle information.  The
web has undeniably become the largest and most unmanageable source of knowledge.
I often grow frustrated when I am unable to find what I know exists, simply because
the computer does not understand data in the same way that I do.  It is interesting
to see the newest technologies under the "Web 2.0" banner (folksonomy, wikis, etc.)
attempt to manually bestow meaning to this information, but it is simply too overwhelming
of a task.  Giving meaning to the current Web requires intelligently-designed, semantically-enabled
tools to help scale the process through automation.  I believe the Semantic Web to
contain real solutions to current setbacks, and I want to be a part of bringing the
ideas of a machine understandable web into reality.  

I imagine that my part in this process will revolve around ontologies.  Ontologies
seem to be one of the more pertinent tools in a successful Semantic Web, and I have
a strong background in their creation, maintenance, and interpretation.  For nearly
two years, I have studied description logics, conceptual modeling, and some of the
current ontology standards such as RDF and OWL.  For the last 6 months, I have worked
with Dr. David Embley on an NSF-funded research project entitled TANGO (Table ANalysis
for the Generation of Ontologies), whose goal is to effectively extract structured
data (i.e. HTML tables) from the Web to infer useful domain ontologies.  This experience
has given me a high level of proficiency in the field of ontology research, which
I will use in my continued graduate education.


Graduate study in the Semantic Web at MIT is a very natural path for me.  

I consider MIT the birthplace of the Semantic Web, starting with the vision of Tim
Berners-Lee, and the strongest force in realizing the goals of semantic technologies.
 Specifically, I would like to study with the Decentralized Information Group (DIG)
as part of the CSAIL department.  I could see myself working in several areas within
this group, but three options particularly fit well with my research objectives.
 First, I believe my background in ontology generation and analysis would make me
a great candidate for continuation of the Ontaria project.  Second, I would be interested
in working on the SIMILE project, specifically that part which deals with the interconnections
of ontologies and metadata. And finally, I could work on integrating the ontology-based
data extraction research I have been involved with into the vast array of semantic
web tools already developed at MIT.


In short, I feel that MIT can provide the best opportunity for the objectives and
goals in my educational and professional career, and my interest and experience in
the Semantic Web will, in turn, greatly benefit the research efforts of this university.

I probably should have finished and put it up earlier, so people could comment on what I could possibly improve, but oh well, take it or leave it.