User:Mrpatrickwest/Tetherless World Constellation

Tetherless World Constellation (TWC) is a constellation lab at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute located in the Winslow Building on the RPI Campus in Troy, NY, USA of multidisciplinary researchers who study the scientific and engineering principles that underlie the Web, to enhance the Web's reach beyond the desktop and laptop computer, and develops new technologies and languages that expand the capabilities of the Web under three themes: Future Web, Xinformatics and Semantic Foundations.

Since its inception the World Wide Web has changed the ways people work, play, communicate, collaborate, and educate. There is, however, a growing realization among researchers across a number of disciplines that without new research aimed at understanding the current, evolving and potential Web, we may be missing or delaying opportunities for new and revolutionary capabilities. If we want to be able to model the Web, if we want to understand the architectural principles that have provided for its growth, and if we want to be sure that it supports the basic social values of trustworthiness, personal control over information, and respect for social boundaries, then we must pursue a research agenda that targets the Web and its use as a primary focus of attention.

TWC will address this emerging area of "Web Science," focusing on the World Wide Web and it's future use. Faculty in the constellation will explore the research and engineering principles that underlie the Web, will enhance the Web's reach beyond the desktop and laptop computer, and will develop new technologies and languages that expand the capabilities of the Web. We will use powerful scientific and mathematical techniques from many disciplines to explore the modeling of the Web from network- and information- centric views. Our goals will include making the next generation web natural to use while being responsive to the growing variety of policy and social needs, whether in the area of privacy, intellectual property, general compliance, or provenance. The Tetherless World Constellation will design new techniques to explore social, scientific, and legal impacts of the evolving technologies deployed on the Web.

TWC goals include making the next generation web natural to use while being responsive to the growing variety of policy, educational, societal, and scientific needs. Research areas include: web science, privacy, intellectual property, general compliance, Web-based medical and health systems, semantic escience, data-science, semantic data frameworks, next generation virtual observatories, semantic data and knowledge integration, ontologies, semantic rules and query, semantic applications, data and information visualization, and knowledge provenance, trust and explanation for science.

Constellation
A Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is a research lab that brings together a number of stars (Constellation Chairs) in a specific research area, bringing together faculty, staff and students from a number of the school's departments. The Tetherless World Constellation brings together students from the Computer Science, Earth and Environmental Science, and Cognitive Science schools to conduct research in the various areas of the Semantic Web and Science Informatics.

The "stars" of the Tetherless World Constellation, and Constellation Chairs, are:
 * 1) . James_Hendler - Information Technology and Web Science, Cognitive Science, Computer Science
 * 2) . Deborah_McGuinness - Cognitive Science, Computer Science
 * 3) . Peter_Arthur_Fox - Earth and Environmental Science, Computer Science