Grant fosters memory manipulation

A group of researchers from

(RGU)

of

have beaten off competition from institutions across the

to secure a £96,074 grant.

They will support collaboration with the Indian Institution of Technology in Chennai, and will work with organisations such as the European Space Agency.

The grant is part of the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI) Awards that were announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in New Delhi earlier this year, and at a ceremony in London by Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell.

Dr. Nirmalie Wiratunga, principal researcher on the project, Dr. Robert Lothian and Professor Susan Craw from RGU were awarded the grant to fund student and staff exchanges with the Chennai Group, led by Dr. Deepak Khemani.

The project, entitled 'Reusing Experiences from Text', will combine the expertise of both groups to develop a textual case-based reasoning framework, which manipulates organizational knowledge by storing and redistributing corporate memories that are acquired from the organization's members.

This framework will enable the exploitation of large amounts of experience contained in electronic text. Examples include lessons-learnt documents, reports, email communications (corporate and personal) and FAQs. Real data will be provided by industrial and scientific stakeholders. The European Space Agency and IBM India are currently contributing with more organisations to be announced.