Today we welcome visiting researchers Núria Casellas and Joan-Josep (Pep) Vallbé from the Institute of Law and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.  So far, they’ve survived navigation across New York City during a major thunderstorm at rush hour, and at this writing are believed to be somewhere in the Catskills recovering from the experience.

Over the next two years, they’ll be working with us on a variety of projects aimed at creating rich legal data on the Semantic Web.  We particularly want to explore the possibilities for cross-jurisdictional retrieval of regulations,  answering questions like,  “If I know what the reg is in the US, how can I automatically retrieve the comparable regulation in Spain?”.  We’re particularly excited about projects like this because they can really help small businesses operate and compete in a global marketplace, and help guarantee that regulations on matters like food safety can be easily discovered by anyone, anywhere.  We’ve also talked about possible projects in the area of data privacy and a variety of other areas.  There’s lots to learn and explore.

Detailed information about Núria is here;  Pep’s blog is here.  We’re really looking forward to learning from them.