Named Entity Extraction and Disambiguation for Informal Text The Missing Link

Dedicated to the soul of my father Acknowledgments " I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13) " I always say that I am lucky. I am lucky because I always get wonderful and kind people surrounding me. I am lucky to have Peter Apers as my promoter. He supported my research directions and gave me freedom and independence. His words always gave me confidence and insistence to complete my PhD. I am lucky to have Maurice van Keulen as my daily supervisor. Although we passed some foggy times, he never lost his positive attitude. He was always there to give advice , optimism, support and ideas. Besides learning how to be a good researcher, I have learned from Maurice how to be a supervisor, which is something I would definitely need through my academic career. Words could never express my sincere gratitude to Maurice. I am lucky to have Willem Jonker, Franciska de Jong, and Antal van den Bosch as my committee members. I would like to thank them for their careful reading of my thesis. I am lucky to be a member of the databases group at the university of Twente. I would like to thank them all for providing me the pleasant working climate. Thanks for I would like to dedicate a special thanks to couple of them Ida den Hamer-Mulder and Juan Amiguet. Ida, the dynamo of the group. Ida helped me with my settlement in the Netherlands. She offered help even for things beyond her duty. The DB group is really lucky to have Ida as their secretary. Juan, my office mate, the person who knows at least one thing about everything. The man who is willing to help at any time. Juan, I am grateful for your help and for our nice conversations we had together discussing almost everything from food recipes to astronomy. I am lucky to spend my PhD life period at this peaceful quiet spot of the world called Enschede. In Enschede life is easy! I would like also to express my gratitude towards the Egyptian Coptic community in the Netherlands who helped me to overcome my home viii sickness. Thanks for bishop Arsany, father Maximos, father Pavlos, I am lucky because I did an internship at the highly reputable databases and information systems group of the Max Planck Institute of Informatics in Saarbrucken, Ger-many. I learned …