Ian Robert Horrocks One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: is a professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

in the UK and a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

Oriel College, Oxford Oriel College () is Colleges of the University of Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title for ...

. His research focuses on

knowledge representation and reasoning Knowledge representation (KR) aims to model information in a structured manner to formally represent it as knowledge in knowledge-based systems whereas knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, or KR²) also aims to understand, reason, and ...

, particularly

ontology languages Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

description logic Description logics (DL) are a family of formal knowledge representation languages. Many DLs are more expressive than propositional logic but less expressive than first-order logic. In contrast to the latter, the core reasoning problems for DLs are ...

and optimised tableaux

decision procedure Decision may refer to: Law and politics *Judgment (law), as the outcome of a legal case * Landmark decision, the outcome of a case that sets a legal precedent * ''Per curiam'' decision, by a court with multiple judges Books * ''Decision'' (novel ...

Education

Horrocks completed his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

(BSc),

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

(MSc) and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

degrees in the

Department of Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

Research and career

After several years as a

lecturer Lecturer is an academic rank within many universities, though the meaning of the term varies somewhat from country to country. It generally denotes an academic expert who is hired to teach on a full- or part-time basis. They may also conduct re ...

, senior lecturer, reader then Professor in Manchester, Horrocks moved to the University of Oxford in 2008. His work on tableau reasoning for very expressive description logics has formed the basis of most description logic reasoning systems in use today, including Racer, FaCT++, HermiT and Pellet. Horrocks was jointly responsible for development of the OIL and

DAML+OIL The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe taxonomies and classification networks, essentially defining the structure of knowledge for vario ...

ontology languages, and he played a central role in the development of the

Web Ontology Language The Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a family of Knowledge representation and reasoning, knowledge representation languages for authoring Ontology (information science), ontologies. Ontologies are a formal way to describe Taxonomy, taxonomies and ...

(OWL). These languages and associated tools have been used by

Open Biomedical Ontologies The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry is a group of people who build and maintain ontologies related to the life sciences. The OBO Foundry establishes a set of principles for ontology development for creating a suite of ...

(OBO) Consortium, the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ...

(NCI) in America, the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

(UN)

Food and Agriculture Organization The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; . (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, , translates ...

(FAO), the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

(W3C) Ian Horrocks introduction on the www-webont-wg mailing list
at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and a range of major corporations and government agencies. His research is partly funded by the

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British UK Research Councils, Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical scienc ...

(EPSRC). Horrocks served as

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

of ''

Journal of Web Semantics The ''Journal of Web Semantics'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It covers knowledge technologies, ontology, software agents, databases and the semantic grid, information retrieval, human language technology, ...

'' from 2012 until late 2022. Together with the other editors-in-chief at the time, he resigned from his position at the

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

journal, and became editor-in-chief of the newly founded

diamond open access Diamond open access refers to academic texts (such as monographs, edited collections, and journal articles) published/distributed/preserved with no fees to either reader or author. Alternative labels include platinum open access, non-commercial o ...

journal Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge. Horrocks also served as program chair of the 1st

International Semantic Web Conference The International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) is a series of academic conferences and the premier international forum for the Semantic Web, Linked Data and Knowledge Graph Community. Here, scientists, industry specialists, and practitioners m ...

(ISWC) in 2002 and as the general chair of ISWC 2010.International Semantic Web Conference 2010, Organization
Retrieved 4 May 2023.

Awards and honours

In 2020 Horrocks was awarded the BCS Lovelace Medal in recognition of his significant contribution to the advancement of

reasoning system In information technology a reasoning system is a software system that generates conclusions from available knowledge using logical techniques such as deduction and induction. Reasoning systems play an important role in the implementation of art ...

s. Horrocks was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

(FRS) in 2011 and won the Roger Needham Award of the

British Computer Society image:Maurice Vincent Wilkes 1980 (3).jpg, Sir Maurice Wilkes served as the first President of BCS in 1957. The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned ...

(BCS) in 2005.

Oxford Semantic Technologies

In 2017 Horrocks co-founded the

University spin-off University spin-offs (also known as university spin-outs) are companies that transform technological inventions developed from university research that are likely to remain unexploited otherwise. They are a subcategory of research spin-offs. Prom ...

Oxford Semantic Technologies Limited with two of his colleagues; Bernardo Cuenca Grau and Boris Motik.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Horrocks, Ian British artificial intelligence researchers Living people Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester Members of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford Fellows of the British Computer Society Fellows of the Royal Society 1958 births People associated with the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester Semantic Web people