computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
and
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
in Knowledge Representation & Reasoning in the AI department at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public university, public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in ...
. He was scientific director of the LarKC project (2008-2011), "aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale
semantic web
The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.
To enable the encoding o ...
reasoning."Homepage of Frank van Harmelen at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Retrieved 6 October 2008.
Biography
After studying mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam, Van Harmelen moved to the Department of AI of the
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
, where he was awarded a PhD in 1989 for his research on meta-level reasoning. While in Edinburgh, he "co-developed a logic-based toolkit for expert systems, and worked with
Alan Bundy
Alan Richard Bundy (born 18 May 1947) is a professor at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh,http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bundy/ Professor Alan Bundy's website known for his contributions to automated reasoning, especially ...
on proof planning for inductive theorem proving".
After his PhD research, he moved back to
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
where he worked from 1990 to 1995 in the SWI Department under Professor
expert systems
In artificial intelligence (AI), an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by Automated reasoning system, reasoning through bodies of knowl ...
, on the formal underpinnings of the CommonKADS methodology for Knowledge-Based Systems. In 1995 he joined the AI research group at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public university, public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in ...
, where he co-lead the On-To-Knowledge project, one of the first Semantic Web projects. He was appointed full professor in 2002, and is leading the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group. Currently he is scientific director the LarKC project aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale
semantic web
The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.
To enable the encoding o ...
reasoning.
Van Harmelen was elected a member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam.
In addition to various advisory a ...
in 2017.
In 2019, Van Harmelen received a Zwaartekracht grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for The Hybrid Intelligence Center
Work
Van Harmelen's research interests include
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
,
knowledge representation
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 ...
and the
semantic web
The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.
To enable the encoding o ...
, approximate reasoning and Medical Protocols. He was one of the co-designers 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) and the
Ontology Inference Layer
OIL (Ontology Inference Layer or Ontology Interchange Language) can be regarded as an ontology infrastructure for the Semantic Web. OIL is based on concepts developed in Description Logic (DL) and frame-based systems and is compatible with RDFS.
...
(OIL), and has published books on meta-level inference, on knowledge-based systems, and on the Semantic Web.
Publications
Van Harmelen has published several books and over 100 research papers, Books:
* 1989. ''Logic-Based Knowledge Representation''. With P. Jackson and H. Reichgelt. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989. .
* 1991. ''Meta-level Inference Systems F. van Harmelen. Research Notes in AI.'' Pitmann, Morgan Kaufmann, London, San Mateo, California, 1991.
* 2003. ''Towards the semantic web: ontology-driven knowledge management'' With John Davies and Dieter Fensel (eds.) John Wiley & Sons, 2002,
* 2004. ''A Semantic Web Primer (Cooperative Information Systems)''. With Grigoris Antoniou. MIT Press.
* 2004. ''Information Sharing on the Semantic Web''. With Heiner Stuckenschmidt. Springer.
* 2008. ''Handbook of Knowledge Representation''. With V. Lifschitz and B. Porter, Elsevier, 2008. .
Articles, a selection:
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