Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The VU Division W&I, the Division of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Free University Amsterdam, brings to the project its extensive experience in the areas of knowledge management, ontological engineering, and distributed systems and intelligent agents analysis and design. For example, VU Division W&I researchers have delivered key contributions to internationally renowned methodologies, frameworks and languages for knowledge engineering and management such as CommonKADS, DESIRE, and (ML)2 . Related to this, the VU is well known for its recent work in ontology development (e.g. (KA)2 , PhysSys) and intelligent and multi-agent systems (e.g. HomeBots).
The VU Division W&I represents a long-standing international experience in direct as well as consortium-based industry-university collaborations, in addition to the fact that it is rated as the best academic research site in computer science in The Netherlands. Apart from direct joint work with industry, VU researchers have been active over the years in a wide range of European efforts, ranging from EU Esprit basic research (e.g. REFLECT, DRUMS, IBROW), large RTD projects (e.g. KADS-II, OLMECO, On-to-knowledge), networks of excellence (e.g. AgentLink), to industry take-up and user leveraging projects (e.g. TRACKS).
Dr. Dieter Fensel obtained in 1989 a Diploma in Social Science at the Free University of Berlin and a Diploma in Computer Science at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1993 he was awarded a Doctor's degree in economic science (Dr. rer. pol.) at the University of Karlsruhe. From November 1989 to July 1994 he worked as a research scientist at the University of Karlsruhe, Institute AIFB. From August 1994 to October 1996 he worked as a guest scientist at the University of Amsterdam, department SWI in the group of Prof. Wielinga. From November 1996 to October 1999, he worked as a senior scientist at the institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe. In December 1998 he received his Habilitation in Applied Computer Science. Since Ocotber 1999, he works as a Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His current research interests include knowledge engineering, knowledge management, intelligent information integration and electronic commerce.
He has published around 150 papers as books and journal, book, conference, and workshop contributions. He organised around 50 scientific workshops and conferences and has edited several special issues of scientific journals. He is associated editor of Knowledge and Information Systems: An International Journal (KAIS), Springer-Verlag, and IEEE Intelligent Systems. He is involved in several national and internal research projects, for example, in the running IST projects IBROW (IST-1999-19005) and On-to-Knowledge (IST Project IST-1999-10132). He is the project coordinator in On-to-Knowledge. He also received grants from the Human Capital and Mobility programme of the EC and the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft. He gave more than 40 courses at Berufsakademien, Fachhochschulen and Universities. Topics were about: Formal Specification Languages, Software Engineering, Data Warehouse, World Wide Web, Electronic Commerce, and Agent-based Information Access. He supervised around thirty master theses and PhDs
Dieter Fensel is the author of the books Ontologies: Silver Bullet for Knowledge Management and Electronic Commerce, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000; Problem-Solving Methods: Understanding, Development, Description, and Reuse, Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), no 1791, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000; and The Knowledge Acquisition and Representation Language KARL, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Boston, 1995.
Prof. Frank van Harmelen (1960) studied mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam. In 1989, he was awarded a PhD from the Department of AI in Edinburgh for his research on meta-level reasoning. After his PhD research, he moved back to Amsterdam where he was involved in various ESPRIT projects (REFLECT, KADS), and where he lead the development of the (ML)2 language for formally specifying Knowledge-Based Systems. In 1995 he joined the AI research group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he is professor of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. He is currently involved in a number of Fifth Framework projects that are concerned with applying Knowledge Representation Techniques the the Web (IBROW, On-To-Knowledge). He is author of a book on meta-level inference, editor of a book on knowledge-based systems, has published over 60 research papers, and is one of the most-cited Dutch AI scientists.
