Bill Andersen

Bill Andersen (andersen-at-ontologyworks-dot-com)

Chief Scientist

HIGHFLEET, Inc. (formerly Ontology Works)

3600 O'Donnell Street, Suite 600

Baltimore, MD 21224

USA.

(somewhat dated) Where I am now: I'm an employee and one of the founders of Ontology Works, a Maryland-based software product company that builds ontology-driven software -- Ontology engineering, ontology-driven DBMS, and ontology-driven semantic integration systems.

Where I've been: I received degrees in Russian language and computer science from the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). I worked for 13 years for the US National Security Agency, most of which was spent in research, specifically in database integration. Concurrently, I was a research assistant and PhD student at UMCP in Jim Hendler's lab, where I worked on scalable KR systems. I pretty much gave up the PhD in 1998 when I resigned from the Government to start Ontology Works. While there (2001-2) I spent a year and a half at Texas A&M studying logic and metaphysics with Chris Menzel.

My research interests mirror closely what Ontology Works is working on. Generally I am interested in applications of logic and metaphysics to building more powerful modeling and data integration systems. To this end I've spent some effort working with Chris Welty and Nicola Guarino to improve OntoClean, worked on the design of Common Logic (CL) and the IKL knowedge interchange language with Chris Menzel, Pat Hayes and others. One issue I am especially interested in is characterizing the difference (if any) between ontologies and data models, and between conventional data management and ontology-driven systems. I think there is much work to be done in that area. Most recently I'm involved in the design of OW's new data integration system. Can't say much more than that. Stay tuned.