Ontology Research Group - OLT Unit Researchers

Ontology, Language and Technology Unit related researchers

Barry Smith is Julian Park Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the University at Buffalo (New York, USA) and Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science in Saarbrücken, Germany. Smith’s current research focus is ontology and its applications in biomedicine and biomedical informatics, where he is working on projects relating to biomedical terminologies and electronic health records.

Thomas Bittner is a specialist in formal ontology and its applications in geospatial and biomedical informatics. His research interests include bioinformatics, formal ontology, qualitative spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal reasoning, approximate reasoning, representation and reasoning about vagueness and indeterminacy, medical information science, theoretical foundations of geographic information systems, spatial information science and formal geography.

Maureen Donnelly is a specialist in logic with applications to ontology-based reasoning in bioinformatics and other fields. Her research interests include also formal ontology, qualitative spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal reasoning, approximate reasoning, representation and reasoning about vagueness and indeterminacy, medical information science, theoretical foundations of geographic information systems, spatial information science and formal geography.

Robert Arp is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (as of June 1, 2007). He specializes in philosophy of biology and philosophy of mind with concentrations in metaphysics, logic, and bioethics. Currently, he is doing research in foundational ontology and ontology content development related to the biomedical domain.

External, collaborating researchers

David Mark is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been a Research Scientist with the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis since its inception, and is now NCGIA Director for the Buffalo site.

Neil E. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo. His research interests fall at the intersection of metaphysics and the philosophy of science, concerning issues of causation, powers, and the laws of nature. His wider metaphysical interests extend to ontological questions concerning properties, possibility, and time, as well as formal ontological issues of persistence, constitution, and composition. He is presently working on problems in the philosophy of biology concerning the ontology of disease and dysfunction.

Fabian Neuhaus is a logician and formal ontologist working at NIST.