Frank van Harmelen Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group
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Picture by Irma Bulkens

MIT Press is now selling the 2nd edition of the "Semantic Web Primer". It's still the most widely used textbook on the Semantic Web: Overview, XML, RDF, RDF Schema, OWL, rules, applications, ontology engineering. Now also available as an e-book in the MIT Press CISnet collection. Take a look at the book's website, at www.semanticwebprimer.org Translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Greek and Spanish (forthcoming)

Elsevier is now selling our Handbook of Knowledge Representation. The Table of Contents reads like a who-is-who in Knowledge Representation of the past 20 years. It is the most comprehensive and authoritative reference book on Knowledge Representation on the market.

(there is also a more detailed view)

Research interests

Read the summary below, or jump to my on-line publications.

I am professor of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning in the AI Department, and I lead the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group. In this group, we work on a number of related topics:

• Approximate reasoning: Classical logic-based reasoning provides either a correct answer or no answer at all. We study alternative forms of reasoning which provide approximate answers under suboptimal circumstances. This allows for more gradual correctness criteria, and can be exploited in anytime algorithms.
  Key publications: KAIS'03 (behaviour of KBS under degrading input); WWW'07 (approximate ontology matching).
• Medical protocols: Medical protocols describe a medical procedure for a given category of patients. We study KR languages for representing such protocols, and perform various forms of reasoning with such protocols (verification, critiquing, configuration etc).
  Key publications: AIM'06 (improving medical protocols by formal methods); AIME'07 (model-checking on medical guidelines).
• Semantic Web: The growth of the Web has resulted in a very large on-line body of weakly structured information. KR&R techniques help in searching, navigating, visualising and maintaining such weakly structured information.
  Key publications: CIA'06 (Semantic Web Research anno 2006); IEEE-IC'07 (Unifying Reasoning and Search to Web Scale).

Teaching

• College Kaleidoscoop AI

In the past:

• Web-based Knowledge Representation (course designer, author of book )
• Intelligent Web Applications
• College Kennissystemen (course designer)
• Programmeren in Prolog (course designer)
• Praktikum Programmeren in Prolog
• Onderdeel Prolog voor Programmeertalen
• Praktikum Representatie & Zoeken
• Praktikum Kennissytemen
• FAAI

Brief CV

Frank van Harmelen (1960) is a professor in Knowledge Representation & Reasoning in the AI department (Faculty of Science) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. After studying mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam, he moved to the Department of AI in Edinburgh, 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 Prof. Alan Bundy on proof planning for inductive theorem proving. After his PhD research, he moved back to Amsterdam where he worked from 1990 to 1995 in the SWI Department under Prof. Wielinga, on the use of reflection in expert systems, 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, where he co-lead the On-To-Knowledge project, on of the first Semantic Web projects. He was appointed full professor in 2002, and is leading the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group. He was one of the co-designers of the OWL Web Ontology Language Language. He is currently scientific director the LarKC project (http://www.larkc.eu), aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale semantic web reasoning. His interests include

• Approximate reasoning,
• Semantic Web
• Medical Protocols

He has published three books (on meta-level inference, on knowledge-based systems, and on the Semantic Web) and over 100 research papers, most of which can be found on-line.

How to reach me

	Diary for this week
	Frank.van.Harmelen@cs.vu.nl
	(+31) - 20 - 598 7731 (+31) - 20 - 598 7483 (secr)
	(+31) - 84 - 221 4294 (delivered to me by email)
	AI Department Division of Mathematics and Computer Science  Faculty of Sciences room: T3.57  Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam  de Boelelaan 1081a  1081HV Amsterdam  The Netherlands		Home: Archimedesplantsoen 6 1098KC Amsterdam tel: (+31) - 20 - 638 5422 (Click on the map for directions) Location in Yahoo Maps Location in Google Maps