LeoObrst

= Leo Obrst =


 * Co-convener of the Ontolog community

Dr. Leo Obrst is a principal artificial intelligence scientist in the Information Discovery and Understanding department at MITRE’s (www.mitre.org) Command and Control Center, where he created and led, but now advises the Information Semantics Group (semantics, ontological engineering, knowledge representation and management), and has been involved in projects on Semantic Web rule/ontology interaction, context-based semantic interoperability, ontology-based knowledge management, conceptual search and information retrieval, metadata and taxonomy/thesaurus construction for community knowledge sharing, intelligent agent technology, semantic support for natural language processing, and ontology-based modeling of complex decision-making. He is also currently involved in many US federal government efforts to establish Communities of Interest (COI) vocabularies and ontoloiges for information sharing, including the development of universal and common models which span those COIs.

In 1999-2001, he was director of ontological engineering at VerticalNet.com, a department he formed to create ontologies in the product and service space to support Business-to-Business e-commerce. Leo's PhD is in theoretical linguistics with a concentration in formal semantics from the University of Texas-Austin. He has worked over 25 years in computational linguistics, knowledge representation, and in the past 15 years in ontological engineering and more recently in Semantic Web technologies. Leo has also been employed by Boeing, Software Development Group (a partner), Intelligent Business Systems, the Microelectronics Computer Corporation (MCC), Texas Instruments, SoftCraft, and Ohio Edison.

Leo is a member of the Executive Council of the newly formed International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA, http://www.iaoa.org/), the Executive Committee of the National Center for Ontological Research (NCOR, http://ncor.us/), and the chair of the NCOR Technical Committee. He was a member of the W3C Web Ontology Working Group (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/) that developed the Web Ontology Language OWL, 2002-2004. Along with PeterYim and KurtConrad, he co-founded the Ontolog Forum (http://ontolog.cim3.net) in 2002, an open community of practice which focuses on the promotion of ontological engineering and semantic technologies, and is also one of the co-champions of the Open Ontology Repository effort, with PeterYim and MikeDean (http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OpenOntologyRepository). He is a member of AAAI, LSA, and ACM. His research interests include semantic interoperability/integration, automated reasoning, formalization of context for ontology mapping and merging, and formal upper ontologies, Semantic Web rules, hybrid logic, answer set programming, and the application of formal ontology and formal semantics to ontological engineering. Leo is on the editorial board of the journal of Applied Ontology (http://www.applied-ontology.org/). He has been dissertation advisor or committee member for five Ph.D students. He is co-author (with Mike Daconta and Kevin Smith) of the book The Semantic Web: The Future of XML, Web Services, and Knowledge Management. John Wiley, Inc., June, 2003, and has published many book chapters, conference and workshop papers (over 40 refereed papers) and many reviews. He has organized or been a program committee member on more than 40 conferences/workshops, including Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) and Ontology for the Intelligence Community (OIC). Along with SteveRay and PeterYim, Leo has founded and convened the Ontology Summit conference series, which NIST, Ontolog, and other co-organizers have been putting together, on an annual basis since 2006. Along with MikeDean (BBN), Leo was the local organizer for the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2009, which took place in the greater Washington, DC area.

I have many personal interests, including dogs (with a couple of cats and chickens thrown in) and writing poetry and fiction (though it's nearly entirely poetry these days). "De Colóres" was a selected finalist for the 1996 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, Nimrod International Journal.

Some recent or forthcoming publications

 * Schneider, Todd, Ali Hashemi, Mike Bennett, Mary Brady, Cory Casanave, Henson Graves, Michael Gruninger, Nicola Guarino, Anatoly Levenchuk, Ernie Lucier, Leo Obrst, Steve Ray, Ram D. Sriram, Amanda Vizedom, Matthew West, Trish Whetzel, Peter Yim. 2012.  Ontology for Big Systems: The Ontology Summit 2012 Communiqué. Applied Ontology, forthcoming.
 * Janowicz, Krzysztof and many collaborators. 2012. Semantics and Ontologies in EarthCube: a Manifesto. http://earthcube.ning.com/profiles/blogs/semantics-and-ontologies-in-earthcube.
 * Hitzler, Pascal; Krzysztof Janowicz; Gary Berg-Cross; Leo Obrst; Amit Sheth; Tim Finin; Isabel Cruz. 2012. Semantic Aspects of EarthCube. Version 1.0, May 22, 2012. Technology Subcommittee of the EarthCube Semantics and Ontologies Group. knoesis.wright.edu/faculty/pascal/pub/EC-SO-TC-Report-V1.0.pdf.
 * Parmelee, Mary; Leo Obrst. 2012. Technologies for Metadata, Vocabulary, and Ontology Storage. Chapter in: Miguel-Angel Sicilia, ed. 2009. Handbook of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies. World Scientific Publishing Co. Forthcoming.
 * Obrst, Leo; Pat Cassidy. 2011. The Need for Ontologies: Bridging the Barriers of Terminology and Data Structures. Chapter in: GSA Memoir on Societal Challenges and Geoinformatics, Sinha, Krishna; Linda Gundersen; Ian Jackson; David Arctur, eds. Publication of a Memoir Volume. Geological Society of America (GSA). November 1, 2011.
 * Neuhaus, Fabian; Elizabeth Florescu, Antony Galton, Michael Gruninger, Nicola Guarino, Leo Obrst, Dagobert Soergel; Matthew West;, Peter Yim, and Barry Smith. 2011. Ontology Summit 2010 – Creating the Ontologists of the Future. Applied Ontology, Volume 6, Number 1 (2011), pp. 91-98. IOS Press.
 * Uschold, Michael; John Bateman; Mills Davis; John Sowa; Mike Bennett; Rex Brooks; Alden Dima; Michael Gruninger; Nicola Guarino; Ernie Lucier; Leo Obrst; Steve Ray; Todd Schneider; Ram Sriram; Matthew West; Peter Yim. 2011. Ontology Summit 2011: Making the Case for Ontology. Applied Ontology, Volume 6, Number 4 (2011),  pp. 377-385. IOS Press.
 * Obrst, Leo; Terry Janssen, Werner Ceusters, eds. 2010. Ontologies and Semantic Technologies for the Intelligence Community. IOS Press, forthcoming.
 * Hybertson, Duane; Obrst, Leo. 2009. Conceptualization, chapter 8 in: Hybertson, D. Model-Oriented Systems Engineering Science: A Unifying Framework for Traditional and Complex Systems. Boca Raton, FL: Auerbach Publications. 2009.
 * Poli, Roberto; Leo Obrst. 2010. The Interplay Between Ontology as Categorial Analysis and Ontology as Technology. Chapter 9 in Part One: Ontology as Technology in the book: TAO – Theory and Applications of Ontology, Volume 2: The Information-science Stance, Michael Healy, Achilles Kameas, Roberto Poli, eds. Forthcoming, Springer.
 * Obrst, Leo. 2010. Ontological Architectures. Chapter 2 in Part One: Ontology as Technology in the book: TAO – Theory and Applications of Ontology, Volume 2: The Information-science Stance, Michael Healy, Achilles Kameas, Roberto Poli, eds. Forthcoming, Springer.
 * Obrst, Leo; Dru McCandless; Michael Bankston. 2010. Enabling Rich Discovery of Web Services by Projecting Weak Semantics from Structural Specifications. In: Semantic Technologies for Intelligence, Defense, and Security (STIDS), October 27-29, 2010, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
 * McCandless, Dru; Leo Obrst. 2009. Dynamic Web Service Chaining using OWL and a Theorem Prover. Third IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing, Berkeley, CA, USA - September 14-16, 2009.
 * Parmelee, Mary; Deborah Nichols; Leo Obrst. 2009. A Net-Centric Metadata Framework for Service Oriented Environments. International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (IJMSO), special issue, edited by Bruce Bargmeyer, forthcoming.
 * Gruninger, Michael; Olivier Bodenreider; Frank Olken; Leo Obrst; Peter Yim. 2008. The 2007 Ontology Summit Joint Communiqué. Ontology, Taxonomy, Folksonomy: Understanding the Distinctions. Journal of Applied Ontology 3:3, 2008, pp. 191-200.
 * Massie, Thomas; Leo Obrst; Duminda Wijesekera. 2008a. TVIS: Tactical Voice Interaction Services for Dismounted Urban Operations. George Mason University (GMU/AFCEA) Symposium on "Critical Issues in C4I", George Mason University, 20-21 May 2008.
 * Massie, Thomas; Leo Obrst; Duminda Wijesekera. 2008b. Ontology for Voice Based Tactical Operations. IEEE Conference on E-Commerce Technology (CEC' 08) and the 5th IEEE Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce and E-Services (EEE ' 08). Washington, DC, Jul 21-24, 2008.
 * Samuel, Ken; Leo Obrst; Suzette Stoutenberg; Karen Fox; Adrian Johnson; Ken Laskey; Deborah Nichols; and Jason Peterson. 2007. Applying Prolog to Semantic Web Ontologies & Rules: Moving Toward Description Logic Programs. The Journal of the Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP), Massimo Marchiori, ed., forthcoming.
 * Obrst, Leo; Dru McCandless; Suzette Stoutenburg; Karen Fox;  Deborah Nichols;  Mike Prausa; Rick Sward. 2007. Evolving Use of Distributed Semantics to Achieve Net-centricity. Regarding the “Intelligence” in Distributed Intelligent Systems, AAAI Fall Symposium, Arlington VA, Nov. 8-11, 2007.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette; Leo Obrst; Deborah Nichols; Paul Franklin; Ken Samuel; Michael Prausa. 2007. Ontologies and Rules for Rapid Enterprise Integration and Event Aggregation. Vocabularies, Ontologies and Rules for the Enterprise (VORTE 07), Annapolis, MD, Oct. 15-19, 2007.
 * Stoutenburg, S; L. Obrst; D. McCandless;  D. Nichols; P. Franklin; M. Prausa; R. Sward. 2007. Ontologies for Rapid Integration of Heterogeneous Data for Command, Control, & Intelligence. Ontologies for the Intelligence Community Conference, Columbia, MD, Nov. 28-30, 2007, forthcoming.
 * Ontology Summit 2007 - Ontology, Taxonomy, Folksonomy: Understanding the Distinctions. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2007.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette; Obrst, Leo; Nichols, Deborah; Samuel, Kenneth; and Franklin, Paul. 2007. Toward a Standard Rule Language for Enterprise Application Integration, Year 2 Results, MITRE Technical Report MTR070025, February, 2007.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette, Leo Obrst, Deborah Nichols, Ken Samuel, and Paul Franklin. 2006. Applying Semantic Rules to Achieve Dynamic Service Oriented Architectures. RuleML 2006: Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, co-located with ISWC 2006, Athens, GA, November 10-11, 2006.  In: Service-Oriented Computing – ICSOC 2006, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 4294, 2006, pp. 581-590. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, Also: MITRE Technical Report MTR 06B0000014, March 2006. http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_06/06_0904/index.html.
 * Obrst, Leo; Patrick Cassidy; Steve Ray; Barry Smith; Dagobert Soergel; Matthew West; Peter Yim. 2006. The 2006 Upper Ontology Summit Joint Communiqué. Journal of Applied Formal Ontology. Volume 1: 2, pp. 203 - 211, 2006.
 * Samuel, Ken; Leo Obrst; Suzette Stoutenberg; Karen Fox; Adrian Johnson; Ken Laskey; Deborah Nichols; and Jason Peterson. 2006. Applying Prolog to Semantic Web Ontologies & Rules: Moving Toward Description Logic Programs. ALPSWS: Applications of Logic Programming in the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services, Aug. 16, 2006, International Conference on Logic Programming, pp. 112-113. Federated Logic Conference 2006, Seattle, WA. Poster presentation and extended abstract. http://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Publications/CEUR-WS/Vol-196/alpsws2006-poster5.pdf.
 * Obrst, Leo; Todd Hughes; Steve Ray. 2006. Prospects and Possibilities for Ontology Evaluation: The View from NCOR. Workshop on Evaluation of Ontologies for the Web (EON2006), Edinburgh, UK, May 22, 2006.
 * Obrst, Leo; Werner Ceusters; Inderjeet Mani; Steve Ray; Barry Smith. 2007 The Evaluation of Ontologies: Toward Improved Semantic Interoperability. Chapter in: Semantic Web: Revolutionizing Knowledge Discovery in the Life Sciences, Christopher J. O. Baker and Kei-Hoi Cheung, Eds., Springer, 2007.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette; Obrst, Leo. 2005. Orchestration of Ontologies and Rules for Integration of the DoD Enterprise. Protégé With Rules Workshop, paper and presentation, 8th International Protégé Conference 2005, July 18-21, Madrid, Spain.
 * Obrst, L, D. Nichols. 2005. Context and Ontologies: Contextual Indexing of Ontological Expressions. AAAI 2005 Workshop on Context and Ontologies, poster, AAAI 2005, July 9-13, Pittsburgh, PA. http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_05/05_0903/index.html.
 * Obrst, Leo; Robert Case; Ken Laskey; Marwan Sabbouh; Mary Pulvermacher. 2005. Frameworks for Semantics in Web Services Workshop. MITRE Position Paper. 2005. June 9-10, 2005, Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Innsbruck, Austria. Sponsored by W3C.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette; Leo Obrst; Deborah Nichols; Jason Peterson; Adrian Johnson. 2005. Toward a Standard Rule Language for Semantic Integration of the DoD Enterprise. W3C Workshop on Rule Languages for Interoperability, 27-28 April 2005, Washington, D.C. MITRE Technical Report: http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_05/05_0400/index.html.
 * Stoutenburg, Suzette; Obrst, Leo. 2004.  Toward a Standard Rule Language for Enterprise Application Integration.  Rules and Rule Markup Languages for the Semantic Web, presentation, 3rd International Semantic Web Conference, November 7-11, 2005, Hiroshima, Japan.
 * Pulvermacher, Mary; Leo Obrst; Salim Semy; and Suzette Stoutenburg. 2005. Perspectives on Applying Semantic Web Technologies in Military Domains, MITRE Technical Report. http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_05/05_0129/index.html.
 * Semy, S.; Pulvermacher, M.; L. Obrst. 2005. Toward the Use of an Upper Ontology for U.S. Government and U.S. Military Domains: An Evaluation. MITRE Technical Report, MTR 04B0000063,November 2005. http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_05/04_1175/index.html.
 * Daconta, M., L. Obrst, K. Smith. 2003. The Semantic Web: The Future of XML, Web Services, and Knowledge Management. John Wiley, Inc., June, 2003.
 * Obrst, L., H. Liu, R. Wray. 2003. Ontologies for Corporate Web Applications. Artificial Intelligence Magazine, special issue on Ontologies, American Association for Artificial Intelligence, Chris Welty, ed., Fall, 2003, pp. 49-62. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=958676.
 * Obrst, L. 2003. Ontologies for Semantically Interoperable Systems. Proceedings of the Twelfth ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2003), Ophir Frieder, Joachim Hammer, Sajda Quershi, and Len Seligman, eds. New Orleans, LA, November 3-8, New York: ACM, pp. 366-369. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=956863.956932.
 * Obrst, L., H. Liu, R. Wray, L. Wilson. 2002. Ontologies for Semantically Interoperable Electronic Commerce. In the Proceedings of ICEIMT’02, International Conference on Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration Technologies (ICEIMT), and the Conference of the EI3-IC Initiative (Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration – International Consensus), Valencia, Spain, April 24-26, 2002, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
 * Obrst, L., H. Liu. 2002. Knowledge Representation, Ontological Engineering, and Topic Maps, chapter in XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web, Jack Park, ed., Addison-Wesley, 2002.
 * Obrst, L., R. Wray, H. Liu. 2001. Ontological Engineering for B2B E-Commerce. In: Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Collected Papers from the Second International Conference, October 17-19, 2001, Ogunquit, ME. Chris Welty, Barry Smith, eds. ACM Publishing, http://www.fois.org/fois-2001/index.html.
 * Tyler, J., L. Obrst, D. Pack, E. Peterson. 1999. Knowledge-Based Agents for C2 Decision Support, September 14-16, 1999, Simulation Interoperability Workshop, Fall, 1999, Orlando, Fl.
 * Obrst, L., E. Peterson, J. Tyler. 1999. Ontologies and Complex Command and Control Decision-making Behavior Modeling, AAAI Workshop on Ontology Management, Orlando, FL, July 19, 1999.
 * Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. 1999. Semantic Context for Object Exchange, AAAI Workshop on Context in AI Applications, Orlando, FL, July 19, 1999.
 * Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. 1999. Semantic Interoperability via Context Interpretation, Context-99, Trento, Italy, April, 1999, invited poster session.
 * Smith, K., L. Obrst. 1999. Unpacking The Semantics of Source and Usage To Achieve Semantic Reconciliation In Large-Scale Information Systems, SIGMOD special issue on Semantic Interoperability, March, 1999, A. Sheth & A. Ouksel, eds.