Robert Meersman
Prof. dr. Robert Meersman holds a Ph.D in Mathematics of the Free University Of Brussels (VUB) (1976). He was appointed Full Professor at VUB in 1995. His earlier positions include positions at the University of Antwerp (UIA, 1975- 78), and Control Data Corp. (Data Management Lab, Brussels, Belgium, 1978-83). He worked there on the definition of the NIAM (now ORM) as well as languages (RIDL) and on the first tools for this methodology. He held chairs at University of Limburg (Belgium, 1983-86) and at University of Tilburg (The Netherlands, 1986-95) and founded InfoLabs there. His current research is focused on ontologies and their relationship to databases, semantic web and design methodologies and tools.
He is a member and the past chairman (1983-1992) of the IFIP WG2.6 on Database. He is the past chairman of the IFIP TC 12 (Artificial Intelligence, 1987-92), and the current Chairman of TC 2 (Software Theory and Practice). He is a co-founder and the current president of the International Foundation for Cooperative Information Systems (IFCIS, since 1994) and of the Distributed Objects Applications Institute (DOA, since 2000).
He founded the Semantics Technology and Applications Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) at VUB in 1995. He has been Director of STARLab since. His current scientific interests include ontologies, database semantics, domain and database modelling, interoperability and use of databases in fields such as enterprise knowledge management and the Semantic Web.