Frank van Harmelen

Frank van Harmelen is a full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and scientific director of The Network Institute. He specializes in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, and the Semantic Web. His research includes foundational contributions to OWL, Sesame, and large-scale reasoning engines. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh (1989) and has been recognized with awards like the 10-Year Impact Award (2012).

Research interests span symbolic knowledge representation, large knowledge bases, and medical guideline formalization. Notable projects include the EU-funded Large Knowledge Collider and the formalization of Dutch breast-cancer guidelines using dynamic temporal logic.

Awards: Distinguished Lecturer (2003), Keur der Wetenschap (2005), European AI Society Fellow (2007), and Most Cited Article Award (2011).

Advising includes student Jacopo Urbani, co-author of prize-winning work. His work integrates theorem-proving with medical applications and semantic web infrastructure.