SWAD-Europe Partners

ERCIM (World Wide Web Consortium)

The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. It is hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Laboratory for Computer Science [MIT/LCS] in the United States; the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique [ERCIM] in Europe; and the Keio University Shonan Fujisawa Campus in Japan. Many of the more than sixty researchers and engineers that make up the W3C Team work at these host locations.

ERCIM

W3C's European presence is hosted by ERCIM in France. ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. Leading research institutes from sixteen European countries are members of ERCIM.

Key Personnel

(Full profiles of the entire W3C Team, including the non-European members of the Semantic Web Activity, are available from the Consortium's Web site. The individuals named here work directly on SWAD-Europe, working closely with the entire W3C Team, and the Semantic Web team in particular. Within W3C, the project will be managed as part of W3C's larger Semantic Web Advanced Development Activity. Eric Miller (Semantic Web Activity Lead) and Ralph Swick (W3C SWAD Lead) will share responsibility with the SWAD-Europe Project Director (Dan Brickley) for the integration of SWAD-Europe's work into the wider W3C Activity.)

Dr Bert Bos

Bert Bos completed his Ph.D. in Groningen, The Netherlands, on a protoyping language for graphical user interfaces. He then went on to develop browser software and support for humanities scholars, before joining the W3C at INRIA/Sophia-Antipolis in October 1995. He is now working on stylesheets, XML and internationalisation

Dan Brickley - Project Director

Dan is a member of the W3C team working primarily in the Semantic Web Activity. From 1995 to 2001 Dan worked at ILRT, joining the W3C team as a Visiting Fellow in 1999 to contribute to the Metadata Activity. At ILRT Dan established one of the first research groups dedicated to the implementation and deployment of RDF and Semantic Web technology and led ILRT's technical work in several Semantic Web projects. Dan is editor of the RDF Schema Specification, chair of the RDF Interest Group, and co-chair of the RDF Core WG. He is currently responsible for European Semantic Web developments within W3C at ERCIM.

Dr Max Froumentin

Max joined W3C at INRIA in July 2000. Prior to that, he completed a PhD in computer graphics in 1996 at University of Lille, France, and has worked for three years as a research assistant at University of Bath, UK. His interests are 2D and 3D graphics, styling and typography. His work at W3C has been primarily in the areas of XML styling (XSL and XSLT) and Mathematics

Charles McCathieNevile

Before joining W3C in November 1998, Charles had been working for Sunrise at RMIT on a variety of things including Web Accessibility, internationalisation and metada and teaching people how to do publish for the Web. At W3C, Charles is working on Web Accessibility, focussing on guidelines, protocol review, and outreach as well as on the Semantic Web.

University of Bristol (ILRT)

The Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol is an internationally recognised centre of excellence in the development, use and application of learning and research technologies. Institute projects have national and international impact and value, attracting funding from, for example, the UK Higher Education Funding Councils, the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Commission, as well as professional associations and support from local schools and businesses.

Key personnel

Dave Beckett

Dave is a technical researcher who has been developing, researching and deploying Internet research discovery systems and metadata since 1993. He is a long-time member of the Dublin Core Initiative and the editor of the first DCMES in RDF/XML document. Dave has been working with RDF since 1998 and deployed several services with it and the Dublin Core. Dave joined ILRT in June 2000 and has been working on integrating RDF, web crawling and human-cataloguing of the web,and developed the Redland RDF system. Dave participates is a member of the W3C RDF Core Working Group and co-edited the first two W3C Working Drafts produced by that group. He has also given invited presentations at international workshops and conferences on RDF, Dublin Core and the Semantic Web.

Jan Grant

Jan is a senior technical researcher for the Educator Access to Services in the Electronic Landscape (EASEL IST-1999-10051) project which involves creating adaptive learning content for web-based delivery using the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) model. Jan researches and develops RDF-based systems including modelling queries, cross-schema interoperability, high-level RDF APIs, modelling trust and on exposing legacy data in various formats (primarily RDBMS) as RDF. Jan participates in RDF standardisation as a member of the W3C RDF Core Working Group.

Dr Libby Miller

Libby is a senior technical researcher currently working on Semantic Web technologies, specifically on the design and implementation of RDF query languages (e.g. SquishQL). She also leads the W3C's RDF calendaring taskforce. Libby has three years' experience working with RDF and XML, working within the DESIRE II (RE4004) and Harmony projects. She is a member of the W3C WebONT workng group, and is ILRT Semantic Web Coordinator.

Nikki Rogers

Nikki Rogers is a technical researcher working on the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) project with experience in digital library and information gateway services for image description and discovery, distributed query and retrieval and content aggregations mechanisms using RDF and Semantic Web technologies.

Kate Sharp - Project Manager

Kate Sharp is a project manager at ILRT. As well as managing this project she is current the manager for Biz/ed, an Internet service for students, teachers and lecturers in Business and Economics. She has just finished managing the Virtual Training Suite for Further Education.

CCLRC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

The Central Laboratory to the Research Councils (CCLRC) is a UK government research and development laboratory located at three sites in the UK, of which the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is the largest (http://www.clrc.ac.uk/). CCLRC employs 1800 staff, of which 1200 are located at RAL. CCLRC has produced several successful spin-off companies to exploit its research products including Vector Fields Ltd, Bookham Technology Ltd and Qudos Technology Ltd.

The Business and Information Technology Department employs about 130 staff, supporting, researching and developing IT, including considerable experience in EU projects. ITD within CCLRC/RAL acts as the UK office for W3C the World Wide Web Consortium.

Key personnel

Dr Brian Matthews

Dr Brian Matthews joined RAL in 1986, after completing a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Bristol. In 1988 he completed an MSc in the Foundations of Advanced Information Technology at Imperial College, London, and in 1996 a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Glasgow. Brian Matthews has been working within the Information Technology Department of CCLRC on research and development projects in advanced information technology, including formal systems modelling and structured data and documentation. He was RAL technical leader and acting project manager on the EC project TORUS, which included work on distributing engineering design data across the web, integrating engineering data with structured documentation within formal process models. Recently, he has worked with the W3C within the W3C-LA project on emerging web standards including XML, XSL and RDF, and their application to online glossaries.

Dr. Michael Wilson

Dr Michael Wilson is the manager of the W3C UK Office, hosted by RAL/CCLRC.

Hewlett-Packard (HP European Laboratories)

The Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is a leading global manufacturer of computing, Internet and Intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognised for excellence in quality and support.

HP has been operating in Europe since 1959 with the opening of its first manufacturing facility outside Palo Alto, California, at Böblingen near Stuttgart, Germany. From the outset, HP aimed to be a European citizen and have a balanced presence. HP Laboratories is Hewlett-Packard's central research organisation and its innovation engine. Its dual missions are to help HP remain successful in current businesses while creating new business opportunities through technology innovation. Hewlett-Packard European Laboratories were established in Bristol, England in 1984, and currently employ around 150 researchers, with research projects focussed on Information Infrastructure, Personal Appliances, Communications and Platforms for E-Business.

Key Personnel

Ian Dickinson

Ian is active in the area of software agents, particularly concerned with personal agents and user-agent interaction. He is interested in the application of semantic web technologies to the representation of user data and is author of jena's DAML API.

Martin Merry

Martin is a Project Manager at HP. He is the manager of this project within HP.

Dave Reynolds

Dave is interested in the use of semantic web technologies to link decentralized information systems together both with each other and with people. He also the developer and maintainer of the jena RDB backend store.

Andy Seaborne

Andy is interested in application architectures and design for semantic web applications. As part of this, he has developed the RDQL sub-system for the Jena RDF framework and also built an RDF server, Joseki, which provides remote access to RDF data. He is currently developing an RDF NetAPI to extend the remote access to include web-style collaborative applications.

Stilo Technology

Stilo Technology Ltd is a wholly-owned division of Stilo International plc, the first specialist XML company to be listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. In addition to Stilo Technology Ltd, Stilo International plc wholly owns Omnimark Technologies Corporation in Ottawa, Canada, and holds a majority shareholding in eidon GmbH in Nuremburg, Germany. Group companies develop and market content engineering technologies which enable enterprises more readily to automate the integration, creation, management and re-purposing of large quantities of data using XML. With offices now in Canada, USA, UK, Germany, Belgium, France and distributors in Australia and Japan, Stilo companies operate in some of the world's leading markets and provide global customers with local training, sales, consultancy and supporting services.

Key Personnel

Stephen Buswell

After reading mathematics at Oxford, Stephen Buswell has worked in IT in the UK, Europe and North America at organisations including Logica, European Payment Systems Services and, as an independent consultant, the Polish Ministry of Finance. Applications included telecommunications, finance and control software for life sciences experiments on board Spacelab. Stephen co-founded Stilo in 1992, and has since specialised in markup languages, information architecture and web technologies. Stephen is a member of the W3C Math Working Group and a principal writer of the MathML Recommendation for mathematics on the web. He worked on the ESPRIT OpenMath project, and is a member of the ESPRIT OpenMath Thematic Network. Stephen is a member of the W3C Advisory Committee, and Chief Technology Officer at Stilo Technology

Nick James

Nick has worked as a software engineer and project leader for twelve years. He specialises in data management and database software, and has in depth knowledge of database systems. He has worked as an engineer producing a sophisticated object oriented database, and has produced advanced software for the GIS industry. Nick has experience in a wide range of industrial areas including finance and space, usually working with large data management problems. He is currently working an ontology-based system for knowledge management and complex data transformation.