Michael Uschold has over 25 years of experience in developing and transitioning semantic technology from academia to industry. He pioneered the field of ontology engineering, co-authoring the first paper on the topic in 1995 that described his experiences as lead developer of the “Enterprise Ontology.” He also co-authored the first comprehensive introduction to the emerging ontology field in 1996, a source still widely referenced to this day.
Michael is a world-class mentor and trainer. He co-presented the first ontology tutorial in 1995 in London and was an invited instructor at the first Semantic Web summer school in Madrid in 2003 as well as at the Second Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis in Vitoria, Brazil, in 2014. He has given numerous invited talks and tutorials at industry and academic conferences on semantic technology, emphasizing practical ways to put ontologies to use.
As a senior ontology consultant at Semantic Arts since October 2010, Michael trains and guides clients to better understand and leverage semantic technology. He has taught hundreds of budding ontologists about OWL in the past decade, in tutorials, open classes, and seminars held in-house in major organizations. He has built commercial enterprise ontologies in sports and entertainment, digital asset management, finance, healthcare, legal research, consumer products, electrical product specifications, manufacturing, corporation registration, and metadata management.
From 2008‒2009, Uschold worked at Reinvent on a team that developed a semantic advertising platform that substantially increased revenue. As a research scientist at Boeing from 1997‒2008, he defined, led, and participated in numerous projects applying semantic technology to enterprise challenges. He is a frequently invited speaker and panelist at national and international events and serves on the editorial board of the Applied Ontology Journal. He received his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University in 1991 and his M.Sc. in Computer Science from Rutgers University in 1982.