Frank van Harmelen (born 1960) is a Dutch computer scientist and professor in Knowledge Representation & Reasoning in the AI department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He was scientific director of the LarKC project (2008-2011),^[3] "aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale semantic web reasoning."^[4][5][6]

This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. (September 2013)

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Frank van Harmelen
Born	1960 (age 63–64)
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Scientific career
Fields	Semantic Web[1]
Institutions	Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Thesis	On the Efficiency of Meta-level Reasoning  (1989)
Academic advisors	Alan Bundy[2]
Website	www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh twitter.com/FrankVanHarmele

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After studying mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam, Van Harmelen moved to the Department of AI of the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded a PhD in 1989 for his research on meta-level reasoning. While in Edinburgh, he "co-developed a logic-based toolkit for expert systems, and worked with Alan Bundy on proof planning for inductive theorem proving".^[2][4]

After his PhD research, he moved back to Amsterdam where he worked from 1990 to 1995 in the SWI Department under Professor Bob Wielinga, on the use of reflection in expert systems, on the formal underpinnings of the CommonKADS methodology for Knowledge-Based Systems. In 1995 he joined the AI research group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he co-lead the On-To-Knowledge project, one of the first Semantic Web projects. He was appointed full professor in 2002, and is leading the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Group. Currently he is scientific director the LarKC project aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale semantic web reasoning.^[4]

Van Harmelen was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017.^[7][8]

In 2019, Van Harmelen received a Zwaartekracht grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for The Hybrid Intelligence Center^[9]

Van Harmelen's research interests include artificial intelligence, knowledge representation and the semantic web, approximate reasoning and Medical Protocols. He was one of the co-designers of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the Ontology Inference Layer (OIL), and has published books on meta-level inference, on knowledge-based systems, and on the Semantic Web.

Van Harmelen has published several books and over 100 research papers,^[6] Books:

• 1989. Logic-Based Knowledge Representation. With P. Jackson and H. Reichgelt. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1989. ISBN 0-262-10038-X.
• 1991. Meta-level Inference Systems F. van Harmelen. Research Notes in AI. Pitmann, Morgan Kaufmann, London, San Mateo, California, 1991. ISBN 1-55860-196-1
• 2003. Towards the semantic web: ontology-driven knowledge management With John Davies and Dieter Fensel (eds.) John Wiley & Sons, 2002, ISBN 0-470-84867-7
• 2004. A Semantic Web Primer (Cooperative Information Systems). With Grigoris Antoniou. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-01210-3
• 2004. Information Sharing on the Semantic Web. With Heiner Stuckenschmidt. Springer. ISBN 3-540-20594-2
• 2008. Handbook of Knowledge Representation. With V. Lifschitz and B. Porter, Elsevier, 2008. ISBN 978-0-444-52211-5.

Articles, a selection:

• Vink, J.; Koppens, P. C. J. M.; Van Harmelen, F. A.; Van Voorthuijsen, W. E. (1981). "Flexible data handling for routine quantitative analyses employing a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer under computer control". Journal of Automatic Chemistry. 3 (2): 85–88. doi:10.1155/S1463924681000242. PMC 2547295. PMID 18927785.
• Renardel De Lavalette, G. R.; Groenboom, R.; Rotterdam, E.; Van Harmelen, F.; Ten Teije, A.; De Geus, F. (1997). "Formalisation for decision support in anaesthesiology". Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 11 (3): 189–214. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.78.2673. doi:10.1016/S0933-3657(97)00031-6. PMID 9413606.
• Vollebregt, A.; Ten Teije, A.; Van Harmelen, F.; Van Der Lei, J.; Mosseveld, M. (1999). "A study of PROforma, a development methodology for clinical procedures". Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 17 (2): 195–221. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.27.2892. doi:10.1016/S0933-3657(99)00016-0. PMID 10518051.
• Korotkiy, M.; Middelburg, R.; Dekker, H.; Van Harmelen, F.; Lankelma, J. (2004). "A tool for gene expression based PubMed search through combining data sources" (PDF). Bioinformatics. 20 (12): 1980–1982. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bth183. PMID 15044238.
• Balser, M.; Coltell, O.; Van Croonenborg, J.; Duelli, C.; Van Harmelen, F.; Jovell, A.; Lucas, P.; Marcos, M.; Miksch, S.; Reif, W.; Rosenbrand, K.; Seyfang, A.; Ten Teije, A. (2004). "Protocure: Supporting the development of medical protocols through formal methods". Studies in Health Technology and Informatics. 101: 103–107. PMID 15537209.
• Ten Teije, A.; Marcos, M.; Balser, M.; Van Croonenborg, J.; Duelli, C.; Van Harmelen, F.; Lucas, P.; Miksch, S.; Reif, W.; Rosenbrand, K.; Seyfang, A. (2006). "Improving medical protocols by formal methods". Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 36 (3): 193–209. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.71.3147. doi:10.1016/j.artmed.2005.10.006. PMID 16376061. S2CID 1938327.
• Serban, R.; Ten Teije, A.; Van Harmelen, F.; Marcos, M.; Polo-Conde, C. (2007). "Extraction and use of linguistic patterns for modelling medical guidelines". Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 39 (2): 137–149. doi:10.1016/j.artmed.2006.07.012. PMID 16963241.
• Groot, P.; Hommersom, A.; Lucas, P. J. F.; Merk, R. J.; Ten Teije, A.; Van Harmelen, F.; Serban, R. (2009). "Using model checking for critiquing based on clinical guidelines". Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. 46 (1): 19–36. doi:10.1016/j.artmed.2008.07.007. hdl:2066/72379. PMID 18824335.