Nicola Guarino
Encyclopedia
Nicola Guarino is a researcher in the area of Formal Ontology for Information Systems, and the head of the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA), part of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in Trento
.
, predominantly in Knowledge Representation
. He is arguably one of the founders of the field of ontology in computer science, but undoubtedly one of its most outspoken proponents. While most of the AI and KR researchers focused on reasoning algorithms and semantics of representation languages, and considered the actual knowledge expressed in these languages and reasoned over by these algorithms to be unimportant (just examples), Guarino spearheaded a counter-movement to study how knowledge should be expressed. The rallying cry of this movement undoubted came from the well-known "Naive Physics Manifesto" paper by Patrick J. Hayes
.
Guarino's work in the early 1990s began to take shape as he applied his engineering background to understand how knowledge-based systems were built and, most importantly, how the knowledge was acquired. He was a familiar face in the early Knowledge Acquisition Workshops where he was best known for pointing to himself and saying, "I am not a class!" This remark referred to what Guarino believes to be an important and fundamental distinction between universals and particulars. While some representation systems allow classes to themselves be instances of other classes, and in certain contexts that makes sense, there are some instances which can never be classes (these are particulars).
His emphasis on formal rigor in specifying the type of knowledge that was eventually to be called "ontologies" by computer scientists, led him to the field of formal ontology in philosophy, where he began to study the metaphysics literature, focusing on the work of such notables as Quine
, Strawson, and especially Simons
.
Guarino founded the Formal Ontology in Information Systems conference in 1998, a recurring academic conference focused on ontologies themselves, not the languages they are represented in. He has worked tirelessly to promote research in ontology and maintain a level of scientific rigor.
Guarino may be best known in the Computer Science community for developing OntoClean
, the first methodology for formal ontological analysis, with his colleague Chris Welty
.
Trento
Trento is an Italian city located in the Adige River valley in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. It is the capital of Trentino...
.
History
Dr. Guarino has published numerous articles in the area of Artificial IntelligenceArtificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
, predominantly in Knowledge Representation
Knowledge representation
Knowledge representation is an area of artificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitate inferencing from those knowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge...
. He is arguably one of the founders of the field of ontology in computer science, but undoubtedly one of its most outspoken proponents. While most of the AI and KR researchers focused on reasoning algorithms and semantics of representation languages, and considered the actual knowledge expressed in these languages and reasoned over by these algorithms to be unimportant (just examples), Guarino spearheaded a counter-movement to study how knowledge should be expressed. The rallying cry of this movement undoubted came from the well-known "Naive Physics Manifesto" paper by Patrick J. Hayes
Patrick J. Hayes
Patrick John Hayes or Pat Hayes is a British computer scientist who lives and works in the United States. , he is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. He received a B.A. in Mathematics from University of Cambridge and a Ph.D...
.
Guarino's work in the early 1990s began to take shape as he applied his engineering background to understand how knowledge-based systems were built and, most importantly, how the knowledge was acquired. He was a familiar face in the early Knowledge Acquisition Workshops where he was best known for pointing to himself and saying, "I am not a class!" This remark referred to what Guarino believes to be an important and fundamental distinction between universals and particulars. While some representation systems allow classes to themselves be instances of other classes, and in certain contexts that makes sense, there are some instances which can never be classes (these are particulars).
His emphasis on formal rigor in specifying the type of knowledge that was eventually to be called "ontologies" by computer scientists, led him to the field of formal ontology in philosophy, where he began to study the metaphysics literature, focusing on the work of such notables as Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
, Strawson, and especially Simons
Peter Simons (professor)
Peter Simons, FBA, is a professor of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin.He studied at the University of Manchester, and has held teaching posts at the University of Bolton, the University of Salzburg, where he is Honorary Professor of Philosophy, and the University of Leeds...
.
Guarino founded the Formal Ontology in Information Systems conference in 1998, a recurring academic conference focused on ontologies themselves, not the languages they are represented in. He has worked tirelessly to promote research in ontology and maintain a level of scientific rigor.
Guarino may be best known in the Computer Science community for developing OntoClean
OntoClean
OntoClean is a methodology for analyzing ontologies based on formal, domain-independent properties of classes due to Nicola Guarino and Chris Welty.-Overview and History:...
, the first methodology for formal ontological analysis, with his colleague Chris Welty
Chris Welty
Chris Welty, an American computer scientist, is a Research Scientist at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, NY, and formerly a professor in the Computer Science Department of Vassar College and a distinguished lecturer of the Association for Computing Machinery. He is best known for...
.
External links
- http://www.loa-cnr.it/guarino.html homepage