Frank Olken

Our friend and Ontolog Forum collaborator Frank Olken died October 18, 2019.
Sad news and a great loss to the community.
Frank's been a good man and a champ, and he will be missed. May he Rest In Peace!

Frank Olken Obituary on the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory website

Frank was a valued contributor to the Ontolog Forum, especially to many Ontology Summits. In his capacity as program director at the National Science Foundation, he funded numerous projects addressing database research and Semantic Web technologies, and provided space and logistical support to many of the Ontology Summit Symposia.

Frank has been a valued contributor to the ontology community and many of the activities that folks at the Ontolog Forum were involved, such as:

Frank was a key participant at the Ontology Summit 2007, where "Ontology, Taxonomy, Folksonomy: Understanding the Distinctions" was the main theme for the discourse. Frank Olken co-drafted and co-edited the Ontology Summit 2007 Communiqué discourse together with Olivier Bodenreider. See: OntologySummit2007_Communique

After the Ontology Summit 2008: Toward An Open Ontology Repository, and the start of the OOR Initiative, Frank gave a talk (at the World Bank) to the CENDI-NKOS communities to promote the use of ontologies and to socialize the concepts of an open ontology repository. Slides in odp format Slides in pdf format Slides in ppt format

Frank has always been passionate about the ontology and standardization on Units of Measure UoM. He co-convened and chaired the UoM Ontology Standard Working Group UoM Working Group home page. Right after Ontology Summit 2009: Toward Ontology-based Standards OntologySummit2009, Frank hosted a full day workshop (at NSF) UoM_Ontology_Standard/Workshop_2009_10_30 to discuss how the community can move that work forward toward formal standardization. The effort subsequently led to the formation of the OASIS Quantities and Units of Measure Ontology Standard Technical Committee (QUOMOS TC), which Frank co-chaired (with Steve Ray).

One initiative that we are working on at NSF that Frank was very excited about is the Open Knowledge Network, which is now a track under the new NSF Convergence Accelerator program. He was keen to stay engaged and keep abreast of the program. We deeply regret that he will not be around to see this move forward.