Mike Dean

Our friend and Ontolog Forum collaborator Michael Dean died November 19, 2014. It was very sad news to all of us who worked with him, and a great loss to the community.

Among his many roles, Mike was

◘ Principal Scientist at Raytheon BBN Technologies, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.

◘ Member of the Ontolog Board of Trustees

◘ Chair of the DARPA DAML Program Joint Committee (Joint US/EU ad hoc Agent Markup Language Committee)

◘ Member of the W3C Web Ontology Working Group
◘◘ This is the working group that developed the OWL Web Ontology Language, for which Mike was a co-editor.

◘ Co-convener of the Open Ontology Repository (OOR) initiative

◘ Member of the Steering Committee of the annual Conference on Semantic Technology for Intelligence, Defense and Security (STIDS)
◘◘ The STIDS Conference organizers have established an annual "Michael Dean Best Paper Award" to reward the paper that best exemplifies the qualities that made Mike such a productive and respected member of the semantic technology community.

◘ Symposium Co-Chair for Ontology Summit 2013: Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle

... he has made key contributions, and took on leadership roles in the semantic web, ontology and artificial intelligence communities - in the Ontolog SemanticWiki, EarthScienceOntolog & RulesReasoningLP mini-series'; SOCoP (Spatial Ontology CoP); W3C/RIF Working Group; and the Ontology Summit program. He will be missed.