Anthony Petosa

I have been a working Ontologist for approximately fifteen years. For a substantial portion of this time, I developed ontologies in support of the US Army’s Data Strategy efforts, having been exposed to various domains (Command & Control, Logistics, etc.). Much of my work was in support of enterprise-level data strategy efforts. Currently, I work for a large pharmaceutical company in the role of Principal Semantic Modeler and have oversight over ontology modeling projects.

Having initially become interested in Ontology at the time I began employment with the Army, I had an opportunity to develop my understanding, albeit in an atypical fashion. Namely, I started by learning the various W3C RDF-based grammars, using TopBraid Composer to model OWL ‘ontologies’. I place ‘ontologies’ in quotes because the OWL grammar is based upon set theoretics and not Ontology. I soon realized I needed to delve into Ontology from a philosophical perspective and began reading dozens of white pages by Dr. Barry Smith, Pierre Grenon and others. This was my introduction to Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and its foundational basis of Ontological Realism.

By no means am I a philosopher, nor do I believe I have the privilege of considering myself an Ontologist. However, over the years I acquired a foundational knowledge, which has served to fuel my continued interest in this most fascinating subject.