Information Systems Group

Rob Shearer

Research Assistant; Doctoral Student (Linacre College)

Research

My primary research interest is efficient and scalable reasoning systems for very expressive description logics, including the logic which forms the theoretical foundation of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Ontology Language (OWL). In addition to my theoretical work, I am a part of the team developing HermiT, a reasoner for OWL ontologies.

I am currently working to complete my DPhil dissertation, which is (currently) titled Scalable Reasoning for Description Logics. I plan to submit my thesis in January 2010.

Prior Work

Before coming to Oxford I did similar research at the University of Manchester as a member of Manchester’s Information Management Group and that group’s Description Logic clique. While there, I managed the “Semantic Web Language Extensions” work package (number 2.5) of the EU KnowledgeWeb project, and in most cases served as Manchester’s representative within other work packages.

Prior to that, I developed the Cerebra reasoner while leading technology development at a small start-up company (called Network Inference and located in London when I joined, and called Cerebra, Inc. and located in Carlsbad, California when I left). The company was subsequently acquired by WebMethods, which in turn became a part of SoftwareAG; I have no idea what the status of the Cerebra reasoner is these days. During my time there I had some involvement with the W3C RDF Data Access Working Group, which went on to produce SPARQL.

I also spent a few years with Transversal in Cambridge, England, working on adapting natural language processing technologies to the problems of web content management.

Personal

I’m a member of Linacre College and currently serve as the college’s Common Room Information Technology Representative. I also had an eventful tenure as head resident of one of Linacre’s houses from 2008 to 2009.

For reasons even I have trouble fully understanding, I’m an active member of the Oxford University Athletics Club, and have represented the club in a number of competitions for which they couldn’t find anybody else willing to show up, in events ranging from hurdles to pole vault to hammer throw. Throughout the 2008--2009 season I was the squad leader for Oxford’s throwers.

In my younger days I attended Brown University, where I founded and served as president for Technology House, the university’s first and only technology-focused residential society.

I grew up in Rhode Island but have spent most of my time in the UK since early 2001.

If you want to buy me a gift, I like motorcycles.