Ora Lassila

Background

I joined Nokia Research Center in April 1996 and spent the first two years as a visiting scientist at MIT/LCS (now CSAIL), co-creating the RDF standard and effectively launching the Semantic Web. My current activities are focused on the Semantic Web and its applicability in mobile and ubiquitous computing.

My background is in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Knowledge Representation (KR) and programming languages. I spent almost 10 years doing research on how to apply AI and KR to problems in production and logistics planning and scheduling. For more information about me, please see my "official" home page.

Current Research

SWAPME - Semantic Web Application Platform for Mobile Ecosystems.

Software

I have written a lot of software over the years. Some things worth mentioning:

• Wilbur is an open-source toolkit for developing Semantic Web applications. It is written in Common Lisp.
• A frame-based knowledge representation system (dubbed "SCAM") that I developed (first at HUT and later at CMU) flew on board the NASA Deep Space 1 probe that passed the asteroid belt in 1999. The system served as the KR substrate for an on-board planner used in an experiment to have the probe perform its functions autonomously.

Publications

I have 80+ publications, including the seminal article on the Semantic Web (see Google Scholar for citations). A full list of my publications is available.

Other Activities

• I am an elected member of the W3C's Advisory Board (and Nokia's former representative to W3C's Advisory Committee).
• I am a member of the technical advisory boards of ILOG, Intelliseek and Cerebra (formerly Network Inference). I was a member of the technical advisory board of Eizel, now part of Nokia.
• I also sit on the steering committee of the Semantic Web Science Association