SUNY Buffalo

Faculty Member, Philosophy

SUNY Distinguished Professor and Julian Park Chair

About

Barry Smith is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology. He is the author of some 450 scientific publications on ontology and related topics, and editor of The Monist: An International Quarterly Journal of General Philosophical Inquiry. His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US, Swiss and Austrian National Science Foundations, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the European Union. In 2002 he received in recognition of his scientific achievements the Wolfgang Paul Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Smith is SUNY Distinguished Professor and holder of the Julian Park Chair of Philosophy in the University at Buffalo (New York, USA). He is also Research Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science in Saarbrücken, Germany. He studied at Oxford and Manchester, and has held faculty positions in Sheffield, Manchester, Liechtenstein and Leipzig.

Smith’s primary research focus is the application of ontology in biomedicine and biomedical informatics. He is a Coordinating Editor of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry initiative, a principal scientist of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gene Ontology Consortium and a PI of the Protein Ontology and Infectious Disease Ontology projects. He also collaborates with Hernando de Soto, Director of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima, Peru, on the ontology of property rights and social development.

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