Ivan Herman

Ivan graduated as a mathematician at the University of Budapest, in Hungary, in 1979. After a brief scholarship at the Universite Paris VI he joined a Hungarian research institute in computer science (SZTAKI) where he worked 6 years (and turned into a computer scientist...). He then spent three years at a software house in Mnich, Germany, before joining the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences in Amsterdam in 1989, where he holds a tenure position. He received a PhD degree in computer science in 1990 at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Although Ivan worked in quite different areas (distributed and dataflow programming, language design, system programming) he spend most of these years in computer graphics and visualization. He also participated in various related ISO standardization activities.

Ivan has been active in the Eurographics Association since 1985. He is now vice-chair of the Association. His activities in EG also provided him with his first active encounter with the Web: he created and maintained the Web site of the Association back in 1994 (or thereabouts) and he was the head of the online activities until the end of 2000.

He was the co-chair of the 9th World Wide Web Conference, in Amsterdam, in May 2000. He was also the AC Rep for CWI, and head of the W3C Dutch Office until he joined the W3C team.

Ora Lassila

Ora Lassila is a Research Fellow at the Nokia Research Center and the Chief Scientist of Nokia Venture Partners. He has been an elected member of the Advisory Board of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) since 1998, and represented Nokia in the W3C Advisory Committee in 1998-2002. In 1996-1997 he was a Visiting Scientist at MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, working with W3C and launching the Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard; he served as a co-editor of the RDF Model and Syntax specification.

His current research work focuses on the Semantic Web and its applications to ubiquitous computing. He collaborates with several US universities, including MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, and is an active participant in the DARPA Agent Markup Language (DAML) program.

His previous positions include Project Manager at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University and Research Scientist at the CS Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology. He has also worked as a software engineer in several companies (including his own start-up). He is the author of more than 70 conference papers and journal articles.

Brian Matthews

Dr Brian Matthews has a background in mathematics and formal methods for software development. In recent years he has brought this to bear upon web technologies, writing one of the first XML parsers, and exploring emerging technologies for exploiting the potential of the Web, including XML and RDF; and further exploring the use of formal methods and tools in software design. He is interested in finding synergies between these two threads.

Brian currently manages the e-information group at the CCLRC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory which provides an environment to apply the latest technologies for information and knoweldge management to meet the extreme demands of cutting edge science.

Brian was programme committe chair for the Euroweb 2002 conference and is leading the Thesaurus activity in the EU funded SWAD Europe project developing demonstration applications of semantic web technologies.

Andy Seaborne

Andy Seaborne is a researcher in HP labs, one of the five sites at which HP conducts its strategic product and technology research. Andy's current interests are in the processing RDF in applications. To this end, he has built two systems in the Jena framework:

• a data-oriented query language for RDF, RDQL, which has now been merged into Jena
• a NetAPI for remote interface with RDF models, with an server, Joseki, and client API.

Both are available for download from Andy's homepage which provides further details.

Michael Moss

Michael Moss is a specialist in Knowledge Management at Rolls-Royce. Originally working as an engineer in heat transfer he went on to do and publish research in knowledge based systems. Returning to Rolls-Royce he developed a strategy for knowledge management which aims to strike a balance between social approaches to knowledge sharing and the use of IT. Michael ran a project to set-up the web based system which is now widely used within the company to share technical methods and processes. Michael's current role includes technology transfer from universities. He is working with researchers in a number of universities who have interests in capture and reuse of engineering experience, improved design tools and in improving planning in a design environment.

Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson is Manager of the W3C Regional Office in the UK and Ireland. He holds a PhD in lexical semantics from Cambridge University and has been a full time researcher at the UK's CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory developing intelligent user interfaces for the last 20 years. He was a member of the W3C working group that developed the SMIL recommendation for synchronising multimedia. He was recently conference chair of Euroweb 2002: From e-science to e-business, that focussed on the integration of the semantic web, web services and GRID technologies. He is a member of the EU IST programme advisory group (ISTAG).

Steve Ross-Talbot

Steve Ross-Talbot is Chief Scientist of Enigmatec Corporation with over 21 years IT experience. His research interests include the semantic web, active queries and distributed architectures. At Nomura Research Institute he pioneered the use of active queries in financial services.

Steve is the co-chair of the W3C Web Services Choreography Working Group; Chair of the RuleML Reactive Rules subgroup and co-chair of the RuleML Steering committee and has extensive links with W3C and other standards organizations. Steve has considerable experience in applying emerging technologies to business being the founder of the JMS messaging company SpiritSoft. As Chairman of SpiritSoft he was responsible for raising £10.5M in venture capital funding over two rounds. He holds the position of Honorary Research Fellow at Napier University.