B Huffer Statement

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I am the founder of Lingua Logica, a small business engaged in the design and development of semantic software applications. Lingua Logica provides contractor support to the Atmospheric Science Data Center at NASA’s Langley Research Center. I’m a philosopher and lover of logic, semantics, ontology and data and have been working in the semantic technology field since 1998, when I joined the Cyc Project in Austin, Texas. I’ve worked on knowledge representation, formal logic modeling, and implementation of semantic technologies at companies including HIGHFLEET and Microsoft, and on behalf of U.S. Government agencies including the FAA, DOD, DHS, and NASA. I have extensive experience in ontology-supported applications for semantic search, and data and text analytics.

I am the current chair of the Semantic Technology Committee, and in that role have helped the committee form some productive alliances and achieve some important milestones. In 2017, working with the ESIP staff, the Semantic Technology Committee completed an evaluation of two candidate ontology repositories that were being considered for adoption as an ESIP community resource. The Community Ontology Repository was selected, and we are now beginning to develop a process for managing this valuable ESIP resource. We have begun a collaborative effort with the OBO Foundry’s Environment Ontology (ENVO), investigating possibilities for aligning ENVO and SWEET, which became an official ESIP resource in 2017. I’ve personally been working with the ENVO lead and others as part of a FUNding Friday project to develop a process for working with scientists and subject matter experts to develop acceptable and scientifically accurate term definitions to improve and extend SWEET using the NSF-funded YAMZ Metadictionary tool. We have also worked closely with the Drone Cluster to help that group begin to leverage semantic technologies and ontologies in addressing metadata requirements for drone-generated data. I would be grateful for the opportunity to build on these achievements and to continue leading the Semantic Technology Committee in 2018.