Frank van Harmelen (born 1960) is a Dutch computer scientist and professor of Knowledge Representation & Reasoning in the Artificial Intelligence department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.^[2] He served as the scientific director and leader of the LarKC project (2008–2011), aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider as a platform for very large scale semantic web reasoning.^[4,3,1,2] He earned his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh in 1989 under Alan Bundy with the thesis "On the Efficiency of Meta-level Reasoning".^[2] His online profiles include his university homepage (http://www.cs.vu.nl/~frankh) and his Twitter account (@FrankVanHarmele).

After studying mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam, Van Harmelen moved to the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, where he obtained his PhD (awarded in 1989 according to English Wikipedia) for his research on meta-level reasoning, while Italian Wikipedia describes it as work on automated reasoning. While in Edinburgh, he co-developed a logic-based toolkit for expert systems and worked with Alan Bundy on proof planning for inductive theorem proving.^[2]

After his PhD research, he returned to Amsterdam, where he worked from 1990 to 1995 in the SWI Department under the guidance of Professor Bob Wielinga on the use of reflection in expert systems and on the formal underpinnings and foundations of the CommonKADS methodology for Knowledge-Based Systems. In 1995, he joined the artificial intelligence research group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he was a co-leader of the On-To-Knowledge project, one of the first Semantic Web projects. He was appointed to a professorship in 2002 and became the leader of the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group. Currently, he is the leader and scientific director of the LarKC project aiming to develop the Large Knowledge Collider, a platform for very large scale semantic web reasoning.^[4,2]

In 2017, Van Harmelen was elected a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), an association of Dutch scientists.^[5] In 2019, Van Harmelen received a Zwaartekracht grant from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for The Hybrid Intelligence Center.^[7]

Van Harmelen's research interests include artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, the semantic web, approximate reasoning, and medical protocols. He was one of the co-designers of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and the Ontology Inference Layer (OIL), and has published books on meta-level inference, automated reasoning, knowledge-based systems, and the Semantic Web.

Van Harmelen has published several books and over 100 research papers and articles.^[8] In 1989, he co-authored Logic-Based Knowledge Representation with P. Jackson and H. Reichgelt, published by The MIT Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts (ISBN 0-262-10038-X). In 1991, he published Meta-level Inference Systems (referred to as Meta-level Deduction Systems in Italian Wikipedia) as part of Research Notes in AI (Artificial Intelligence Research Notes) with Pitman and Morgan Kaufmann in London and San Mateo, California (ISBN 1-55860-196-1). In 2003, he co-edited Towards the Semantic Web: Ontology-Driven Knowledge Management with John Davies and Dieter Fensel, published by John Wiley & Sons (dated 2002, ISBN 0-470-84867-7). In 2004, he co-authored A Semantic Web Primer (in the Cooperative Information Systems series) with Grigoris Antoniou, published by MIT Press (ISBN 0-262-01210-3). Also in 2004, he co-authored Information Sharing on the Semantic Web (listed as Semantic Web Information in Italian Wikipedia) with Heiner Stuckenschmidt, published by Springer (ISBN 3-540-20594-2). In 2008, he published the Handbook of Knowledge Representation alongside V. Lifschitz and B. Porter, released by Elsevier (ISBN 978-0-444-52211-5).

A selection of his research articles includes the 1981 paper "Flexible data handling for routine quantitative analyses employing a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer under computer control" in the Journal of Automatic Chemistry, co-authored with J. Vink, P. C. J. M. Koppens, and W. E. Van Voorthuijsen. In Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, he co-authored "Formalisation for decision support in anaesthesiology" (1997) with G. R. Renardel De Lavalette, R. Groenboom, E. Rotterdam, A. Ten Teije, and F. De Geus, followed by "A study of PROforma, a development methodology for clinical procedures" (1999) with A. Vollebregt, A. Ten Teije, J. Van Der Lei, and M. Mosseveld. In 2004, he published "A tool for gene expression based PubMed search through combining data sources" in Bioinformatics with M. Korotkiy, R. Middelburg, H. Dekker, and J. Lankelma, as well as "Protocure: Supporting the development of medical protocols through formal methods" in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics with M. Balser, O. Coltell, J. Van Croonenborg, C. Duelli, A. Jovell, P. Lucas, M. Marcos, and S. Miksch. His later co-authored contributions to Artificial Intelligence in Medicine include "Improving medical protocols by formal methods" (2006) with A. Ten Teije, M. Marcos, M. Balser, J. Van Croonenborg, C. Duelli, P. Lucas, S. Miksch, and W. Reif; "Extraction and use of linguistic patterns for modelling medical guidelines" (2007) with R. Serban, A. Ten Teije, M. Marcos, and C. Polo-Conde; and "Using model checking for critiquing based on clinical guidelines" (2009) with P. Groot, A. Hommersom, P. J. F. Lucas, R. J. Merk, A. Ten Teije, and R. Serban.

External resources include an interview with Frank van Harmelen about the Semantic Web. A blog written by Frank van Harmelen is also available.