Dave Beckett is an RDF and semantic web developer working for the Yahoo! Media Group. He has worked on standarizing and developing web metadata standards for Dublin Core, RDF and the early work of RDF query with SPARQL, which he named. Dave created the Redland, Raptor and Rasqal RDF open source libraries to implement it all. Dave has also helped run several web sites such as Planet RDF for Semantic Web Interest Group support activities for over 5 years.

Mills Davis's Project10X specializes in industry research and strategic programs. Mills consults with technology manufacturers, global 2000 corporations, and government agencies on next-wave semantic technologies and solutions. Mills serves as lead for the Federal CIO council's Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) research into the business value of semantic technologies. Also, he is a founding member of the AIIM interoperable enterprise content management (iECM) working group, and a founding member of the National Center for Ontology Research (NCOR).

Jim Hendler will focus the work of the new Tetherless World Constellation on increasing access to information at any time and place without the need for a “tether” to a specific computer or device. Jim is former Director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery and co-director of the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics (MIND) Laboratory at the University of Maryland, and is widely recognized as one of the earliest visionaries of the Semantic Web.

Ivan graduated as mathematician at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary, in 1979. After a brief scholarship at the Université Paris VI, he joined the Hungarian research institute in computer science (SZTAKI) where he worked for 6 years. Ivan left Hungary in 1986 and, after a few years in industry, joined the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences (CWI) in Amsterdam where he has held a tenure position since 1988. He received a PhD degree in Computer Science in 1990 at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Ivan joined the W3C team as Head of Offices in January 2001 while maintaining his position at CWI. He served as Head of Offices until June 2006, when he was asked to take the Semantic Web Activity Lead position, which is now his principal work at W3C.

Ralph Hodgson is a co-founder and executive partner at TopQuadrant, Inc, a US-based company that specializes in semantic technology consulting, training and tools. He combines expertise in semantic technologies with over 25 years of experience in business application development and deployment, consulting, software development and strategic planning. Prior to co-founding TopQuadrant, Ralph has held executive consulting positions at IBM Global Services and was the founder of Interactive Development Environments in the UK, an international CASE tools vendor. His two most recent books are "Capability Cases: a Solution Envisioning Approach" by Addison-Wesley and "Adaptive Information: Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration" published by John Wiley.

Ms. Kendall’s formal training in Situation Semantics coupled with extensive systems integration experience led her to architect Sandpiper's innovative, standards-based approach to knowledge sharing through the use of ontologies. She is an active participant in the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment effort of the W3C and a key contributor to standards such as the Object Management Group’s Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM). Prior to Sandpiper, Ms. Kendall consulted for Lockheed Martin where she drove the reuse strategy for the DARPA / TRI-Services RASSP program. Ms. Kendall served as product development manager for Aspect Development, a provider of component and supplier management systems. She started her career in development, integration, and deployment of ground-based communications, signal, and data processing systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space. She holds an MA in Linguistics from Stanford University and a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Kevin Lynch was the Project Manager and database architect for COPLINK, a national data warehousing project to integrate law enforcement databases that became a national model for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies. As a Knowledge Architect for Raytheon for the last 4 years, his focus is on semantic infrastructure for systems integration.

Dave McComb is President of Semantic Arts, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in the application of semantics to enterprise architectures. Dave has been successfully leading software development, planning, and review projects for over 25 years. He has worked with dozens of clients and dozens of technical environments, including those during his time with Andersen Consulting, that have led to a much broader understanding of what is needed to grow a productive environment. Dave is the author of the book Semantics in Business Systems (Morgan Kaufmann) and the chairman of SemTech: The Semantic Technology Conference.

Professor Deborah McGuinness is co-directing the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For the previous 9 years Dr McGuinness led or co-led the Knowledge Systems Lab at Stanford University. Dr. McGuinness is a leading expert in knowledge representation and reasoning languages and systems, and has worked in ontology creation and evolution environments for over 25 years. She has done foundational work in ontologies, having built and deployed numerous ontological environments during the course of her career in AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies. Her work on languages (including OWL, DAML+OIL, OIL, CLASSIC) is aimed at providing languages that enable the next generation of web applications. She leads efforts at RPI on among other things, explainable systems, accountable social collaborative environments, and semantic eScience. She is on numerous advisory boards for academic and commercial startups and serves as CEO of McGuinness Associates.

Eric Miller's Zepheira provides solutions to integrate, navigate and manage data across personal, group and enterprise boundaries to save time and money. His team applyies Semantic Web standards and knowledge management technologies to address specific data integration challenges. Most recently, Eric led the Semantic Web Initiative for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at MIT. Before joining the W3C, Eric was a Senior Research Scientist at OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. in Dublin, Ohio and the co-founder and Associate Director of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. Eric holds a Research Scientist position at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory where he is a Principal Investigator on the MIT SIMILE project focused on developing robust, open source tools based on Semantic Web technologies that improve access, management and reuse among digital resources.

Dr. Brand Niemann is a Senior Enterprise Architect in the Office of the Chief Information Officer of the Environmental Protection Agency. His work on EPA and Interagency data architecture to facilitate electronic information sharing was recognized by Federal Computer Week in its 2006 Power Player Series Special Report and recently at the Gartner Spring Enterprise Architecture Summit Conference. He was asked by Federal Computer Week to help organize The 22nd Semi-Annual Spring Government CIO Summit “Government by Wiki: New Tools for Collaboration, Information-Sharing, and Decision-Making” and provided a keynote on Government by Web 2.0 (Wiki): A Guided Tour.

At Intel Capital (ICap), the venture capital subsidiary of Intel Corporation, Eghosa leads investments in consumer internet startups. He is also ICap’s leading expert on semantic technologies and search. Prior to this role, Eghosa was Chief of Staff of Intel Capital. Selected ICap deals that he was involved with include CADMos, Photobit, Sharewave, Get2Chip, Consera, JBoss, and AppIQ. Pre-ICap deals included GeoTrust and 800.com, among others. He has also been a member of several ABA Committees including the Small Business Committee, the Committee on Federal Regulation of Securities and the Task Force on Small Business Issuers. Eghosa graduated with honors from the University of Nigeria Law School, received an LL.M in Corporate Law and Finance from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and an MBA (Entrepreneurship) from Babson College. He is admitted to the bar in Nigeria, New York and Oregon.

Mehmet Orun is the Principal Architect for Data Services in the Enterprise Architecture group of Genentech responsible for data architecture and data services infrastructure projects. He was previously a management consultant specializing in integration, migration, and data warehousing projects, and also worked in academic and healthcare IT. His interest and expertise includes data and meta data driven solutions to improve data quality, maintainability, and utility while bridging the gap across applications, processes, and structured and unstructured data sources. Towards this end, Mehmet has earned a double MBA in Management and Management Information Systems, with post graduate studies in Computer Science. Mehmet is the Program Director for the San Francisco chapter of DAMA.

Mr. Pollock is a technology leader and author of the enterprise software book "Adaptive Information" (John Wiley & Sons 2004). Currently a Senior Director with Oracle’s Fusion Middleware group, Mr. Pollock was formerly an independent consultant for the Defense Department, Vice President of Technology at Cerebra and Chief Technology Officer of Modulant, developing semantic middleware platforms and inference driven SOA platforms. Throughout his career, he has architected, designed, and built application server/middleware solutions for Fortune 500 and US Government clients. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences, author for industry journals, active member of W3C and OASIS, and formerly an engineering instructor with University of California at Berkeley’s Extension on the subjects of object-oriented systems, software development process and enterprise systems architecture.

Dr. Susie Stephens joined Eli Lilly in early 2007 as a Principal Research Scientist for open innovation. Her role is to identify and foster external collaborations that complement Lilly's research and business priorities in integrative informatics and tailored therapeutics. Previously, Dr Stephens worked at Oracle where she led the development of the company's core infrastructure to enhance its capabilities for the life sciences industry. Dr Stephens is chair of W3C's Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group, and coordinates the BioRDF activity within the W3C Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group.