Ian Horrocks facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ian Horrocks
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Ian Horrocks
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| Born |
Ian Robert Horrocks
11 March 1958 |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | University of Manchester (BSc, MSc, PhD) |
| Known for |
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| Awards | BCS Lovelace Medal (2020). Roger Needham Award (2005) |
| Scientific career | |
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| Thesis | Optimising tableaux decision procedures for description logics (1997) |
Ian Robert Horrocks is a smart computer scientist from the United Kingdom. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford. He is also a Fellow at Oriel College, Oxford. His main work is about how computers can understand and use information, especially with something called ontology languages.
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Learning and Degrees
Ian Horrocks studied at the University of Manchester. There, he earned three degrees: a Bachelor of Science (BSc), a Master of Science (MSc), and a PhD. A PhD is the highest university degree you can get.
His Work and Discoveries
After teaching and researching for many years at the University of Manchester, Professor Horrocks moved to the University of Oxford in 2008. He developed important ways for computers to "reason" or think about complex information. His ideas are used in many computer systems today that help computers understand things.
Professor Horrocks also helped create special computer languages called OIL and DAML+OIL. He played a very important part in making the Web Ontology Language (OWL). These languages and tools help computers organize and understand huge amounts of information. Big groups like the United Nations (UN) and many companies use them.
His research has received funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). This council helps pay for science and engineering projects in the UK.
From 2012 to 2022, Professor Horrocks was the main editor for a science magazine called Journal of Web Semantics. Later, he and other editors started a new magazine called Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge. He also helped organize big computer science conferences in 2002 and 2010.
Awards and Special Recognitions
Professor Horrocks has received several important awards for his work.
- In 2020, he won the BCS Lovelace Medal. This award is given to people who have made a big difference in computer science.
- In 2011, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honor for scientists in the UK.
- In 2005, he won the Roger Needham Award from the British Computer Society (BCS).
Oxford Semantic Technologies
In 2017, Professor Horrocks started a company called Oxford Semantic Technologies Limited. He created it with two of his friends and colleagues, Bernardo Cuenca Grau and Boris Motik. This company helps use their advanced computer science research to solve real-world problems.
