Tom Gruber

Tom is a computer scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur with a focus on systems for knowledge sharing and collective intelligence.  He did foundational work in ontology engineering and is well known for his definition of ontologies in the context of Artificial Intelligence. Gruber’s research interests in the 1990s were in the field of developing intelligent networked software to support human collaboration and learning. Areas of specialty include knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, computer-supported collaborative work, computer-mediated communication for design, and knowledge sharing technology.  In 1994 he was responsible for the creation of hypermail, an email to web gateway software that saw extensive use after a rewrite by a different programmer.  In 2007 Gruber co-founded Siri Inc., which created the Siri intelligent personal assistant and knowledge navigator. Siri Inc. was acquired by Apple in 2010, and Siri is now an integral part of iOS 5.