Barry Smith

Barry Smith is one of the most highly cited contemporary philosophers. He is a prominent contributor to both theoretical and applied research in ontology, where the applications of his work cover multiple disciplines from molecular biology to intelligence analysis. He is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the University at Buffalo, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Informatics, Neurology, and Computer Science and Engineering. He is also Director of the National Center for Ontological Research and Visiting Professor in the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano.

His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the US, Swiss and Austrian National Science Foundations, the Humboldt and Volkswagen Foundations, the European Union, and the US Department of Defense.

Smith's pioneering work on the science of ontology led to the establishment of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). BFO is the most commonly adopted top-level ontology development framework and was approved in ISO/IEC:21838-2 as an ISO standard top-level ontology. His work led also to the formation of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry, a suite of interoperable ontology modules designed to support information-driven research in biology and biomedicine.