Piek Vossen (1960) studied Dutch and General Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. In 1995, he received his PhD (cum laude) in Linguistics on Computational Lexicology and Lexicography. He has been involved in the following (EU-)projects: Links, Acquilex-I and II, Sift, EuroWordNet I and II, Meaning, Euroterm, Balkanet and Pidgin. He is involved in further standardisation initiatives, such as the Ansi committee for ontology standardisation and the EAGLES/ILSE project. He is also Founder and President of the Global WordNet Association.
His PhD thesis, entitled "Grammatical and Conceptual Individuation in the Lexicon" (published by IFOTT, Amsterdam) describes a new model, the so-called Anchored Relational Model, for defining the syntactic and semantic properties of English and Dutch nouns based on differences in their pragmatic use. Using formal computer representations, the semantic and syntactic properties can be correlated in complex ways, making a further distinction between a cognitive level of meaning and a lexical semantic level (See also review in International Journal of Lexicography, 1998; 11: 73 - 79).
Vossen was the project coordinator of the EuroWordNet project. The aim of the EuroWordNet project was to develop a multilingual database with wordnets for Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Czech, Estonian and English. In this database, the concepts in the wordnets are interconnected via an Inter-Lingual-Index. The EuroWordNet model is now used by many other groups and projects to build wordnets for their languages and to link them to the database.
Vossen has published more than hundred articles in national and international journals, conference proceedings and (hand)books. He has given invited lectures at several conferences and other occasions, is a regular referee for (inter)national conferences and journals, and has served on several program and organizing committees. He also serves as a member of PhD-committees, in the Netherlands as well as abroad. He was the writer and editor of the book "EuroWordNet: a multilingual database with lexical semantic networks" (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998) and wrote several chapters in prominent Handbooks in the fields of Ontologies, Linguistics, Language, Lexicography etc.
Since 2000, he is founder and president of the Global WordNet Association and in this function he organized the First Global Wordnet Conference (India, 2002), the Second Global Wordnet Conference (Tsjechië, 2004), the Third Global Wordnet Conference (Korea, 2006) and the Fourth Global Wordnet Conference (Hungary, 2008).
As of February 2, 2006, Vossen launched the Global Wordnet Grid: the building of a complete free worldwide wordnet grid. This grid will be build around a shared set of concepts, such as the Common Base Concepts used in many wordnet projects. These concepts will be expressed in terms of Wordnet synsets and SUMO definitions. People from all language communities are invited to upload synsets from their language to the Grid. Gradually, the Grid will then be represented by all languages. The Grid will be available to everybody and will be distributed completely free.
Vossen is also one of the initators/organizers of IWIC, the The First International Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration (Kyoto, 2007), whereafter a website is launched called Intercultural Collaboration Gateway, with the aim of gathering information about intercultural collaboration.
He is invited as expert consultant for many (EU-) projects such as: "Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal", "Corpus Gesproken Nederlands", "Euroterm" and "Balkanet". He is also a member of the NWO - IMIX (Interactieve Multimodale Informatie Extractie)-program and the STEVIN (Spraak-en Taaltechnologische Essentiële Voorzieningen In het Nederlands)-Program from the Nederlandse Taalunie, NWO, AWI, and the FWO and IWT.
He is also responsible for the European part of a new project "Constructing Arabic Wordnet (AWN) in Parallel with an Ontology", sponsored by the American government and headed by Princeton University. AWN will build a lexical resource in Standard Arabic and it will be constructed according to the methods developed for EuroWordNet and since applied to dozens of languages around the world. The EuroWordNet approach maximizes compatibility across wordnets and focuses on manual encoding of the most complicated and important concepts.
As from 2006, he will be the project coordinator of "Cornetto" (Combinatorial Relational Network for Language Applications), financially supported by the Dutch-Flemish Language Union. Cornetto will build a lexical semantic database for Dutch with rich vertical and horizontal semantic relations and combinatorial lexical constraints such as multiword expressions, idioms and collocations on the one hand, and lexical functions and frames on the other. The concepts will be aligned with the English Wordnet so that ontologies and domain labels can be imported. The semantic layer will be validated with a formal ontology, to make it usable in Semantic Web environments. Cornetto will cover 40K entries, including the most generic and central part of the language. The database will go beyond the structure and content of Wordnet and FrameNet. Cornetto is an initiative of Vossen and the Free University of Amsterdam to combine the Dutch wordnet and the Referentie Bestand Nederlands (a Dutch database with combinatoric information of Dutch word meanings) in a unique resource for Dutch.
In April 2006, Vossen is appointed as Professor Computational Lexicology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
As of March 2008 Vossen will be project coordinator of the 7th EU Framework Project "Conceptual characterization of various genres in written and spoken media, across languages: "KYOTO" (7th Framework Project in the area of Digital Libraries). The development of a cross-lingual and cross-cultural knowledge and information transition system that is applied to the domain of the environment in Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.
In his present function as C.T.O. of Irion Technologies B.V., he develops multilingual language technology for many different languages. The technology combines state-of-the-art statistical engines developed at TNO with intelligent language modules. It uses a rich semantic network for 7 languages that is unique in the world, which makes it possible to develop concept-based information and knowledge management systems. Current main products are: a cross-lingual concept-based search engine, a document classification system, and a question-answer system. All products are available for English, Dutch, German, French, Italian and Spanish.