External Research Funding

External Research Funding.

This list represents a total of $16 million (estimated*) external funding awards that support research, visiting postdoctoral scholars and graduate students in the UB Department of Philosophy.**

External Funding Awards

  • 2023: Infrastructure Data Taxonomy (Ontology-based revision strategy), LLNL
  • 2023: Ontology Bootcamp, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Washington DC
  • 2022: Abrasian Ontology and Database, Edison Welding Institute (EWI), Buffalo, NY.
  • 2022: Ontology Bootcamp, Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, Tucson, AZ,
  • 2021-23: Intelligence Community PostDoc Fellowship ORAU 174038, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Oct 2021-Sep 2023.
  • 2020: JAIC (Joint Artificial Intelligence Center) Joint Logistics Program, 141011 Ontology Support. PI
  • 2021: METASTRIKE (Air Force Research Lab, Dayton, OH) Question-and-Answer System for BFO-conformant Ontology Development. July 2021-December 2021
  • 2020-2021: CUBRC to create an ontology of cyber vulnerabilities in support of the Navy Systems Engineering Transformation.
  • 2020-2021: MIT Lincoln Lab to create an ontology of collaborative behavior in support of the Army's Advanced Aviation Teaming Program.
  • 2020-2021: CUBRC to create an ontology of cyber vulnerabilities in support of the Navy Systems Engineering Transformation.
  • 2020-2021: MIT Lincoln Lab to create an ontology of collaborative behavior in support of the Army's Advanced Aviation Teaming Program.
  • 2020-2023: John Templeton Foundation to study of the philosophy and psychology of intellectual autonomy; goal is to deepen understanding of how to balance reasoning and decision-making with a robust awareness of the fallibility of cognitive capacities.
  • 2015-2025: NIH/NCATS 1UL1TR001412; Buffalo Clinical and Translational Research Center; To contribute to the national CTSA consortium by developing novel health informatics tools; leveraging our strength as a leading center on research in standards and ontologies; and testing and disseminating ontology-based methods to share translational image data. 
  • 2017-2022: BRIGHT Education: Buffalo Research Innovation in Genomic and Healthcare Technology Education; The goal of the project is to train 5 post-docs and 2 5-yr PhDs plus 3 short term trainees in research on biomedical informatics. The training focus is on health and healthcare/clinical informatics, translational bioinformatics and clinical research informatics.
  • 2018-2022: Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR): Event Characterization Fusing Hard and Soft Data via Semantic Models. Project to create a space event ontology to enable space event characterization on the basis of both human derived information and information from physics-based sensing mechanisms.
  • 2019-2020: C5ISR Center, US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command: Cognition Data Framework: To automate a significant portion of the intelligence analysis process by employing two foundational concepts: (1) an open data store that is accessible by all cognition forming processes, and (2) ontological rigor in the development of classes needed for the correlation of evolving intelligence. 
  • 2018-2020: Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program: Referent Tracking for Intelligence Analysis: This project aims to identify the lessons learned from the most advanced Referent Tracking (RT) work in medicine and to explore how these lessons might be translated to the domain of intelligence analysis.
  • 2015-2020: NIH/NCI 1U24CA199374-01; Pathology Image Informatics Platform for Visualization, Analysis and Management; To allow end users with different needs and technical backgrounds to seamlessly (a) archive and manage, (b) share, and (c) visualize Digital Pathology Image data acquired from different sites, formats, and platforms.
  • 2015-2020: NIH (National Institute for General Medical Science) for work on the Protein Ontology (PRO) to support work by Barry Smith and collaborators Alex Diehl and Alan Ruttenberg on the logic of the PRO and on its interrelations with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and with BFO-based ontologies in areas such as drug discovery, neurology and disease.
  • 2018-2019: Naval Postgraduate School N00244-18-1-0003: Data Science Approaches to Automation of Analytic Workflows: The goal of the project is to define a system engineering approach to the functional design of a closed-loop adaptive information collection system supportive of both intelligence analysis and tactical mission operations. This will include: careful assessments of ontological elements supporting current analytic frameworks and research on the ontological elements supporting an optimal cognitively-based information collection system.
  • 2017-2018: Coordinated Holistic Alignment of Manufacturing Processes; A combined government, academia and industry initiative to advance interoperability of manufacturing industry information systems through incorporation of ontology technology.
  • 2015-2017: NIH / NIAID HHSN272201200028C: Bioinformatics Integration Support Contract (BISC). To provide ontology services to the IMMPORT Database and Analysis Portal which provides advanced information technology and bioinformatics support in the collection, analysis and exchange of scientific data for NIAID-funded science researchers investigating immunology and immune-mediated diseases.
  • 2014-2015: SUNY Network of Excellence in Energy, Environment, Education and Economics for Understanding and Overcoming Barriers to Communication in Complex Socio-ecological Systems: An Integrative Approach to Interdisciplinary Research, Policy Translation, and Educational Application. Co-PI K. Shockley.
  • 2013-2016: INSPIRE grant (Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education) Advancing groundwater restoration through qualitative analysis. Co-PI K. Shockley.
  • 2013-2015: NIH grants for ImmPort Bioinformatics Integration Ontologies. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 2005-2014: NIH grants to National Center for Biomedical Ontology. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 2007-2014: NIH grants for PRO: A Protein Ontology in Open Biomedical Ontologies. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 2007-2014: NSF-IGERT (Integrated Graduate Education through Research and Training) grant for Ecosystem Restoration through Interdisciplinary Exchange (ERIE). Researcher: K. Shockley.
  • 2008-2013: NIH and Burroughs Wellcome grants for the Infections Disease Ontology. Co P-I B. Smith.
  • 2010-2012: NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program grant. Coordinator of Ethics Component: K. Shockley.
  • 2009-2010: John Templeton Foundation grant through the Cognition, Religion, and Theology Project of Oxford University for the study of the psychology of religious belief. PI J. Beebe.
  • 2008-2009: DoD grants for the Command and Control (C2) Core Ontology and Biometrics Ontology. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 2004-2008: Volkswagen Foundation grant on Forms of Life: Philosophical Dimensions of Contemporary Biomedical Ontology. PI B. Smith
  • 1998-2008: NSF Integrated Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) grants. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 1995-1999: NSF grant on Geographic Categories: An Ontological Investigation. Co-PI B. Smith.
  • 1993: NSF grant on The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality. Co-PI B. Smith.

*The estimate is of direct costs brought to the University at Buffalo by our researchers.

**In addition to the items on this list, UB philosophers have received individual grants from agencies such as the National Humanities Center and from internal sources such as UB's Humanities Institute and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy.