Founded the InfoLabs at University of Limburg (Belgium, 1983-86) and at University of Tilburg (The Netherlands, 1986-95) , where he held the Chair of Databases.
Research remains an important interest even now and is focused on ontologies and their relationship to databases and the semantic web, enterprise interoperability. Specifically the foundations and application of design methodologies and tools crafted for community-driven development of ontologies, as exemplified by the DOGMA and GOSPL Projects at VUB STARLab. Prof. Meersman led and participated in numerous EU projects (FP4-FP7) involving applications of these subjects, and in STARLab's spinoff company Collibra (2008). Author of numerous papers on the above topics.
Member and Past Chairman (1983-1992) of the IFIP WG2.6 on Database. Past Chairman of the IFIP TC 12 (Artificial Intelligence, 1987-92), and of TC 2 (Software Theory and Practice, 2004-08). Past (founding) WG Chair of the new IFIP WG12.7 on Social Semantics (2010). Invited and keynote speaker at many international conferences and events. Robert Meersman co-founded the famous international conference series on Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS, since 1994, now part of OnTheMove Federated Conferences).
Last but not least, he is President of the non-profit Distributed Objects Applications Institute (DOAI, since 2000) that hosts the annual OnTheMove – check its website http://www.onthemove-conferences.org. The next OTM’14 event is scheduled in Calabria, Italy 27-31 October 2014.
