James Hendler

Education Hendler completed his Doctor of Philosophy degree at Brown University (1986) with a thesis on automated planning and scheduling. He also has an MSc (1983) from Brown University, an MS (1981) in Cognitive Psychology from Southern Methodist University, and a BS (1978) from Yale University.

Research Hendler's research interests are in the semantic web and artificial intelligence. Hendler held a longstanding position as professor at the University of Maryland where he was the Director of the Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery and held joint appointments in the Department of Computer Science, the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and the Institute for Systems Research. Hendler was the Director for Semantic Web and Agent Technology at the Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the British Computer Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the AAAS and the Association for Computing Machinery and the National Academy of Public Administration (United States).

Hendler was co-author, with Tim Berners-Lee and Ora Lassila, of the article "The Semantic Web" which appeared in Scientific American in 2001. In 2017, he also became the Rensselaer lead of the joint RPI-IBM Center for Health Empowerment by Analytics, Learning and Semantics, (HEALS) a member of the IBM Artificial Intelligence Horizons Network. In 2019, Hendler was named Director of the RPI-IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Collaboration, a large joint project between IBM Research and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 2022, Hendler became the Founding Director of Rensselaer's Future of Computing Institute. In 2025 he became the head of the cognitive science department at RPI.

Hendler helps lead the Tetherless World Constellation on increasing access to information at any time and place without the need for a "tether" to a specific computer or device. Researchers envision an increasingly web-accessible world in which personal digital assistants (PDAs), cameras, music-listening devices, cell phones, smartphones, laptops, and other technologies converge to offer the user interactive information and communication. Hendler is the former chair of the board of directors of the Web Science Trust and has been a visiting professor at Hebrew University, DeMontfort University, Bath Spa University, University of Edinburgh and an honorary professor at Wuhan University and University of Leicester.

He is also the Editor in Chief Emeritus of IEEE Intelligent Systems and was the first computer scientist to serve on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.

He is a former member of the US Air Force Science Advisory Board and a former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). During his tenure there, he was responsible for projects such as the Control of Agent Based Systems (CoABS) program which led to the creation of other Agent-based projects: Taskable Agent Software Kit (TASK) and DARPA's Agent Markup Language (DAML) - the latter of which was involved in funding the emerging Semantic Web area.

Hendler served as an "Internet Web Expert" for the U.S. government, providing guidance to the Data.gov project, and in September 2013 he was appointed as the Open Data Advisor for NY State. In 2015, he was appointed a member of the US Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee (HSSTAC) and in 2016 appointed to the National Academies Board on Research Data and Information. In 2017, he became a member of the Director's Advisory Committee for the National Security Directorate at PNNL. In 2018, he was appointed chair of the Association for Computing Machinery's US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC, formerly USACM) and in 2021 became chair of the ACM's Global Technology Policy Council.

In 2018, Hendler was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration (United States).

Since 2018, Hendler has been a regular participant on the Roundtable Panel at WAMC radio and in 2021 he became a member of the Board of Trustees of WAMC.

Books Linking the World’s Information: Essays on Tim Berners-Lee’s Invention of the World Wide Web, O. Seneviratne, J. Hendler (eds), ACM Press, 2023. Social Machines: The coming collision of artificial intelligence, social networking and humanity w/Alice Mulvehill, (2016) Apress . Web Science:Understanding the Emergence of Macro-Level Features on the World Wide Web w/Kieron O'Hara, Noshir Contractor, Wendy Hall, Nigel Shadbolt; NOW publishers, 2013 - . Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist (w/ Dean Allemang, Fabien Gandon) Morgan Kaufmann (2008) (second edition, 2011)(third edition, 2020). Spinning the Semantic Web (ed) MIT Press (2005) Robots for Kids (ed) Morgan Kaufmann (2000) Massively Parallel Artificial Intelligence (ed) AAAI Press (1994) Expert Systems: The User Interface (ed) Ablex Pub (1988) Integrating Marker-Passing and Problem Solving. Lawrence Erlbaum (1987)

Honors This short work is the first draft of a book manuscript by Aaron Swartz written for the series "Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web" at the invitation James Hendler. Unfortunately, the book wasn't completed before Aaron's death in January 2013. As a tribute, the editor and publisher are publishing the work digitally without cost. 1995 - Fulbright Foundation Fellowship 1999 - Fellow, AAAI 2002 - Department of the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service 2005 - Robert Engelmore Memorial Lecture Prize, AAAI 2007 - Fellow, British Computer Society 2009 - Fellow, IEEE 2009 - Fellow, Semantic Technology Institute International 2010 - Named to the "Honor Roll" of 20 most innovative US professors by Playboy magazine 2010 - Named "Internet Web Expert" for US Office of Science and Technology Policy 2012 - Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science 2013 - Named Open Data Advisor, New York State Government 2014 - IBM Faculty Research Award 2015 - Appointed Member of the US Homeland Security Science and Technology Advisory Committee 2016 - Appointed Member of the National Academies' Board on Research Data and Information. 2016 - Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery 2017 - Distinguished Service Award, AAAI 2018 - Fellow, National Academy of Public Administration (United States) 2021 - chair, Global Technology Policy Council, Association for Computing Machinery 2022 - Honorary Professor and Fellow, University of Leicester 2023 - Service Award, Semantic Web Science Association 2024 - Steering Committee, AI Alliance. 2025 - Recipient of 2025 AAAI 2026 - Recipient (with Tim Berners-Lee and Ora Lassila) of Lifetime Achievement award at Knowledge Graph Conference)

Boards and advisory boards WAMC Public Radio, Board of Trustees. Trinity Alliance (NGO), Board of Trustees. Timbr.AI, Advisory Board Web Science Trust, board member, former chair of the Board Radar Networks, Advisory Board, (sold to EVRI) TopQuadrant, Advisory Board Franz Inc, Advisory Board Bright Hub, Advisory Board SocialWire, Advisory Board Common Crawl, Advisory Board