gist FORUM

gistUFO: An Alignment of gist and gUFO

Tuesday, November 17, 2026 · 11:30am MT / 1:30pm ET

Virtual · Free

About the session

gist is a free, open-source upper ontology for business, designed to be lightweight and easy to adapt, and used as the starting point for domain ontologies in a wide range of fields. gUFO is an OWL implementation of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), whose strong theoretical foundations make it a good resource for developing and evaluating more specialized models. gistUFO aligns the two, mapping every gist class into gUFO's hierarchies of individuals and types.

Dylan Abney and Will Mandel will walk through the reusable method behind the alignment: a step-by-step decision wizard that can map any ontology to gUFO, and SPARQL queries that check the result against UFO's constraints and known anti-patterns. The alignment has two main benefits. It enables interoperability between domains modeled with gist and those modeled with gUFO, and it adds a validation layer that points to some potential changes to gist. There will be time for questions and discussion.

The session is based on the open-access ​paper​ "gistUFO: An Alignment of gist and gUFO", by Dylan Abney, Phil Blackwood, Will Mandel, and Claudenir M. Fonseca of the University of Twente, published in Formal Ontology in Information Systems (2026). The ontologies, alignments, and queries are on ​GitHub​.

Your presenters

Dylan Abney

Associate Ontologist, Semantic Arts

Dylan Abney is an ontologist with experience spanning both academia and industry, specializing in semantic technologies and enterprise knowledge graphs. At Semantic Arts, he contributes directly to the ongoing development of gist and has consulted for clients across energy, commodities, and defense research domains. With a strong background in philosophy and applied ontology, Dylan brings a rare combination of theoretical depth and hands-on implementation expertise to semantic modeling challenges.

Will Mandel

Entry Ontologist, Semantic Arts

Will Mandel brings a background of library science and archiving to his work in ontology, with strong experience in both theoretical and applied fields. At Semantic Arts, he contributes to both gist and client projects, helping develop and implement knowledge graph solutions.

Also on the project

Phil Blackwood

Journeyperson Ontologist, Semantic Arts

Phil, a co-author of the paper, is an ontologist with more than 30 years of experience in large enterprises. At AT&T he was Lead Systems Engineer for the first release of seven major applications, and as Enterprise Architect he advocated for data-centric architecture. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Virginia.

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