PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michel Dumontier

Michel Dumontier is a data science professor whose research links semantic technologies, biomedical data and AI for health. He earned a biochemistry degree at Manitoba in 1999 and a bioinformatics PhD at Toronto in 2004, then held posts at Carleton and Stanford. He served as scientific director of Bio2RDF and coauthored the FAIR data principles; in 2017, he joined Maastricht to set up its Institute of Data Science. His work there includes Onto-CGAN, which combines disease ontologies with generative models to create synthetic health data, and 2026 research on errors in clinical knowledge graphs. As of October 2026, he is Distinguished Professor of Data Science and founder and director of that institute.

Born
1975

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1999–2004

    Biochemistry and bioinformatics

    He earns a BSc in biochemistry at the University of Manitoba in 1999 and a PhD in bioinformatics at the University of Toronto in 2004.

  2. 2005–2013

    Carleton and Bio2RDF

    From 2005 to 2013, he is an assistant and associate professor at Carleton University. In 2010, he becomes scientific director of Bio2RDF, an open-source project that uses Semantic Web technologies to provide interlinked life-science data.

  3. 2013–2016

    Stanford and Ebola-KB

    From 2013 to 2016, he is an associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine's Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. In 2015, he coauthors an Ebola virus-centered knowledge base that aggregates data through Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies.

  4. 2016

    The FAIR Guiding Principles

    In 2016, he coauthors the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. The paper emphasizes that machines should find and use data, while people should be able to reuse it.

  5. January 2017

    Building Maastricht's data institute

    In January 2017, he becomes Maastricht University's University Professor of Data Science and sets up an interdisciplinary Institute of Data Science. He later serves as the institute's founder and director.

  6. 2025

    Onto-CGAN for unseen diseases

    In 2025, he coauthors Onto-CGAN, which combines disease ontologies with generative adversarial networks to create synthetic health data for diseases absent from its training data.

  7. Since 2017

    Professor and institute director

    He is Distinguished Professor of Data Science and founder and director of the Institute of Data Science at Maastricht University. In 2026, he coauthors research on learning constraints to detect semantic errors in the MIMIC-III clinical knowledge graph.

Career

  1. Since 2017Maastricht UniversityDistinguished Professor of Data Science, Founder and Director
  2. 2013–2016Stanford School of MedicineAssociate Professor
  3. 2005–2013Carleton UniversityAssistant and Associate Professor

Education

  1. 2004University of TorontoPhD in Bioinformatics
  2. 1999University of ManitobaBSc in Biochemistry

From the biography.

  1. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Stanford University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Maastricht University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Maastricht University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Maastricht University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Michel Dumontier yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Michel Dumontier (M.J.) maastrichtuniversity.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Data Science: sleutel naar een betere wereld maastrichtuniversity.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Bio2RDF: Convert, Provide And Reuse. nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. An Ebola virus-centered knowledge base pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Generating unseen diseases patient data using ontology enhanced generative adversarial networks nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Rule-augmented constraint learning for semantic error detection in MIMIC-III knowledge graph cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.