I'm Tim O'Keefe, an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Discipline at The University of Minnesota at Morris.

I'm a (fairly) freshly-minted Ph.D. from the UT-Austin Department of Philosophy. I specialize in ancient philosophy and wrote my dissertation on Epicurus. If you're interested in reading more about that part of my life, you can take a look at my curriculum vitae.

Before coming to Minnesota, I worked as an 'ontological engineer' at Cycorp, Inc. Cycorp is trying to model human common sense knowledge and reasoning. As an ontological engineer, I didn't create new categories of being. Instead, I was supposed to enter knowledge connected with various domains, like group action or tools. In doing this, I needed to decide what categories we should use in order to model adequately the knowledge in that domain.

Some personal info: I was born in New York City, but grew up in Long Island, Ohio, and New Jersey. My parents currently live in Florida, and my sister (and niece) are in Massachusetts. Here's a photo of us.

My grandfather also lives in Florida. One of his leisure activities is writing about what it was like growing up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania and serving in WW II.

This summer the wonderful Anne Farrell and I were married. We met in graduate school.

Teaching, reading, and writing take up most of my time, but I also enjoy hiking, camping, biking, homebrewing, and being a news junkie.

Return to the main page.