Ontologies are seeing a resurgence of interest and usage as big data proliferates, machine learning advances, and integration of data becomes more paramount. The previous models of sometimes laborintensive, centralized ontology construction and maintenance do not mesh well in today’s interdisciplinary world that is in the midst of a big data, information extraction, and machine learning explosion. In this talk, we will provide some historical perspective on ontologies and their usage, and discuss a model of building and maintaining large collaborative, interdisciplinary ontologies along with the data repositories and data services that they empower. We will give a few examples of heterogeneous semantic data resources made more interconnected and more powerful by ontology-supported infrastructures, discuss a vision for ontologyenabled future research and provide some examples in a large health empowerment joint effort between RPI and IBM Watson Health.