CV

CURRENT POSITIONS

• Head of User-Centric Data Science Group, VU University Amsterdam (2013 – present)
• Full Professor: Computer Science, VU University Amsterdam (2016 – present)
• Chief Scientist: Tagasauris Inc, NYC, NY (2013 – present)
• Visiting researcher: Columbia Data Science, NYC, NY (2016 – present)
• Visiting researcher: Center for Advanced Studies, IBM Netherlands (2013 – present)
• Track leader Creative Industry: Amsterdam Data Science (2015 – present)
• Chair: eHumanities Events Working Group (2016 – present)
• President: User Modeling Inc (2016 – present)

EDUCATION

• Ph.D.: University of Twente, The Netherlands, September 2001 Task-based Approach to Information Handling Support for Web-based Education
• M.Sc: Sofia University, Bulgaria, September 1996 AI Specialization, Computer Science

WORK EXPERIENCE (ACADEMIA)

• VU University Amsterdam, Computer Science Department, NL
  • 2016 – present, full professor
  • 2011 – 2016, associate professor
  • 2006 – 2011, assistant professor
• Columbia Data Science, NYC, NY (2016 – present), visiting researcher
• Eindhoven University of Technology, Computer Science Department, Information Systems Group, NL (2001 – 2006), assistant professor
• Center for Mathematics & Computer Science (CWI), Interactive Information Access Group, NL (2005 – 2006), guest researcher
• Osaka University, Computer Science Department, Knowledge Science ISIR Group, Japan (2002 – 2004), visiting professor

WORK EXPERIENCE (INDUSTRY)

• Tagasauris Inc, NYC, NY (2013 – present), Chief Scientist
• IBM Research
  • 2012 – Watson Group, Yorktown, NY, visiting researcher
  • 2013 – present, Center for Advanced Studies, Amsterdam, visiting researcher

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

• Best paper award MTSR2017: for our paper “Enriching Media Collections for Event-based Exploration”, Victor de Boer, Liliana Melgar, Oana Inel, Carlos Martinez Ortiz, Lora Aroyo, and Johan Oomen, in the context of the DIVE+ Project, which also won:
  • Grand Prize at the LODLAM Challenge 2017 for our work on metadata enrichment of cultural heritage collections with events and linked data
  • 3rd Prize at the Semantic Web Challenge 2014 for the novel event-centric & linked-data exploration of cultural heritage collections online(DIVE+ Project)
• Inaugural Lecture for Full Professor at VU University Amsterdam
  • Video with slides, Slides only, Video only
• TEDx Talk: To be AND not to be: quantum intelligence? 
  • Video, Slides
• IBM Shared University Research Award 2014: my coordination of the VU-IBM CrowdTruth research team
• IBM Faculty Award 2013: my work on Crowdsourcing Medical Relation Extraction
• 1st Prize at the EuroITV’10 Competition Grand Challenge for our work on Waisda? Video Tagging Game, which also won a number of practice awards:
  • the Best Archives on the Web award in the category Best Use of Crowdsourcing in 2010
  • the TIMAF European Best Practices award in 2009.
• Best Journal Paper 2008: The Effects of Transparency on Trust in and Acceptance of a Content-based Art Recommender, James Chen Annual Award for Best UMUAI Journal Article
• Meaning and Perspectives in the Digital Humanities, White Paper, KNAW, IBM
• 3rd Prize for the CHIP Art Recommender at the Semantic Web Challenge 2007: Cultural Heritage Information Presentation
• Patent for the work on providing Electronic Program Guides (granted 21/12/10)

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (SELECTED)

• Conference Chair: European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2010)
• Program Chair: Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP2016)
• Program Chair: International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2011)
• Program Chair: European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC2009)

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• Track Chair:
  • Web Science Track @WWW2015
  • Education Track @ WWW2005
  • HCI Track @EuroITV2011 
  • AI and the Web track @AAAI2010
  • Interactive Events @ International AI-ED Conference (AIED2005)

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• Doctoral Consortium Chair:
  • ISWC2006, UMAP2012, ISWC2013, WWW2013

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• Conference Proceedings Editor
  • The Semantic Web, ISWC2006, ISWC2011, Springer.
  • The Semantic Web: Research and Applications, ESWC2009, ESWC2010, Springer

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• Journal Guest Editor of Special Issues 
  • Semantic Web for Digital Humanities, Journal of Web Semantics, 2017
  • Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, Semantic Web Journal, 2017
  • AI and Cultural Heritage, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2009;
  • Intelligent Educational Systems, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 2007;
  • Concepts & Ontologies in WBES, IJCEELL, 2004;
  • Software Agents in Education, IJCEELL, 2002;
  • Intelligent Agents for Education and Training Systems, JILR, 2001

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• Workshop Proceedings Editor for more than 15 workshops and tutorials at international conferences:
  • Augmenting Intelligence with Humans-in-the-Loop, WWW2018 Conference
  • Understanding Events Semantics in Cultural Heritage, (EVENTS-CH) Workshop Series
  • Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage (PATCH) Workshop Series
  • Ontologies and Semantics for e-Learning (SW-EL) Workshop Series

ADVISORY & BOARD MEMBERSHIPS

• President User Modeling Inc (2017 – present)
• Vice-president Semantic Technology Institute International (2014 – 2016)
• Area Chair: Creative Industry, Amsterdam Data Science (2015 – present)
• Working Group: Cultural Heritage Advanced Technologies (CHAT) (2013-2014)
• Advisory Board member: IRL (Irish Record Linkage) (2015)
• Advisory Board member: EuropeanaTech (2015)
• Advisory Board member: User Modeling Inc. (2010 – 2013)
• Steering Committee: European Semantic Web Conference (2010 – 2013)
• Advisory Committee: CATCHPlus 2009 (Dutch National Research Funding Organization); and Program Working Group: CATCH2 2009 (Dutch National Research Funding Organization)

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• Editorial Board member: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), Elsevier.
• Editorial Board member: Journal of Personalization Research (UMUAI), Kluwer Academic.
• Editorial Board member: Semantic Web Journal (SWJ), IOS Press.
• Reviewer for more than 6 journals, e.g., Journal of Web Semantics, IEEE Internet Computing, Interdisciplinary Journal of Ontological Analysis and Conceptual Modeling (Journal of Applied Ontology).

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• Review panel for various funding agencies, e.g. National Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) Creative Industry, Smart Culture, DFG German Graduate Schools, FWF Austrian Science Fund, Research Council of Canada, etc.
• EU Project Reviewer: for various EU projects

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• I have served on more than 30 program committees as regular and senior PC member for peer-reviewed conferences and workshops. A selection of the conference PC memberships is included below: International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP), European Conference on Interactive TV and Video (EuroITV), International EKAW Conference (EKAW), International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI), ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), User Modeling Conference (UM, UMAP), Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED), IEEE/ACM WI: Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technologies Conference, IFIP AI, Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations, ACM SAC, ICAI: Artificial Intelligence