Directors

John Domingue

KMi, The Open University and STI International

Prof John Domingue is the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University and the President of STI International, a semantics focused networking organization. He has published over 200 refereed articles in the areas of Semantics and the Web and his current work is focused on: how semantic technology can automate the management, development and use of Web services; the relationship between Linked Data, rich media, the Future Internet and education; and supporting personal wellbeing and health through wearable sensors and semantic technologies.

He currently serves as: the OU representative to W3C; the Chair of the Steering Committee for the ESWC Conference Series and the Project Coordinator for two European projects (FORGE within the Future Internet Research and Experimentation Unit and the European Data Science Academy within the Big Data Value Unit). From 2008-2012 he served as a member of the Future Internet Assembly Steering Committee which helped coordinate the activities of over 150 EU projects with a combined budget of over 500M Euros. He is the founder and Director of the ESWC Summer School and serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Web Semantics and the Applied Ontology Journal.

Marko Grobelnik

Jozef Stefan Institute

Marko Grobelnik expertise is the areas of “data science” including Machine Learning, Data/Text Mining, Network Analysis, Semantic Technologies, and Data Visualization. He works at “Jozef Stefan Institute”, the national research institute for natural sciences in Slovenia co-managing a group of approx. 30 researchers. Marko co-authored several books, co-founded five start-ups, is W3C AC representative and member of the boards for ELRA and STI. Currently he coordinates FP7 project X-LIKE on large scale formal knowledge extraction from text.

Elena Simperl

University of Southampton

Dr. Elena Simperl is Associate Professor at the Web and Internet Science (WAIS) group at the University of Southampton. Her research interests include knowledge engineering, Social Web technologies, and crowdsourcing. She has contributed and lead over 15 national and European research projects and authored more than 75 scientific publications, and chaired the European Semantic Web Conference in 2011 and 2012. Elena initiated several activities targeted at the supervision and guidance of doctoral students and young researchers such as the PhD Network Berlin Brandenburg, and the Knowledge Web PhD Symposium series organized at the European Semantic Web Conference ESWC since 2006. Further educational activities include the lecture of Master and Bachelor courses at the Free University of Berlin, University of Innsbruck, and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the founding and organization of the ESWC summer school; the Asian Semantic Web School; the IEEE Summer School on Semantic Computing; and the Semantic Web Services Winter Retreat; as well as the management of the education service within Semantic Technologies Institute International (STI), an association bringing together major players in the fields of semantic technologies, and co-founder of semsphere GmbH, a professional training company in the same area.

Organisational Support

Rachel Yarrien

KMi, The Open University

Rachel works as the Executive Assistant to the Director of Knowledge Media Institute, and his executive team.