Ruben Verborgh

Ruben Verborgh is a professor of Semantic Web technology at Ghent University – imec and a research affiliate at the Decentralized Information Group at MIT. He aims to build a more intelligent generation of clients for a decentralized Web at the intersection of Linked Data and hypermedia-driven Web APIs. Through the creation of Linked Data Fragments, he introduced a new paradigm for query execution at Web-scale. He has co-authored two books on Linked Data, and contributed to more than 250 publications for international conferences and journals on Web-related topics.

  • Professor of Semantic Web Technology Ghent University 2017–now I’m an assistant professor with a focus on research, contributing to the (re-)decentralization of the Web using Semantic Web technologies. I lead our Linked Data Fragments activities, and supervise several PhD students working on Semantic Web topics.
  • Research Affiliate Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2018–now I am regularly visiting the Decentralized Information Group to collaborate with Tim Berners-Lee on re-decentralizing the Web through Linked Data technologies. We are building the Solid platform to enable a new generation of Web applications that let you keep ownership of your own data.
  • Postdoctoral Fellow Research Foundation Flanders 2015–now

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Keywords: decentralization, Linked Data, querying, data integration, Semantic Web

Key publications
  • R. Verborgh, M. Vander Sande, O. Hartig, J. Van Herwegen, L. De Vocht, B. De Meester, G. Haesendonck, and P. Colpaert, “Triple Pattern Fragments: a Low-cost Knowledge Graph Interface for the Web,” Journal of Web Semantics, vol. 37–38, pp. 184–206, Mar. 2016.
  • R. Verborgh and M. Dumontier, “A Web API ecosystem through feature-based reuse,” Internet Computing, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 29–37, May 2018.
  • R. Verborgh and J. De Roo, “Drawing Conclusions from Linked Data on the Web,” IEEE Software, vol. 32, no. 5, pp. 23–27, May 2015.
  • S. Mayer, R. Verborgh, M. Kovatsch, and F. Mattern, “Smart Configuration of Smart Environments,” IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 1247–1255, Jul. 2016.
  • S. Capadisli, A. Guy, R. Verborgh, C. Lange, S. Auer, and T. Berners-Lee, “Decentralised Authoring, Annotations and Notifications for a Read–Write Web with dokieli,” in Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Web Engineering, 2017, vol. 10360, pp. 469–481.
Publication links