Topics of interest
I work on interoperable, legally compliant, and user-centric solutions for trustworthy data flows. I am currently on a mission to turn these principles into practical, reusable Trustflows solutions by bringing together research, government, industry, and end users. I pursue this mission by building the Trustflows community.
Work experience
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2012 – … : Professor at Ghent University–imec–IDLab
I started a PhD in 2012 and graduated in 2017. After my PhD I started a post-doctoral researcher position, kickstarting a team on publishing Linked Open Data Interfaces. During this period, we handled use cases in various domains, such as in the mobility sector, smart cities, and e-government domain.
In 2021 I was appointed professor at Ghent University. The ZAP position gives me the flexibility shape the research in our own team of 40 researchers to work on Semantic Web, Linked Data Web APIs, Solid, Linked Data Event Streams, and more recently something we started calling “Trustflows”. I currently am the head lecturer for the courses Knowledge Graphs (also available as a micro-credential for professionals) and Big Data Technology.
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2011 – 2012: CTO FlatTurtle
As the CTO of a start-up called FlatTurtle I worked on a digital signage product visualizing live data.
Education
- 2017 – PhD in Information Engineering Technology: “Publishing Transport Data for Maximum Reuse”
- 2012 – Master of Science Information Engineering Technology from Ghent University
Selection of top papers
- Verborgh, R., Vander Sande, M., Colpaert, P., Coppens, S., Mannens, E., & Van de Walle, R. (2014). Web-Scale Querying through Linked Data Fragments. Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Linked Data on the Web
- Colpaert, P., Van Compernolle, M., De Vocht, L., Dimou, A., Vander Sande, M., Verborgh, R., & Mannens, E. (2014). Quantifying the interoperability of open government datasets. Computer, 47(10), 50-56.
- Colpaert, P., Verborgh, R., & Mannens, E. (2017, June). Public Transit Route Planning Through Lightweight Linked Data Interfaces. In International Conference on Web Engineering (pp. 403-411).
- Colpaert, P., Van Compernolle, M., Walravens, N., Mechant, P., Adriaenssens, J., Ongenae, F., Verborgh, R., & Mannens, E. (2017). Open Transport Data for maximising reuse in multimodal route planners: a study in Flanders. IET Intelligent Transport Systems.
- Dimou, Anastasia, Miel Vander Sande, Pieter Colpaert, Ruben Verborgh, Erik Mannens, and Rik Van de Walle. "RML: A Generic Language for Integrated RDF Mappings of Heterogeneous Data." In LDOW. 2014.
- More publications can be found on my own overview maintained on my website, my university’s Biblio page or through my Google Scholar profile.
Other academic involvement
As a researcher I am involved in the domains of Open Data, Personal Data management, Semantic Web, Linked Data, Smart Cities and Transport data.
- Wrote a chapter on transport in State of Open Data (May 2019): stateofopendata.od4d.net
- Was a guest editor for a special issue on Open Data for the Journal of Web Semantics (2018)
- Was a guest editor for a special issue on Transport Data for the Semantic Web Journal (2022)
I review papers for multiple conferences and workshops, such as:
Teaching
I have given various guest lectures on Web APIs and Open Data in the courses of: Ruben Verborgh (UGent), Sofie Van Hoecke (UGent), Joep Crompvoets (KU Leuven) and Pierre Deville (Solvay Business School). Since my appointment as professor at Ghent University in 2021, teaching has become a structural part of my work at IDLab. I’m the head-lecturer of the master courses Knowledge Graphs and Big Data Technology at Ghent University.
Standardization
I participate in standardization activities such as:
- I’m the editor of the TREE hypermedia specification
- I’m the editor of the SEMIC Linked Data Event Streams specification
- I positioned RDF Messages in the RDF Stream Processing Community
- I co-chair the W3C community group on dataspaces
- I contributed to various Flemish domain models in the OSLO initiative
Project work
Alongside managing the Knowledge on Web-Scale team, I take active roles in research and innovation projects. Selected projects include:
- I served as technical lead for the Smart Flanders programme from 2017 to 2020.
- I have worked with the European Commission’s DG DIGIT team on the new European Interoperability Framework, scheduled for publication in 2027.
- I am the research lead for the DiSHACLed ICON project.
- I research serendipitous algorithms as part of the SBO Serendipity Engine.
- I contributed to the Flanders Smart Data Space from 2020 to 2025.
- I have worked with the European Commission’s DG DIGIT SEMIC team on interoperability pilots and the LDES specification.
An overview of all projects can be found on the KNoWS website.