Erik Mannens is Research Valorisation Director @ imec & Professor Semantic Intelligence @ Ghent University - IDLab since 2005 where he has successfully managed +75 projects. He received his PhD degree in Computer Science Engineering (2011) at UGent, his Master’s degree in Computer Science (1995) at K.U. Leuven University, and his Master’s degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering (1992) at KAHO Ghent.
Before joining iMinds-Ghent University-DataScienceLab in 2005 as research manager, he was a software engineering consultant and Java architect for over a decade. His major expertise is centered around ethical AI, semantic intelligence, big data analytics, metadata modeling, semantic web technologies, broadcasting workflows, iDTV and web development in general. He is involved in several projects as senior researcher and finished up his PhD on Semantic News Production; he was co-chair of the W3C Media Fragments Working Group and actively participating in other W3C’s semantic web standardization activities (Media Annotations, Provenance, Hydra, Linked Data Platform, eGovernment, Knowledge Graph Construction, and SOLID).
Since 2008 Erik is paving the Open Data path in Flanders. He stood at the cradle of the first Hackathons and is a founding member of the Open Knowledge Foundation. (Belgian Chapter). Since then, he is frequently invited as Open Data evangelist at national and international events. He currently actively participates in W3C’s eGov and Data On The Web working groups. Furthermore his team is owner of the Open Sourced Linked Open Data Publishing frameworks TheDataTank (github.com/tdt), R&Wbase, RML (rml.io), Linked Data Fragments (linkeddatafragments.org), SOLID (solidproject.org), and Comunica (comunica.dev).
On all of these subjects he has published +300 papers and book chapters. He is also member of the technical committee and/or organizing committee of several high level journals and conferences. His full curriculum can be found on LinkedIn.
Specialties: Ethical AI, (Linked) Open Data, Big Data Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, (Semantic) Web development, project management, W3C standardization (imec’s AC Rep, MMSEM, Video WG - Media Fragments & Media Annotation, Provenance WG, Hydra, Digital Publishing, Knowledge Graph Construction, SOLID), Java architect, iDT.
The Media & Web world is confronted with the combination of an exploding volume of information and multiplying distribution channels. This causes a shift in the preferences of consumers and the emergence of new dominant actors in the media & web ecosystem that help the media/web consumer access and control these new vast volumes of media & web content, and news information. The amount of information in the world is doubling every two years. In 2011, the world created a staggering 1.8 zettabytes. By 2020, the world will generate 75 times that amount of information yearly, while IT staff to manage this abundance will grow less than 1.5 times. New ‘information taming’ technologies such as de-duplication, knowledge inference, and analysis tools will have to drive down the cost of creating, storing, and managing all that information. Dealing with these challenges will require investing in research innovation within the knowledge representation and inference domain.
The primary objective of MMLab’s KnOWS-team is to advance research and technology in the field of Enterprise Information Systems & Semantic Technologies and to widely apply this research in large-scale use cases. A particular focus of research and technology is Information, Data and Knowledge Integration employing Linked Data strategies. MMLab’s KnOWS-team has in the end three research aims: to examine the Web and understand its impact on contemporary society, to explore novel changes that the Web enables in the way we run our lives and to develop Web innovations and enhancements to the way that the Web operates in the future. MMLab’s KnOWS-team is also committed to the open source, open access and open knowledge movements.
Erik Mannens has been leading several (inter)national research projects within the domain of broadcast workflow processes, multimedia adaptation, metadata modelling, ontology building, semantic intelligence (the fusion of Semantics and Machine Learning), and ethical AI.
During his work at imec - Ghent University - IDLab Erik Mannens also joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as imec's AC-representative and is since then actively participating in standardization processes within W3C. Erik Mannens was a contributing member of the W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group, the W3C Media Annotations Working Group, and co-chaired / was editor within the W3C Media Fragments Working Group. His group further participated/participates in the Provenance WG (editor), eGovernment WG, Linked data Platform WG, Digital Publishing IG, CSV WG, Hydra WG, RDF JavaScript WG, Data on the Web WG, Knowledge Graph Construction WG (editor), and the SOLID WG (editor).
Erik Mannens has been a reviewer for journal & conference publications:
