Programme Co-chairs

Senior AI/ML BD/Strategist Manager EMEA, AWS. Deeply involved in the AI community, where his expertise in decision science, particularly at the intersection of Large Language Models (LLM), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Knowledge Graphs, and Graph Theory, is applied to foster innovation and strategic development.

Panos Alexopoulos, Head of Ontology at Textkernel BV, specializes in data, semantics, and software, crafting intelligent systems since 2006. Leading a team in HR and Recruitment, he develops a cross-lingual Knowledge Graph. He authored "Semantic Modeling for Data" and serves as a speaker and trainer, bridging academia with industry.

Kurt Cagle is the former contributing editor for Data Science Central. Kurt is a published author with more than twenty books to his credit, and has been working as a technology editor for years, writing for Forbes, O'Reilly Media, IDC and others. He has also been a consulting information architect and ontologist with more than twenty years experience working with Fortune 100 companies and US and European agencies, and is a frequent speaker at conferences on data technologies.

Mike Dillinger, PhD, blends human expertise with AI to advance cognitive computing. With experience at LinkedIn/Microsoft, eBay, and Intel, he emphasizes accessible knowledge representation for both humans and machines, aiming to create next-gen hybrid intelligence. He works on making knowledge shareable and valuable to all stakeholders.

Ashleigh Faith, PhD in Advanced Semantics, boasts over 15 years in the search and data realm, collaborating with corporate giants like eCommerce and Digital Asset Management, as well as governmental and manufacturing entities such as the Federal Reserve, John Deere, NASA, NATO, Gulfstream, DoD, and NLM on data strategy and knowledge management.

Giuseppe is Research Scientist and Knowledge Graphs Engineer with multidisciplinary experience focused on research, development and communication. He loves to explore new technologies to incorporate human knowledge into intelligent systems. Currently working as a Freelance Consultant and a Fellow of the 
Nexa Center for Internet & Society, he was previously Senior Data Scientist for GraphAware

Veronica is Knowledge Graph Lead at Capgemini, working on turning unstructured and chaotic data into a wonder of semantic knowledge graphs. Veronica is a public speaker on topics as Semantic Technologies, Knowledge Graphs, Natural Language Processing amongst others. Guest lecturer at the University of Oslo.

​Amy E. Hodler is graph advisor and consultant. With decades of commercial experience, including Neo4j and RelationalAI, she promotes graph technology in various industries and has founded the GraphGeeks community to foster cross-discipline interaction. Amy is highlighted as a distinguished speaker by G-Research and has authored/contributed to several books including Graph Algorithms (O’Reilly).

Ora Lassila, a Principal Graph Technologist in the Amazon Neptune team at AWS, primarily focuses on knowledge graphs. His extensive experience spans graphs, graph databases, ontologies, and knowledge representation. Notably, he co-authored the original RDF specification and contributed to the seminal article on the Semantic Web.

Teodora holds a PhD. in Marketing Communication, a Master’s in Creative Writing, and a Bachelor’s in Classics. With 15+ years of experience as a content writer, Teodora is currently working as Knowledge Stewards at Graphwise to build bridges between the practices of marketing communications, content operations and semantic technologies. When not writing and curating content for sales enablement, Teodora is writing and curating teaching materials for her students at FH Joanneum to help them see the power of poiesis and intertextuality on the Web.

Dr. Tara Raafat is the head of Bloomberg's metadata strategy at the
CTO office. Tara is a semantic technologies specialist with 15+ years
of experience in semantic knowledge modeling and knowledge driven
applications in domains including but not limited to finance, healthcare, industrial symbiosis and insurance. In her current role she strategizes the use of semantic metadata across Bloomberg and the build of Bloomberg’s enterprise Knowledge graph.

Brad Rees, Manager at NVIDIA's AI Infrastructure group and lead of the RAPIDS cuGraph team, brings over 30 years of experience in designing and supporting advanced software and hardware systems, specializing in complex analytic systems, particularly graph techniques for social and cyber network analysis, with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology.

Juan F. Sequeda, PhD, is the Principal Scientist at data.world, joining through the acquisition of his startup, Capsenta. He focuses on creating knowledge from inscrutable data, specializing in Knowledge Graphs for enterprise data and metadata management. Juan has received numerous awards for his research and is heavily involved in various academic and industry organizations. He co-authored a book on enterprise knowledge graphs and co-hosts the data podcast, Catalog and Cocktails.

Ivo Velitchkov, an independent consultant, has worked for over 25 years with large public and private organizations, helping them with their strategy, structures and information. He’s the author of the book Essential Balances, the https://www.linkandth.ink newsletter, a couple of semantic technology wikis, and co-author of the book Personal Knowledge Graphs. He has a PhD in Computer Science. Ivo has trained hundreds of people on semantic technologies and has helped large organizations unify their data in enterprise knowledge graphs..

Prof. Dr. (Univ. Simón Bolívar) Maria-Esther Vidal leads the Scientific Data Management (SDM) group at TIB and the Leibniz joint-lab with the L3S Research Centre, and she is a full professor (on-leave) at Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), Venezuela. She has made significant contributions to data management, semantic data integration, and machine learning over knowledge graphs. She is a co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed articles in Semantic Web, Databases, Bioinformatics, and Artificial Intelligence. She is also actively shaping her research communities, as an editorial board member of renowned journals, as well as general chair, co-chair, senior reviewer of major scientific events. 

Andrea Volpini, CEO of WordLift and co-founder of Insideout10, is a visionary entrepreneur with 25 years of expertise in semantic web, SEO, and AI, speaking at global events and contributing to publications like the Web Almanac, while initiating RedLink GmbH in 2013 to specialize in semantic content enrichment and natural language processing.