Juniorprof. Dr. Birte Glimm

Since July 2011 I work as a juniorprofessor at the University of Ulm within the Institute of Artificial Intelligence. Before that, I was a research assistant in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, where I worked in the Information Systems Group, mainly on developing algorithms for automated reasoning in expressive Description Logics and on the implementation of the HermiT reasoner.

I did my PhD in Manchester in the Information Management Group under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ian Horrocks and Prof. Dr. Uli Sattler and I was honoured with the Best Thesis Award from the School of Computer Science at Manchester University in 2008. From September 2001 until July 2004 I studied Computer Science in the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and I received my bachelor degree with an award for the best degree.

Before studying Computer Science, I worked for 3.5 years in Industry and did another degree in Communication Design.

Research Interests

My main research interests are knowledge representation and reasoning. In particular, I enjoy developing and implementing algorithms and optimisations for reasoning in expressive description logics. Most recently, I have implemented a novel kind of blocking technique that significantly reduces the memory requirements for the HermiT reasoner. Apart from developing new algorithms and techniques for reasoning, I am currently working in the SPARQL Working Group of the W3C on the SPARQL 1.1 standard. In particular, I am extending SPARQL to work with semantics other than simple entailment, e.g., RDF and RDFS semantics and OWL Direct and RDF-Based Semantics. Each such extensions is called a SPARQL entailment regime. I am also an editor of the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Conformance specification, which describes the conditions that OWL 2 tools must satisfy in order to be conformant with the language specification.

Open Positions

At the moment, I am offering a (post-)doctoral research position. 

Teaching

SS 2012: Algorithmen in der Wissensrepräsentation (only in German)

WS 2011/2012: Semantic Web Grundlagen (only in German)

Activities

• Member of the W3C SPARQL Working Group
• Editor of SPARQL 1.1 Entailment Regimes
• Editor of OWL 2 Web Ontology Language Conformance
• Development of the HermiT OWL reasoner

Organisational Activities

• Program Chair of the German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI) 2012
• Satellite Events Chair of the International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR) 2012
• Poster & Demos Chair of the International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) 2010
• Member of the steering committee of the International Description Logic Workshop (DL, 2010-2011)
• Senior Program Committee von AAAI 2012
• Reviewer for the following conferences and workshops: ESWC 2012, KR 2012, JIST 2011, CADE 2011, WWW 2010, WoLLIC 2010, KR 2010, IJCAR 2010, WWW 2009, ESSLLI 2009, KR 2008, ISWC 2008, WWW 2008, DL 2008, IJCAI 2007, CADE 2007, ISWC 2007, ESWC 2007, DL 2007, RR 2007, DL 2006, CADE 2005, ISWC 2005, ESWC 2005, LPAR 2005, DL 2005, OWL ED 2005, M4M 2005, ODBASE 2005, and DL 2004
• Reviewer for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Journal of Web Semantics, Journal of Symbolic Computation, Journal on Data Semantics