Storing and querying evolving knowledge graphs on the web
Ruben Taelman · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2020
For as long as I can remember, making things has been my greatest passion.As I was fortunate enough to grow up with computers around me, I quickly became fascinated by them, and their ability to automate processes through sequences of instructions.Next to that, I was born at the perfect time to experience the introduction of the Web to the public.Hence, I grew up together with it, which has impacted my life significantly.Thanks to the Web, I was able to easily access information on computers, programming, and Web technologies.This allowed me to learn, and to create new things.As a teenager, I was never really the type of person that played a lot of video games.Nevertheless, like most people of my generation, I often came in contact with them.Instead of being captivated to play these games, I was often intrigued by the way these games worked.This caused me to ponder on their internal processes, and wondering what it would take to make it myself.As such, I occasionally set out to implement or extend certain games.The thing I enjoyed the most, however, was building things that connect people over the Web, which is why I also spent quite some time building Web sites to distribute games and broadcast music.After I graduated secondary school, the obvious choice was to pursue a further education related to computers and programming, which is how I ended up at Ghent University.The most impactful year for me was the final year of my Master's, which is when I worked on my thesis.Because of my existing interest in Web technologies, I chose for a topic in the Semantic Web domain.Under the excellent supervision of Ruben Verborgh and Pieter Colpaert, I investigated continuous querying within the Semantic Web.Due to the motivating guidance of Ruben and Pieter, and my interest in the domain, I continued upon that research as a PhD topic, and became their colleague at Multimedia Lab.Working at Multimedia Lab, Data Science Lab, IDLab has been very exciting so far.I came in contact with many new interesting people, learned about new technologies, and traveled around the world.Most importantly, I was able to (at least slightly) advance the research domain through the contributions that are described in this PhD thesis.All of this was of course impossible without standing on the shoulders of giants.These giants are on the one hand all researchers that my work builds upon, and on the other hand everyone that has directly or indirectly supported this work.