Profile

I am a Professor for Data Science at Universität Koblenz and Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield. In Koblenz, I lead the Institute for Web Science & Technologies and coordinate the MSc in Web and Data Science and BSc in Computational Social Science programmes.

My main research interest is in the intersection of human-centred and responsible artificial intelligence and data science. In particular, I am interested in understanding and modelling how data-driven systems (e.g., information retrieval and recommender systems) shape and influence people and society. Often, I collaborate with partners from industry or other disciplines interested in developing personalisation services or in gaining new insights into their data or society.
My work is underpinned by data mining, natural language processing, machine learning, and human-computer interaction techniques.

I am an active member of the research community. I have hold roles such as steering committee member of the ECIR and ACM SIGIR ICTIR conferences, general chair of ACM CIKM'23 and ACM CHIIR'24, or was co-organiser of evaluation campaigns at CLEF, NTCIR, and MediaEval. I am on the editorial board of the IP&M journal and was guest editor for various special issues of other journals.

I have completed my PhD in Computing Science at University of Glasgow under the supervision of Prof. Joemon M. Jose and Prof. Keith van Rijsbergen. After this, I have worked at research-led science & engineering centres in the US and Ireland, as well as at universities in Germany, China, and the UK. Since 2022, I am a Senior Fellow of the (UK) Higher Education Academy.

Research

My research group is interested in turning data into insight and advancing AI into socially responsible, human-centred solutions. To pursue our vision, our research focuses on two main areas: Data Science and Human-Centred and Responsible AI. Our research projects are often interdisciplinary in nature to address research questions from different angles.

Data Science

We investigate how personal data can be collected, structured, and analysed to generate new knowledge and actionable insights. This work spans several key areas:

• Personal Data: Healthcare records, lifelogs, and cultural heritage collections.

• User-Generated Content: Social media posts, emails, and digital archives.

• Privacy-Aware Data Processing: Methods that ensure sensitive information is handled responsibly.

• Insight Extraction: Analysing data to understand user behaviour, societal trends, and emerging patterns.

To study the impact of our research, we have collaborated with project partners from various sectors. Examples include working with healthcare providers to predict adverse outcomes of COVID-19 cases, with the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) to process and analyse personal digital archives, with arts and humanities institutions to enable access to historical documents, with telecommunications companies to predict customer churn, and with the police to improve data forensics techniques.

Human-centred and Responsible AI

We investigate how AI can empower people while promoting fairness, transparency, and social responsibility. Our research covers:

• Information Retrieval & Recommender Systems: Creating interactive systems that help users find relevant content, from web search to personalised recommendations.

• Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics (FATE): Studying algorithmic bias and promoting transparent, trustworthy AI.

• Responsible Data Science Education: Collaborating with higher education institutions to develop learning materials and outline curricula for human-centred data science, raising awareness of the social consequences of AI and promoting ethical, informed use of data.

Our work enhances systems that help users find relevant information. We contribute to user modelling, interactive information retrieval, and search experience, including gamification. Collaborations with information service providers and arts and humanities institutions have supported the development of personalised recommendation techniques, improved access to historical documents, and established the first living lab for large-scale benchmarking. We also study ways to reduce algorithmic bias, increase accountability, and make AI systems more transparent and trustworthy.

Supervision

Research Supervision

At Institute WeST, I coordinate and oversee the broader direction of our research agenda. Over the years, I have had the privilege of supervising several doctoral students to the successful completion of their PhDs. These researchers have pursued a diverse range of topics within the domains of natural language processing, Web Science, social media analysis, human-computer interaction, and related interdisciplinary fields. Many of my former PhD students have gone on to pursue successful academic or industry careers. According to the Math Geneology Project, they now count among the extended academic lineage that traces back to figures such as Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei.

Supervision of BSc and MSc theses

To date, I have supervised 100+ Bachelor and Master theses. My supervision approach is student-centered, with an emphasis on selecting research topics with practical relevance. Students interested in writing their thesis with me are advised to check the student handbook of Institute WeST, which provides guidance on how to identify a suitable topic and initiate the supervision process.

Publications

Most of my publications can be downloaded from open access repositories. Older publications are archived in repositories of The University of Sheffield, The University of Glasgow, TU Berlin, Dublin City University, and of UC Berkeley.

Other publication lists can also be found on ORCID and on Google Scholar.

Service

I actively contribute to the research and academic community in information retrieval and data science. I have acted as General Chair for conferences including ACM CHIIR 2024, ACM CIKM 2023, and HealthWear 2016, and as a Steering Committee Member for prestigious conferences such as ACM SIGIR ICTIR and ECIR. I have also served as Program Chair for SocInfo 2022, and in various other roles (Workshop chair, Tutorial chair, Demo chair, etc.) at ACM CHIIR'27, ACM MM'25, ECIR'23, ACM ICMR'20, ACM CHIIR'19, iConference'18, MMM'17, ACM ICMR'17, MMM'14, and MMM'12. I have organized numerous workshops, tutorials, and evaluation campaigns on topics like gamification, lifelogging, news recommendation, and quantification.

I have been a member of technical (senior) program committees for over 150 conferences and workshops, including SIGIR, RecSys, WWW, Multimedia, CIKM, and ECIR, and have reviewed for leading journals such as UMUAI, TOIS, WEB, and Multimedia Systems. I have also served as an external examiner for PhD theses at universities in the UK, Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, and Finland, and evaluate research proposals for national and international funding agencies like COST, EPSRC, DAAD, NSERC, and FWF.

Additionally, I have contributed as a member of the editorial board  of the Information Processing and Management journal and as a guest editor for special issues in scientific journals. Through these activities, I aim to support the development, dissemination, and application of knowledge in information retrieval, recommendation systems, and related fields, while fostering collaboration between academia and industry.

Conference-related activities

Workshops, tutorials, and evaluation campaigns

Outreach and public engagement

Editorials and reviewing

Assessment and Examination

Talks

I am frequently invited to present my research to different audiences. This includes talks to experts from various subject areas but also to the general public. I adapt the focus and language of my presentations based on the interests and prior knowledge of the audience.

To date, a majority of my presentations has been targeting technical audiences. For instance, I have given guest lectures or seminar talks at computer science departments or companies, as well as keynote presentations and invited talks at technical conferences and workshops, most of which were co-located with conferences sponsored by special interest groups of the ACM.

I have also presented to the general public and to academics and practitioners of other subject areas, e.g., at public lectures or at seminar talks organised by departments of digital humanities, philosophy, business, health science, or library, archives and information science.