Short biography

I was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador where I lived until 2009. There I got a Bachelor in Computer Engineering at ESPOL (Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral). During my time at the university, I worked as teaching assistant for different lectures in Mathematics and Informatics. I also became a FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) activist, promoting the adoption of free and open source technologies in my community. This led me to be one of the founders of the KOKOA community: a group of students and professors from ESPOL devoted to inform people about the advantages of FOSS. This was achieved via initiatives such as research projects, installation parties, training courses, and informative talks.

After one year away from academia, I decided to continue my studies and migrated to Germany where I pursued a master in Computer Science at Saarland University. I wrote my master thesis under the supervision of Katja Hose and Ralf Schenkel in the area of RDF distributed query processing. In 2012, I got an IMPRS scholarship at MPI-INF (Max Planck Institute for Informatics) and joined the Databases and Information Systems Department as PhD student under the supervision of Fabian Suchanek. At the end of 2013, and after a 4-month research internship at the Knowledge Vault group at Google, I moved with Fabian to Télécom ParisTech becoming part of the DBWeb Team (currently DIG). Under Fabian's supervision I worked on Rule Mining on RDF Knowledge Bases. After my PhD, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Computer Science Department of Aalborg University. There I worked with Katja Hose on efficient querying of RDF cubes. In October 2017, I joined the LACODAM team located at INRIA/IRISA in Rennes as a permanent researcher.

Research Interests

  • Semantic Web
    • Knowledge Representation: Ontologies and Knowledge Bases
    • RDF Query Processing
    • Provenance
    • Completeness in Semantic Data
  • Data Mining
    • Pattern Mining
    • Rule Mining: Inductive Logic Programming, Numerical Rule Mining, Sequential Rules
  • Explainable Machine Learning and AI
    • Post-hoc Explainability: Feature-attribution, rule-based, and exemplar-based explanations
    • Rule-based Regression
    • Visual Representations for Explanations

Software

  • PyClause is a Python library for easy and efficient usage of rules and knowledge graphs.
  • AMIE is a system for rule mining on large knowledge graphs [Demo].
  • HiPaR is a pattern-based regression approach for tabular data.
  • REMI is an algorithm for mining intuitive referring expressions on large knowledge graphs.

Supervision

Postdocs

  • Mohit Mittal co-supervised with Philippe Preux (SequeL Inria team) with the subject Inspecting and Debugging a VQA System through Explanations: Postdoctoral fellowship financed by the HyAIAI project. [October 2020 - September 2022]

  • Daniel Hernández co-supervised with Katja Hose (Aalborg University) with the subject How-Provenance for SPARQL Queries: Postdoctoral fellowship financed by the RelWeb project. [January 2020 - February 2022]

PhD

  • Isseïnie Sinouvassane (ENS Rennes) co-supervised with Alexandre Termier with the subject How-Provenance Polynomials for Efficient and Greener Rule Mining. [September 2023 - ]

  • Olivier Gauriau (University of Rennes) co-supervised with François Brun, Alexandre Termier, and David Makowski with the subject Numerical Rule Mining for the Prediction of the Dynamics of Crop Diseases. [January 2021 - ]

  • Olivier Pelgrin (Aalborg University) co-supervised with Katja Hose with the subject A Holistic Architecture for Metadata Management in RDF Datasets: PhD thesis financed by the RelWeb project. [September 2019 - April 2023]

  • Julien Delaunay (University of Rennes) co-supervised with Christine Largouët with the subject Explainability for Machine Learning Models: From Data Adaptability to User Perception: PhD thesis financed by the ANR JCJC project FAbLe (Framework for Automatic Interpretability in Machine Learning). [September 2020 - December 2023]

Interns

  • Loane Portier (L3, UIT Lannion) co-supervised with Isseïnie Calviac with the subject Multimodal Explainable Knowledge Graph Embeddings. [Feb 2024 - May 2024]

  • Isseïnie Calviac (M2, ENS Rennes) co-supervised with Alexandre Termier with the subject How-Provenance Polynomials for Efficient and Greener Rule Mining. [Jan 2023 - June 2023]

  • Anas Katim (M1, University of Rouen) co-supervised with Katja Hose with the subject A Demo for Explaining Query Answers on SPARQL Endpoints. [June 2022 - August 2022]

  • Cindy Pereira (M2, University of Lorraine) co-supervised with Miguel Couceiro with the subject De-biasing Masked Language Models via Reinforcement Learning. [March 2022 - July 2022]

  • Rameez Qureshi (M2, University of Lorraine) co-supervised with Miguel Couceiro with the subject Mitigating Unintended Bias in Masked Language Models. [March 2021 - July 2021]

  • Guillaume Latour (M2, University of Namur) co-supervised with Danai Symeonidou, and Benoît Frénay with the subject Explaining Embedding-based for Link Prediction in Knowledge Graphs. [February 2021 - May 2021]

  • Simon Mattens (M2, University of Namur) co-supervised with Tassadit Bouadi, Benoît Frénay, and Véronique Masson with the subject Interprétabilité/Explicabilité des IA pour la Méta-Modélisation. Application au domaine de l’agro-écologie. [February 2021 - May 2021]

  • Julien Delaunay (M2 SIF, University of Rennes) co-supervised with Christine Largouët with the subject When are anchors not a good idea?: Internship financed by the ANR JCJC project FAbLe (Framework for Automatic Interpretability in Machine Learning). [Febraury 2020 - July 2020]

  • Vaishnavi Bhargava (Birla Institute of Technology) co-supervised with Romaric Gaudel with the subject Automatic Neighborhood Design for Localized Model-interpretation. [September 2019 - January 2020]

  • Sophie LeBars (M2 BioInfo, University of Rennes) co-supervised with Anne-Isabelle Graux and Tassadit Bouadi with the subject Conception d’un entrepôt de données pour une visualisation et interrogation des données de simulation en vue de répondre à des questions agronomiques. [January 2019 - June 2019]

  • Mohammad Poul-Doust (M1 DS, Jean Monnet University) co-supervised with Gonzalo Méndez with the subject Accurate and Personalized Academic Advising. [April 2019 - July 2019]

  • Diane Kouadio-Comoé (M1 MIAGE, University of Rennes) co-supervised with Véronique Masson and Laurence Rozé with the subject Pattern Mining for Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Time Series. [April 2018 - July 2018]

  • Julien Delaunay (L3 MIAGE, University of Rennes) with the subject Mining Intuitive Referring Expressions on Knowledge Bases. [April 2018 - August 2018]

  • Olivier Pelgrin (M2 SIF, University of Rennes) co-supervised with Alexandre Termier with the subject Numerical Rule Mining for Prediction of Wheat and Vine Diseases. [Febraury 2018 - August 2018]

Scientific Activities

  • Co-guest Editor (with Miguel Couceiro) of the Special Issue Fair and Explainable Decision Support Systems at the EURO Journal of Decision Processes.
  • Co-organizer of the six editions (@EGC'19, @ECML-PKDD'19, CIKM'20, ECML-PKDD'21, CIKM'22, ECML-PKDD'23) editions of the AIMLAI workshop (Advances in Interpretable Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence).

Trivia

  • Although I can prove I could ride a bike for a very short period of my life, now I have strong signals that I cannot do it any more.
  • I tend to name everything: pets, plants and stuffed animals.
  • I used to hate sports but now I go to the gym regularly. Besides, I acquired the taste for badminton.
  • I like dancing.
  • I am not a good dancer.
  • I love cooking.
  • And I think I am, albeit not outstanding, a competent cook.
  • I learnt how to make macarons!
  • I love traveling and languages.
  • I hate driving and I love the fact that most European countries have a good public transportation system.
  • If you ask me about my favourite book or movie, honestly, I cannot give you an answer.
  • But I have a favourite quote "Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz" (Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace) by Benito Juárez.
  • Gabriel García Marquez could be my favourite writer as I have not read as many books from any other author.