On June 25–26, members of our group participated in the annual Convide Working Group meeting at KIT Campus North. Together with more than 30 researchers from across the CRC, we engaged in open and collaborative discussions during a BarCamp-format event focused on cross-project research.
Attended by: Johannes Mäkelburg Zenon Zacouris

Prof. Maribel Acosta attended the 1st GOBLIN Workshop on Knowledge Graph Technologies, which took place on June 12 2025, in Leipzig, Germany. There, she presented the keynote “Neural Query Optimizers for Knowledge Graphs: Can We Get There?“, and had the chance to network with other researchers and industry stakeholders.

Attended by: Maribel Acosta

Prof. Maribel Acosta and Doctoral researchers Samuel García and Yuchen Zhou attended the Extended Semantic Web conference (ESWC), which took place on June 1-5 2025, in Portorož, Slovenia.Yuchen Zhou successfully presented her topic in the PhD symposium and a subsequent Minute Madness and poster presentation, whereas Samuel García presented his first publication, "Information-aware Entity Indexing in Knowledge Graphs to Enable Semantic Search".Lastly, Prof. Maribel Acosta received the best mentor award for her guidance to the other PhD symposium students, and had the honor of becoming the General Chair for the next edition of ESWC in 2026.
Attended by: Maribel Acosta, Samuel García, Yuchen Zhou

Doctoral researcher Samuel García recently attended the first Research Training Group retreat of the CRC 1625, in Heidelberg. In this retreat, aimed exclusively at the doctoral and postdoctoral researchers of the project, he had the opportunity to connect with the other researchers. The activities included a short Knowledge Graphs talk that he imparted alongside presentations from each member of the group, but also bowling, a barbecue and a guided tour of the Heidelberg castle.
Attended by: Samuel García

Doctoral researcher Samuel García, alongside two other collaborators of the CRC 1625, attended the NFDI-MatWerk's Research Data Management in Materials Science and Engineering Spring School, in Aachen. This Spring School was extremely useful to not only learn more about the Material Science perspective on Data Management, but also to network with other researchers in the field.

Attended by: Samuel García

Doctoral researcher Samuel García attended the 2025 CRC 1625 General Meeting at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, where most CRC researchers are based. The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to showcase the progress made in his project since its start—progress that has already been substantial. In addition to presentations from each participating group, the event also featured a poster session, fostering engaging discussions and cross-project insights.
Attended by: Samuel García

At the ICAART 2025 conference in Porto, doctoral researcher Johannes Mäkelburg presented the paper Markov Process-Based Graph Convolutional Networks for Entity Classification in Knowledge Graphs. The work introduces a novel approach that integrates Markov processes into graph convolutional networks to improve entity classification by better capturing structural patterns in knowledge graphs. Link to the paper

Attended by: Johannes Mäkelburg

The latest edition of Mindshift, the official magazine of TUM Campus Heilbronn, features an in-depth article on Deeplify, the start-up founded by Tim Schwabe and mentored by Prof. Maribel Acosta. 
The article explores Deeplify’s mission, its AI-driven solutions, and the entrepreneurial journey of its founder.

Attended by: Maribel Acosta, Tim Schwabe

On 12 December 2024, the Collaborative Research Center 1608: Consistency in the View-Based Development of Cyber-Physical Systems held its annual Winter Colloquium at the InformatiKOM building at KIT. The event provided Convide researchers with a valuable opportunity to connect, exchange ideas, and explore the latest developments in their projects. In addition, two invited talks from Antonio Cicchetti (Mälardalen University) and Gabor Karsai (Vanderbilt University) provided deep insights into critical topics. 

Attended by: Maribel Acosta, Johannes Mäkelburg, Zenon Zacouris 

From October 7th to 9th, the CRC 1625 consortium held its annual retreat, bringing together researchers from all participating institutions for three days of presentations, discussions, and networking. This marked an important introduction to the collaborative environment for new predoctoral researchers joining the project.

The retreat provided a comprehensive overview of ongoing research within CRC 1625, with a strong focus on materials science. While the technical depth of the presentations was demanding, especially for those from outside the field, it offered valuable insight into the interdisciplinary nature of the consortium.

Held at an impressive castle venue, the retreat created space for informal exchange and team-building. Excellent food and a welcoming atmosphere contributed to a productive and inspiring start to the collaborative research.

Attended by: Samuel García

We were excited to host our very first doctoral seminar, held from September 30 to October 1, 2024, in Ellwangen, marking an important milestone for our group. The seminar focused on various aspects of code publishing, equipping our doctoral candidates with valuable skills in writing clean, efficient code that will enhance the quality of their research and foster collaboration within the academic and research communities.

Attended by: Maribel Acosta, Samuel García, Jin Ke, Johannes Mäkelburg, Zenon Zacouris 

Our CONVIDE researcher, Zenon Zacouris, participated in a seminar on advanced model-driven development, focusing on principles, practices, and essential tools. Exploration included established modeling standard languages such as UML, ATL, and OCL, as well as cutting-edge technologies like multi-level and view-based modeling. This knowledge facilitates the creation of meta-models and model transformations, enabling effective extension of a V-SUM meta-model.

Attended by: Zenon Zacouris

Two of our team members, Johannes Mäkelburg and Tim Schwabe, recently attended the TUM Graduate School Kick-Off Seminar, designed to prepare doctoral candidates for a successful academic career. Over three days, participants engaged with researchers from various disciplines and received essential information about doctoral research and Good Scientific Practice. Networking opportunities included a guided Walk & Talk and a custom-designed Escape Game. The seminar concluded with a two-day workshop about Presentation Rhetoric: Presenting with Confidence and Persuasiveness.

Attended by: Johannes Mäkelburg , Tim Schwabe

Our CONVIDE researchers, Johannes Mäkelburg and Zenon Zacouris, recently had the valuable opportunity to visit the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) for an introduction to product development and systems engineering methods specifically tailored for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). This visit was centered on equipping our researchers with essential skills in developing and testing CPS.

Attended by: Johannes Mäkelburg Zenon Zacouris

Professor Maribel Acosta and researcher Jin Ke participated in the 50th VLDB conference held in Guangzhou, China, where Jin presented their work on Re-SHACL, an efficient approach for SHACL validation with reasoning. Traditional SHACL validation often overlooks implicit information, leading to inaccurate results. Their solution incorporates targeted reasoning and merging techniques, significantly improving validation accuracy while reducing computational overhead. On datasets such as DBpedia and Wikidata, Re-SHACL demonstrated faster validation times and more meaningful violation reports. This research opens new possibilities for scalable reasoning-based validation in large knowledge graphs.

Attended by: Maribel Acosta, Jin Ke