Originally from Heidelberg, a town in the southwestern part of Germany, I studied Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the Clausthal University of Technology and the University of Freiburg. After spending a great year at Indiana University as an international exchange student, I decided to return to Bloomington for my doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor Dirk Van Gucht. I have a PhD in Computer Science since June 2009. Currently, I am a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Mannheim working in the infamous Knowledge Representation and Management Research Group.

My research interests include machine learning, probabilistic graphical models, statistical relational learning, digital libraries, formal ontologies and, more broadly, the (social) semantic web. Recently, I have been working on developing probabilistic-logical approaches to ontology matching, ontology learning, and activity recognition.

News

• (06/04/10) The Paper "Leveraging Terminological Structure for Object Reconciliation" has won the best paper award at the 7th Extended Semantic Web Conference
• (06/01/10) The Paper "A Delayed Column Generation Strategy for Exact k-Bounded MAP Inference in Markov Logic Networks" has been accepted at the Twenty-Sixth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence
• (04/03/10) The Paper "A Probabilistic-Logical Framework for Ontology Matching" has been accepted as an exceptional paper at the Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
• (04/01/10) Rim Helaoui, one of the PhD students I supervise, received the Google best PhD forum award at the Eighth Annual IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications
• (02/24/10) The paper "Leveraging Terminological Structure for Object Reconciliation" has been accepted at the 7th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2010).
• (11/27/09) I am on the program comittee of the First Workshop on Uncertainty in Description Logics (UniDL'10) at FLoC 2010
• (11/09/09) I will serve as a PC member of the Extended Semantic Web Conference's PhD Workshop
• (11/08/09) I will be teaching the course "From Probability to Logic and Back: Markov Logic and its Applications to Computational Linguistics and the Semantic Web" at the North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information

Selected Publications

• Mathias Niepert. A Delayed Column Generation Strategy for Exact k-Bounded MAP Inference in Markov Logic Networks. In Proceedings of the 26th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), Catalina Island, California, AUAI Press, 2010. [paper]
• Mathias Niepert, Christian Meilicke, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt. A Probabilistic-Logical Framework for Ontology Matching. In Proceedings of the 24th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Atlanta, Georgia, AAAI Press, 2010. (selected as exceptional paper) [paper][poster][slides]
• Kai Eckert, Mathias Niepert, Christof Niemann, Cameron Buckner, Colin Allen, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt. Crowdsourcing the Assembly of Concept Hierarchies. In Proceedings of the 10th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Gold Coast, Australia, ACM Press, 2010. [paper]
• Mathias Niepert. Towards Collaboratively Learning and Populating Ontologies for the Social-Semantic Web. SIGWEB Newsletter, Spring 2010, ACM Press.
• Jan Noessner, Mathias Niepert, Christian Meilicke, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt. Leveraging Terminological Structure for Object Reconciliation. In Proceedings of the 7th Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), Heraklion, Greece, Springer-Verlag, 2010. (best paper award) [paper]
• Mathias Niepert, Dirk Van Gucht, and Marc Gyssens. Logical and Algorithmic Properties of Stable Conditional Independence. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Volume 51, Issue 5, pages 531-543, 2010. [preprint]
• Rim Helaoui, Mathias Niepert, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt. A Statistical-Relational Activity Recognition Framework for Ambient Assisted Living Systems. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence, Guimarães, Portugal, Springer-Verlag, 2010. [paper]
• Cameron Buckner, Mathias Niepert, and Colin Allen. From Encyclopedia to Ontology: Toward A Dynamic Representation of the Discipline of Philosophy. Synthese, Springer-Verlag, 2010. [article]
• Robert Meusel, Mathias Niepert, Kai Eckert, and Heiner Stuckenschmidt. Thesaurus Extension Using Web Search Engines. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries (ICADL), Gold Coast, Australia, Springer-Verlag, 2010. [paper]
• Mathias Niepert. Logical Inference Algorithms and Matrix Representations for Probabilistic Conditional Independence. In Proceedings of the 25th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), Montreal, Canada, pages 428-435, AUAI Press, 2009. [paper]
• Mathias Niepert, Cameron Buckner, and Colin Allen. Working the Crowd: Design Principles and Early Lessons from the Social-Semantic Web. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Web 3.0: Merging Semantic Web and Social Web - (SW)^2  at ACM Hypertext, Turin, Italy, 2009. [paper]
• Mathias Niepert, Cameron Buckner, Jaimie Murdock, and Colin Allen. InPhO: A System for Collaboratively Populating and Extending a Dynamic Ontology. Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries, Volume 5 Issue 1, 2009.
• Mathias Niepert. A Unifying Framework for Disjunctive Data Constraints with Applications to Reasoning under Uncertainty. PhD thesis, Indiana University, June 2009. [thesis]
• Mathias Niepert and Dirk Van Gucht. Logical Properties of Stable Conditional Independence. In Proceedings of the 4th European Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGM), Hirtshals, Denmark, pages 225-232, 2008. (selected for plenary presentation) [paper] [slides]
• Mathias Niepert, Dirk Van Gucht, and Marc Gyssens. On the Conditional Independence Implication Problem: A Lattice-Theoretic Approach. In Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), Helsinki, Finland, pages 435-443, AUAI Press, 2008. (best student paper runner-up award) [paper] [slides]
• Mathias Niepert, Cameron Buckner, Jaimie Murdock, and Colin Allen. InPhO: A System for Collaboratively Populating and Extending a Dynamic Ontology. (demo abstract) In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, page 429, ACM Press, 2008. [abstract] [poster]
• Colin Allen, Cameron Buckner, and Mathias Niepert. The World is Not Flat: Expertise and InPhO. Selected papers from the Ninth Annual WebWise Conference. First Monday, Volume 13, Number 8, 2008. [article]
• Mathias Niepert, Cameron Buckner, and Colin Allen. Answer Set Programming on Expert Feedback to Populate and Extend Dynamic Ontologies. In Proceedings of the 21st International FLAIRS Conference, Coconut Grove, Florida, pages 500-505, AAAI Press, 2008. [paper] [slides]
• Cameron Buckner, Mathias Niepert, and Colin Allen. InPhO: The Indiana Philosophy Ontology. APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Computers, Volume 7, Number 1, pages 26-28, 2007. [newsletter]
• Mathias Niepert, Cameron Buckner, and Colin Allen. A Dynamic Ontology for a Dynamic Reference Work. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), Vancouver, British Columbia, pages 288-297, ACM Press, 2007. [paper] [slides]

Current Advisees

Teaching

• Instructor: From Probability to Logic and Back: Markov Logic and its Applications to Computational Linguistics and the Semantic Web, 4th North American Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information, Summer 2010
• Instructor: Algorithms and Data Structures, University of Mannheim, Spring 2010
• Co-Instructor: Praktische Informatik 2 (Compilers, in German), University of Mannheim, Spring 2010
• Co-Instructor: Teamproject Business Informatics, University of Mannheim, Fall 2009/Spring 2010
• Co-Instructor: Data and Knowledge Engineering Seminar, University of Mannheim, Spring 2010
• TA: Discrete Mathematics, Indiana University, Spring 2008
• TA: Advanced Database Concepts, Indiana University, Fall 2007
• TA: Algorithm Design and Analysis, Indiana University, Spring 2006
• TA: Theory of Computation, Indiana University, Fall 2005

Service

Conference Presentations & Invited Talks

• A Probabilistic-Logical Framework for Ontology Matching. 24th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 15th, 2010.
• Markov Logic and some Semantic Web Use-Cases. University of Mannheim, May 10th, 2010.
• Working the Crowd: Design Principles and Early Lessons from the Social-Semantic Web. Workshop on Web 3.0: Merging Semantic Web and Social Web at ACM Hypertext, June 29th, 2009.
• On Implication Problems for Disjunctive Constraints. Logic Seminar, Indiana University, February 11th, 2009. [slides]
• Logical Properties of Stable Conditional Independence. Data and Search Institute Seminar, Indiana University, November 19th, 2008. [slides]
• Logical Properties of Stable Conditional Independence. Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models, Hirtshals, Denmark, September 17th, 2008. [slides]
• On the Conditional Independence Implication Problem: A Lattice-Theoretic Approach. Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, Helsinki, Finland, July 12th, 2008. [slides]
• Answer Set Programming on Expert Feedback to Populate and Extend Dynamic Ontologies. International FLAIRS Conference, Coconut Grove, FLorida, May 17th, 2008. [slides]
• The Implication Problem for Disjunctive Rules. Research Seminar in Databases and Data Mining, Indiana University, September 24, 2007. [slides]
• A Dynamic Ontology for a Dynamic Reference Work. North American Computers and Philosophy Conference (NA-CAP), Loyola University, Chicago, July 28, 2007. [slides]
• A Dynamic Ontology for a Dynamic Reference Work. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, Vancouver, British Columbia, June 22, 2007. [slides]
• Combining Statistical Language Processing and Defeasible Reasoning for Collaborative Ontology Learning. Research Seminar in Databases and Data Mining, Indiana University, March 5, 2007. [slides]
• Ontology Learning and Population From Text. Research Seminar in Databases and Data Mining, Indiana University, February 13, 2006. [slides]

Software

Geeky Facts