Marcelo Arenas

Marcelo Arenas is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Mathematical and Computational Engineering at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), former director of the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data, and co-founder of the Center for Semantic Web Research. His Ph.D. in Computer Science was obtained from the University of Toronto in 2005.

Research interests include data management, applications of logic in computer science, and Semantic Web technologies. He has published extensively on topics such as SPARQL query complexity, graph database systems, and incomplete database theory, with notable works like MillenniumDB and Foundations of Data Exchange.

Scientific accolades:

• 2016 SWSA Ten-Year Award for "Semantics and Complexity of SPARQL"
• IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (2004)
• Nine Best Paper Awards across PODS, ISWC, ICDT, ESWC, WWW, and NeurIPS

His work on approximate counting algorithms (e.g., FPRAS for #NFA) and explainable AI frameworks has influenced database theory, while serving on program committees for ICDT 2015, ISWC 2015, and PODS 2018 demonstrates leadership in the field. Current projects focus on probabilistic explanations for decision trees and temporal regular path queries in knowledge graphs.