Diego Calvanese

Diego Calvanese is a Full Professor in Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. He serves as Spokesperson of the Institute of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Smart Data Factory technology transfer lab at NOI Techpark. As Coordinator of the Intelligent Integration and Access to Data (In2Data) research group, part of the Research Centre for Knowledge and Data (KRDB), he leads significant research initiatives in knowledge representation and data management.

Calvanese's research focuses on virtual knowledge graphs for data access and integration, ontology-based data access, description logics, semantic web technologies, graph data management, and verification of data-aware processes. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications through the Ontop framework, which enables SPARQL query answering over OWL 2 QL ontologies connected to external data sources. His research has substantial practical impact, powering the South Tyrol Open Data Hub Knowledge Graph and supporting numerous European and national research projects.

With more than 400 refereed publications and over 39,000 citations (h-index 80), Calvanese's recent work demonstrates continued leadership in virtual knowledge graphs, ontology-based data federation, explainable AI through knowledge representation, and integration of complex data types including 3D city models and raster data. His publications show a clear trajectory from theoretical foundations toward increasingly practical and applied research addressing real-world data integration challenges across multiple domains.

• ACM Fellow (2019)
• EurAI Fellow (2015)
• AAIA Fellow
• Program Chair of PODS 2015 and KR 2020
• General Chair of ESSLLI 2016

Calvanese has secured significant research funding through numerous competitive projects including EU H2020 INFRAEOS Project (INODE), Italian PRIN Project (HOPE), FESR Project (IDEE), and EU FP7 IP Project (Optique), totaling close to 6.4M Euro. As an originator and co-founder of Ontopic, the first spin-off of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, he has successfully translated research into commercial applications. He serves as Associate Editor of Artificial Intelligence (AIJ) and has participated in over 200 program committee roles for international conferences.

As Director of the Smart Data Factory technology transfer lab and coordinator of the In2Data research group, Calvanese bridges academic research with industry applications, focusing on practical implementations of knowledge graph technologies. His work with the KRDB Research Center has established Bozen-Bolzano as a significant hub for knowledge representation and data management research in Europe.