Maribel Acosta

Maribel Acosta is a Professor of Databases and Information Systems at Ruhr-Universität Bochum's Faculty of Computer Science. She holds affiliations with the Institut für Neuroinformatik (INI), focusing on interdisciplinary research combining natural and artificial cognitive systems. Her work spans databases, semantic web technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning applied to knowledge graphs.

Acosta earned her Ph.D. (Summa Cum Laude, 2017) and Master's in Computer Science from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). She has held roles including Junior Professor at RUB (2020–present), Deputy Professor at KIT (2019–2020), and Assistant Lecturer at Heidelberg University (2020).

Research Interests: Her primary research focuses on efficient querying of knowledge graphs, integration of machine learning in data management, and semantic web technologies. Key areas include knowledge graph population, federated query processing, and stability in neural networks. Recent work explores applications in automotive systems and social science data integration.

Awards: Notable recognitions include a 2022 WWW Best Paper nomination, Aminer's Top-100 Influential Scholars (2020–2021), and multiple teaching excellence awards from KIT (2017–2020).

Teaching & Labs: She teaches courses on database systems, knowledge graphs, and artificial intelligence at RUB. Her lab contributes to projects like SMART-KG and has pioneered federated SPARQL query frameworks. She actively supervises doctoral research in knowledge graph applications and machine learning.