Dr hab. Krzysztof Węcel serves as Professor and current Head of the Department of Economic Informatics at Poznan University of Economics and Business (UEP), appointed on October 4, 2024. His primary affiliation spans over 25 years with UEP's Department of Economic Informatics, which maintains one of Poland's longest-running academic websites since 1998. He holds dual recognition through habilitation from University of Potsdam (2020) and professorship conferred by UEP (June 24, 2020). His academic milestones: Habilitation degree in Economic Informatics, University of Potsdam (2020) Professor title, Poznan University of Economics and Business (2020) Węcel's research centers on Semantic Technologies and data quality assessment across multilingual Wikipedia, with emphasis on company information verification, citation analysis, and open data applications. His work bridges Big Data analytics with practical business solutions, particularly in maritime logistics where he pioneered evolutionary algorithm-based AIS data processing. Current investigations focus on generative AI's dual role in creating and combating disinformation, including ChatGPT's impact on academic writing and fake news propagation. Recent publications (2022-2025) reveal three dominant trends: First, systematic analysis of Wikipedia's reliability across languages during crises like the pandemic and Ukraine war. Second, development of AI-driven fact-checking frameworks (e.g., OpenFact project's CLEF 2023 victory). Third, exploration of generative AI's societal impact ranging from student creativity to disinformation campaigns. Scientific awards received: Best Paper Award at ICIST 2017 Conference Award for most innovative article at NATCON 2018 conference Microsoft Azure for Research Award (2016) As academic advisor, he leads the 'Semantic Technologies' diploma seminar attracting high-achieving students, with participants winning the 29th UEP Foundation Competition (2025) and Eurostat's Web Intelligence Challenge (2024). His grant portfolio includes the 'Maritime Big Brother' project (2017) for ship voyage prediction using AIS data and Microsoft Azure funding for Wikipedia quality enhancement. Ongoing initiatives include OpenFact (fake news detection) and GOBLIN projects. He actively collaborates with SKN Data Science student circle (evidenced by 2024/2025 inaugural meeting) and international consortia like CLEF and QOD workshops. Departmental leadership involves managing the OpenFact research team that achieved top results in CheckThat! Lab competitions, alongside maritime data analytics groups applying evolutionary algorithms to shipping networks.




