Elena Simperl

Elena Simperl is a Professor of Computer at King’s College London and the Director of Research of the Open Data Institute. She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow.

Elena features in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade. She obtained her doctoral degree in Computer Science from the Free University of Berlin, and her diploma in Computer Science from the Technical University of Munich. Prior to joining King’s she held positions in Germany, Austria and at the University of Southampton.

Her research is at intersection between AI and social computing, helping designers understand how to build advanced sociotechnical systems that combine data and algorithms with human and social capabilities. She led 14 European and national research projects, including recently QROWD, Data Pitch, Data Stories, ACTION, and MediaFutures.

Elena’s leadership role in the scientific community has also taken form through chairing several conferences in her field, including the European and International Semantic Web Conferences, the European Data Forum, and the European Semantic Technologies conference. She is the president of the Semantic Web Science Association.