Ruben Verborgh – Professor of Decentralized Web Technology

Value doesn’t wait
in data you already hold,
it hides in data you never will.

An AI economy built on streaming insights
delivers mutual benefit without toxic data waste.

Ruben Verborgh

I’m a Professor of Decentralized Web Technology at IDLab of Ghent University – imec and a Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Martin School within the University of Oxford.
I’m a Data Technology Advisor to Inrupt and an occasional advisor to companies. From this hybrid academic and industrial perspective, my professional mission is to inspire, evolve, and reshape our data-driven society.

I investigate why and how an interdisciplinary approach to trusted data will lead us into a sustainable Insight Economy, where a pragmatic alignment of societal and economic needs incentivizes responsible data processing. Technology will support people in deciding when, why, and with whom we exchange data, and companies will experience frictionless usage of the data required to offer their services. My research group designs and implements ecosystems to support and effect this socio-economic change.

The Future of Data

Inside the Insight Economy

For centuries, trade has embodied mutual benefit. Let’s restore what data broke.

Trust takes time

Only people can trust, but only machines scale well.

No more raw data

Trust envelopes enable responsible data reuse.

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Decentralized Data Technology

The Web’s data triad

Querying decentralized data is a solved problem, but why do we prefer some solutions over others?

Reflections of knowledge

Designing Web APIs for sustainable interactions within decentralized knowledge graph ecosystems.

Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web

As separate markets for data and apps emerge, Web development needs to adopt a new shape.

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Publications

• Automated Policy Negotiation: a Four-Course Meal workshop

  Patrick Hochstenbach, Beatriz Esteves, and Ruben Verborgh 2025

  Workshops and Tutorials Proceedings of the 22^nd Extended Semantic Web Conference details full text BibTeX

• Semantic Framework for Legally-aligned Health Data Exchanges workshop

  Beatriz Esteves, Ruben Dedecker, Wout Slabbinck, Filip Pattyn, and Ruben and Verborgh 2025

  Workshops and Tutorials Proceedings of the 22^nd Extended Semantic Web Conference details full text BibTeX

• Link Traversal over Decentralised Environments using Restart-Based Query Planning conference

  Jonni Hanski, Ruben Taelman, and Ruben Verborgh 2025

  Proceedings of the 25^th International Conference on Web Engineering details full text BibTeX

• Interoperable Interpretation and Evaluation of ODRL Policies conference

  Wout Slabbinck, Julián Rojas Meléndez, Beatriz Esteves, and Ruben Verborgh 2025

  Proceedings of the 22^nd Extended Semantic Web Conference details full text BibTeX

• Enforcing Usage Control Policies in Solid using Rule-Based Web Agents conference

  Wout Slabbinck, Julián Rojas Meléndez, Beatriz Esteves, Ruben Verborgh, and Pieter Colpaert 2024

  Proceedings of the Posters and Privacy Session of the Solid Symposium 2024 details full text BibTeX

View all my publications.