By empowering people to take control of their own data, we create a sustainable ecosystem of unprecedented innovation. The future belongs not to data harvesters, but to smart reusers.

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 also a Solid Ecosystem Architect for Inrupt and an advisor to other companies. From this hybrid academic and industrial perspective, my professional goal is to support Solid on its mission to inspire, transform, and reshape our data-driven society.

As a computer scientist, I investigate how decentralized knowledge graphs on the Web can lead us into the post-Big Data era, where companies realize that data harvesting as a business model is a dead end. The future consists of lots of small data that is linked. People will be in control of where they store their data and with whom they share it, independently of the services they use. I’m researching and implementing technologies that enable us to effect this socio-economic change on both a local and a global scale.

Blog

If you’re into Solid, Linked Data, Web APIs, or JavaScript, check out my blog posts:

Reflections of knowledge

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

A data ecosystem fosters sustainable innovation

By equipping people with personal data vaults, we can leverage more data for better services.

Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web

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

Publications

Discover my ongoing research through my recent publications:

• A Policy-Oriented Architecture for Enforcing Consent in Solid workshop

  Laurens Debackere, Pieter Colpaert, Ruben Taelman, and Ruben Verborgh 2022

  Proceedings of the 2^nd International Workshop on Consent Management in Online Services, Networks and Things details full text BibTeX

• Leveraging Semantic Web technologies for digital interoperability in the Railway domain conference

  Julián Rojas Meléndez, Marina Aguado, Polymnia Vasilopoulou, Ivo Velitchkov, Dylan Van Assche, Pieter Colpaert, and Ruben Verborgh 2021

  Proceedings of the 20^th International Semantic Web Conference details full text BibTeX

• Towards a personal data vault society: an interplay between technological and business perspectives conference

  Sofie Verbrugge, Frederic Vannieuwenborg, Marlies Van der Wee, Didier Colle, Ruben Taelman, and Ruben Verborgh 2021

  Proceedings of the 60^th FITCE Communication Days Congress for ICT Professionals details BibTeX

• Link Traversal with Distributed Subweb Specifications conference

  Bart Bogaerts, Bas Ketsman, Younes Zeboudj, Heba Aamer, Ruben Taelman, and Ruben Verborgh 2021

  Proceedings of the 5^th International Joint Conference on Rules and Reasoning details full text BibTeX

• Third-party payment specification for MaaS workshop

  Brecht Van de Vyvere, Tim Asperges, Pieter Colpaert, and Ruben Verborgh 2021

  Proceedings of the 2^nd International Workshop on Semantics for Transport details full text BibTeX

See all my publications…