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Ruben Verborgh

Ruben Verborgh – Professor of Decentralized Web technology

Let’s redefine the relation between people, apps, and data. By taking control of our data flow, we take control of our choices. Privacy is nothing but a byproduct of sustainable innovation.

Ruben Verborgh

I’m a professor of Decentralized Web technology at IDLab, Ghent University – imec, and a research affiliate at the Decentralized Information Group of CSAIL at MIT. I’m also a technology advocate for Inrupt, supporting the Solid ecosystem that gives you back control and choice—online and offline. I love discussing about the Web, Linked Data, decentralization, Web APIs, hypermedia clients, and much more.

We are entering 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 who they share it with, independently of the apps they use. In such a world, we can choose to spend our data on innovative apps, instead of loosing our time to those who hold our data hostage. I’m researching technologies that enable us to effect this socio-economic change.

Of course, I practice what I preach and publish my own data as Linked Open Data. You can query my data live on the Web, even across multiple datasets.
I’m also working on getting my personal data out of Facebook.

Blog

If you’re into Linked Data, Web APIs, REST, JavaScript, communication, research, or if you’re just curious, check out my latest blog posts:

Projects

I’m involved in several projects, including:

Solid
Use the apps you need, store your data where you want.
Linked Data Fragments
Query Linked Data on a Web scale by moving intelligence to the client.
RDF Mapping Language (RML)
Combine data from heterogeneous sources through the power of Linked Data.

Publications

Discover the research I’m into through my recent publications:

See all my publications…