Alexandra Poulovassilis

Professor of Computer Science
Member of the Information Management and Web Technologies research group at the
Department of Computer Science and Information Systems,
Birkbeck, University of London,
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, U.K.

Co-Director of the London Knowledge Lab
Programme Director of the MSc in Learning Technologies
Assistant Dean for Research in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics,
email: ap at dcs.bbk.ac.uk

Principal Investigator on:

the MiGen project - intelligent support for students and teachers in exploratory learning environments;
the MyPlan project - supporting learners in sharing and formulating their learning and career plans;
the SeLeNe project - semantic services for the discovery and sharing of learning resources;
the AutoMed project - tools for data integrators and users of heterogeneous scientific data resources.

Functional Approach to Data Management, Springer 2004

Co-editor of: Web Dynamics, The Functional Approach to Data Management and Reasoning in Event-Based Distributed Systems

Research interests

New digital technologies and applications are giving rise to increasing volumes and varieties of information: in distributed databases, on the web, in mobile and pervasive computing environments. Users may find it difficult to find the right information for their purposes and to combine and reconcile information from different independent sources. My research interests are in querying, integrating, visualising and personalising heterogeneous information, particularly as arising in learning environments and scientific data management. Current research interests include

flexible querying of complex data
heterogeneous data integration
intelligent support for learning and knowledge communities
data languages, data models, data quality, query interfaces, query processing, query optimisation, semi-structured data, semantic web, system architectures and performance, adaptive systems, web information retrieval, information extraction.

Some recent research presentations:

Combining Approximation and Relaxation in Semantic Web Path Queries, Nov 2010.
The design of Teacher Assistance tools in an exploratory learning environment for mathematics generalisation, October 2010.
Awareness in P2P groupware systems: a convergence of contextual computing, social media and semantic web, September 2010.
Querying complex heterogeneous data sets, July 2010.
Searching Lifelong Learner Metadata using Query Approximation and Relaxation, December 2009.
The Conceptual and Architectural Design of a System Supporting Exploratory Learning of Mathematics Generalisation, October 2009.
Ranking Approximate Answers to Semantic Web Queries, June 2009.
Data integration architectures and methodologies for the Life Sciences, October 2007.

Research students:

Areej Alasiry, working on modelling human interaction with search engines
Richard Brownlow, data integration in dataspaces
Petra Selmer, supporting users in flexible querying of web data
Shumin Sillett, multi-channel information integration and personalisation
Jianing Wang, quality-driven data integration

Vacancies: Please contact me if you would like to collaborate on any of the above or related areas. There are frequently funding opportunities for PhD students, postdocs and visiting researchers.

Publications

See the DBLP Bibliography Server , and also my web pages on: data management, data integration, supporting learning and knowledge communities, web dynamics.

Teaching

My teaching in 2011/12

Other Professional Activities

Programme Committees 2006: EDBT, InterDB, WISE, BNCOD
2007: VLDB, ER, ICDE, ISWC, ADBIS, BNCOD, InterDB, SWDB
2008: EDBT, NLDB, BNCOD, WISE, ISWC, ER
2009: ICDE, DILS, WISE, BNCOD
2010: VLDB, DILS, BNCOD, WISE
2011: EDBT, BNCOD, APWeb, DEBS, CIKM
2012: ITS, APWeb, DEBS, IDA, ISWC
Pro-Vice-Master for Research and International Students, Birkbeck, Oct 2002-Sept 2003
Head of the College Research School, Birkbeck, Oct 2003-Feb 2005
Head of School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birkbeck, August 2003-Sept 2006
Head of Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birkbeck, August 2009-Jan 2010
Co-Director of the London Knowledge Lab, Oct 2003-
Member of the EPSRC Peer Review College 2000-
Member of ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning II Commissioning Panel 2007/8
Member of the RAE 2008 Computer Science and Informatics sub-panel
Member of the REF 2014 Computer Science and Informatics sub-panel
Assistant Dean for Research, School of Business, Economics and Informatics, Birkbeck, October 2009-

Brief Biography

After a BA in Maths at Cambridge and working at IBM Greece in the early to mid 1980s, I returned to the UK to do an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science at Birbeck. My PhD and postdoctoral research was in data models and languages. I held a SERC Postdoctoral Fellowship at University College London during 1989-91 and then joined King's College London. After eight years there as Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer, I returned to Birkbeck as Reader in 1999 and Professor from 2001. Since 2003 I have been Co-Director of the London Knowledge Lab, a multi-disciplinary research institution which aims to explore the ways in which digital technologies and new media are shaping the future of knowledge and learning. My current research is in querying, integration and personalisation of information, with applications in e-learning and e-science.