Gjergji Kasneci

Gjergji Kasneci is a German computer scientist known for his contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence, specifically, knowledge base construction, semantic search, and data science. He is a full professor and heads the chair for Responsible Data Science at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and is a core member of the Munich Data Science Institute. Before his current appointment, Kasneci has held multiple positions in academia and industry, including the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Schufa Holding AG and an honorary professorship at the University of Tübingen.

Education and career
Kasneci completed his studies in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Marburg. In 2006, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, earning his PhD from the University of Saarland in 2009. Together with his co-authors Fabian Suchanek and Gerhard Weikum, Kasneci has contributed to research on the YAGO (database), one of the first large-scale knowledge bases automatically assembled from multiple web sources, and semantic search over large knowledge bases. These contributions have set the foundation for many fact-based reasoning and semantic search methodologies in Artificial Intelligence, and the development of so-called knowledge graphs  for structured information retrieval. The work on the YAGO knowledge base was awarded the Seoul Test of Time Award of the International World Wide Web Conference Committee.

Upon receiving his PhD in 2009, Kasneci moved to the United Kingdom to join Microsoft Research Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher. In 2011, he was appointed as Senior Researcher in Information Systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany.

In 2014, Kasneci transitioned into industry, taking up a position at Schufa Holding AG as the head of Innovation and Strategic Analysis. In 2017, he took over the role of the company's Chief Technology Officer, a position he held until 2023. Concurrently, from 2018 to 2023, as an honorary professor, Kasneci led the Data Science and Analytics Research Group at the University of Tübingen. During this period, he also served as a core member of Cyber Valley.

Research work
Kasneci's research interests span across various facets of Artificial Intelligence, currently emphasizing transparency, efficiency, accountability, and thus the responsible application of AI-based technologies. His current work explores explainability of AI models, fairness and ethical implications of AI, and the effectiveness of strategies for evaluating large AI models on challenging datasets.