Sebastian Neumaier

Senior Researcher·USTP – University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten

I am a computer science researcher in Austria, working at the intersection of knowledge graphs, data ecosystems, and trustworthy AI — building semantic methods that make data and AI systems more transparent and accountable.

I earned my Ph.D. at TU Wien in 2019, supervised by Axel Polleres, and have been at the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten since 2021, where I am a Senior Researcher. I lead nationally and EU-funded projects — currently on AI transparency and open-source software — teach, and help organise workshops and conferences in the semantic web and AI community.

News

Oct 2026Starting the FFG K-PASS project DigiSov-CrOSSD — Digital Sovereignty Through a Critical Open-Source Software Database, together with the Federal Chancellery.
Oct 2026Co-organizing the third KG-NeSy workshop on Knowledge Graphs and Neurosymbolic AI, co-located with ISWC 2026, Bari.
May 2026Served as Workshops & Tutorials Chair of the 23rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2026), Dubrovnik.
Nov 2025First release of the AIDOC-AP ontology — an application profile for technical documentation of AI systems, developed in the CERTAIN project.
Jun 2025Participated in Dagstuhl Seminar 25271 — Policy Modeling and Reasoning in Sociotechnical Systems.
Jan 2025Started the Horizon Europe project CERTAIN on ethical and regulatory transparency in AI, leading a work package.

In the Media

Dec 2025Fighting Online Hate Speech — on the HaSPI project. USTP / pressetext
Feb 2025Setting Standards for Ethical AI in Europe — on the CERTAIN project. USTP
May 2023Eine gesunde Open-Source-Landschaft schaffen — on the CrOSSD project. APA-Science

Research Interests

Data ecosystems — data spaces, governance, sharing architectures, and quality management.
Knowledge graphs — construction, information extraction, and neurosymbolic AI.
Open data & the web — semantic enrichment, metadata quality, and reuse.
Trustworthy AI — open-source software health, ethical and regulatory certification, content moderation.

Selected Publications

2023Towards a Critical Open-Source Software Database. WWW '23 Companion. with T. Dam, L. D. Klausner.
2021Knowledge Graphs. Synthesis Lectures, Morgan & Claypool — kgbook.org. with A. Hogan et al.
2019Enabling Spatio-Temporal Search in Open Data. Journal of Web Semantics 55. with A. Polleres.
2016Multi-level semantic labelling of numerical values. ISWC 2016. Best Student Paper nominee
2016Automated quality assessment of metadata across open data portals. JDIQ 8(1).

All publications →

Selected Current Projects

CERTAIN — Certification for Ethical and Regulatory Transparency in AI. Horizon Europe, 2025–2027 · Work Package Lead · ontology.
HaSPI — Hate Speech Prevention Through Imitation. netidee, 2025–2026 · PI · code.
CrOSSD / CrOSSD2 / DigiSov-CrOSSD — A Critical Open-Source Software Database: measuring the health of critical open-source software, extended towards digital sovereignty. netidee 2023–2026 & FFG K-PASS 2026 (with the Federal Chancellery) · PI · code.
KG-NeSy — Workshop series on Knowledge Graphs and Neurosymbolic AI. 2024– · Co-Organizer.

Teaching

Knowledge Discovery & Information Retrieval USTP, 2021–present
Scientific Working USTP, 2021–present
Algorithmic Thinking and Programming WU Vienna, 2020–present
Principles of Programming WU Vienna, 2016–2019
Tutorial, Reasoning Web Summer School Birkbeck, University of London, 2017

Service & Community

Organisation & Chairing

Workshops & Tutorials Chair — ESWC 2026, Dubrovnik · 2026
Co-Organizer — KG-NeSy, Workshop on Knowledge Graphs & Neurosymbolic AI · 2024–present
Poster & Demo Chair — SEMANTiCS 2023, Leipzig · 2023
Research & Innovation Chair — SEMANTiCS 2022, Vienna · 2022
Organizer — SemAI 2022, First Workshop on Semantic AI · 2022

Reviewing

Program Committee: ISWC, ESWC, SEMANTiCS, The Web Conference (WWW), CIKM, ECIS, iDSC.

Journals: Semantic Web Journal, Journal of Web Semantics, Journal of Data and Information Quality, Government Information Quarterly, Applied Soft Computing, and others.