Welcome

Welcome to the homepage of Christophe Debruyne. I am currently a researcher at the Semantics Technology & Applications Research Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, which is part of the Department of Computer Science of the Faculty of Science and Bio-engineering Sciences.

I obtained a BSc in Applied Computer Science at Hogeschool Gent (University College Gent) in 2005, a BSc in Computer Science and a Msc in Applied Sciences and Engineering: Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2007 and 2009 respectively. I started working at STARLab as a developer in 2007. You can find more information about my education and work experience on my LinkedIn page.

My research interests include: Ontology Management, Knowledge Management, Ontology Engineering, Ontology Reuse, Ontology Lanuages (RDFS, OWL, etc.) and Semantic Wikis. I'm also interested in the latest developments concerning Web 2.0.

Contact Information

Research

Ontological commitments can be seen as software objects either manifested as agents or services that use these mappings to add semantics to their data. Even though a methodology supports an ontology to co-evolve with the communities' interoperability-requirements, doing so in an automated way still remains an open question. A reason for this might be the absence of communities as first class citizens within the ontological commitment as well as the lack of a process that translates the changing requirements into operators that can modify those commitments.

The aim of my research is to study the social dynamics of ontological commitment, which is the study of negotiation and agreement processes and how these translate into software actions such as messages between objects. There are two important aspects to reach this goal: one aspect is the investigation of how Omega-RIDL [1] can be extended to include communities as a first class citizen and adding a so called pragmatic layer. A second aspect is to research how ontological commitments can evolve in an automated way based on certain knowledge breakdowns, e.g., a change in the community's requirements, by extending the commitment-operators defined by [2] and how these results can be propagated in the iterative loop of a state-of-the-art ontology engineering methodology such as DOGMA-MESS. With these two aspects, we hope to improve the quality of ontological commitments by truly representing the community and their latest requirements.

1. Pieter Verheyden, Jan De Bo, Robert Meersman: Semantically Unlocking Database Content Through Ontology-Based Mediation. SWDB 2004: 109-126
2. De Leenheer, P.: On Community-based Ontology Evolution: Foundations for Business Semantics Management. PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2009)

Publications

• Journal Papers
  • Debruyne, C., Tran, T. K. and Meersman, R. (2013) Grounding Ontologies with Social Processes and Natural Language. In Journal of Data Semantics, LNCS, Springer (to appear)
• Conference Papers
  • Debruyne, C. and Vasquez, C. (2013) Exploiting Natural Language Definitions and (Legacy) Data for Facilitating Agreement Processes. In Proc. of Software Quality. Increasing Value in Software and Systems Development 2013 (SWQD 2013), LNBIP, Springer [Link]
  • Debruyne, C. and Meersman, R. (2012) GOSPL: a Method and Tool for Fact-oriented Hybrid Ontology Engineering. In Proc. of Advances in Databases and Information Systems 2012 (ADBIS 2012) [Link]
  • Debruyne, C. and Meersman, R. (2011) Semantic Interoperation of Information Systems by Evolving Ontologies through Formalized Social Processes. In Proc. of Advances in Databases and Information Systems 2011 (ADBIS 2011) [Link]
  • Tang, Y., Debruyne, C. and Criel, J. (2010) Onto-DIY: A Flexible and Idea Inspiring Ontology-based Do-It-Yourself Architecture for Managing Data Semantics and Semantic Data. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2010: ODBASE (ODBASE 2010), LNCS, Springer [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., De Leenheer, P. and Meersman, R. (2009) A Method and Tool for Fact Type Reuse in the DOGMA Ontology Framework. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2009: ODBASE (ODBASE 2009), LNCS, Springer [Link]
• Book Chapters
  • Debruyne, C. and De Leenheer, P. (2013) Business Semantics as an Interface between Enterprise Information Management and the Web of Data: A Case Study in the Flemish Public Administration. In Business Intelligence: Second European Summer School (eBISS 2012), LNBIP, Springer [Link]
• Keynotes
  • Meersman, R. and Debruyne, C. (2010) Hybrid Ontologies and Social Semantics. In Proc. of 4th IEEE International Conference on Digital Ecosystems and Technologies (DEST 2010), IEEE Press [Link]
• Workshop Papers
  • Debruyne, C., Kerremans, K., Vasquez, C. and Dominguez Burgos, A. (2012) A Methodological Framework for Ontology and Multilingual Termontological Database Co-evolution. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2012: OTM Workshops - Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society (META4eS 2012), LNCS, Springer
  • Ciuciu, O. and Debruyne, C. (2012) Assessing the User Satisfaction with an Ontology Engineering Tool based on Social Processes. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2012: OTM Workshops - Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society (META4eS 2012), LNCS, Springer
  • Alkhaldi, N. and Debruyne, C. (2011) Comparing XML Files with a DOGMA Ontology to Generate Omega-RIDL Annotations. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2011: OTM Workshops - Semantic and Decision Support (SeDeS 2011), LNCS, Springer [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., De Leenheer, P., Spyns, P., van Grootel, G. and Christiaens, S. (2011) Publishing open data and services for the Flemish Research Information Space. In Proc. of the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling 2011: ER Workshops (ER 2011), LNCS, Springer [Link]
  • Meersman, D. and Debruyne, C. (2011) Purchase Intent, Online Offers and Product Innovation: Misunderstandings in the Ménage à Trois, In: Proc. of the International Conference Business Information Systems (BIS 2011): Workshops - Applications of Knowledge-Based Technologies in Business (AKTB 2011), LNBIP, Springer [Link]
  • Debruyne, C. (2010) On the Social Dynamics of Ontological Commitments. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2010: OTM Workshops - OTMA (OTMA 2010), LNCS, Springer [Link]
  • De Leenheer, P., Debruyne, C. and Peeters, J. (2009) Towards Social Performance Indicators for Community-based Ontology Evolution. In Proc. of Workshop on Collaborative Construction, Management and Linking of Structured Knowledge (CK2009), collocated with the 8th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009), CEUR-WS [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., Peeters, J. and Arrassi, Z. (2008) Semi-Automated Consensus Finding for Meaning Negotiation. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2008: OTM Workshops - COMBEK (COMBEK 2008), LNCS, Springer [Link]
  • De Leenheer, P. and Debruyne, C. (2008) DOGMA-MESS: A Tool for Fact-Oriented Collaborative Ontology Evolution. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2008: OTM Workshops - ORM (ORM 2008), LNCS, Springer [Link]
• Posters and Demos
  • Tran, T. K. and Debruyne, C. (2012) Towards Using OWL Integrity Constraints in Ontology Engineering. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2012: OTM Workshops - Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society (META4eS 2012), LNCS, Springer
  • Debruyne, C. (2012) Demo Paper: A Tool for Hybrid Ontology Engineering. In Proc. of On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2012: OTM Workshops - Methods, Evaluation, Tools and Applications for the Creation and Consumption of Structured Data for the e-Society (META4eS 2012), LNCS, Springer
  • Debruyne, C., De Leenheer, P. and Meersman R. (2011) Empowering Enterprise Data Governance with BSG. In Proc. The 6th International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2011), ACM [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., Meersman, D., Baert, M. and Hansenne, R. (2011) Community Driven Request for Proposals - Applying Semantics to Match Customer Purchase Intents to Vendor Offers. In Proc. of 7th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2011), SciTePress [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., Reul, Q. and Meersman, R. (2010) GOSPL: Grounding Ontologies with Social Processes and Natural Language. In Proc. of 7th International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG 2010), IEEE Computer Society [Link]
  • Debruyne, C., Reul, Q., Criel, J. and Claeys, L. (2009) An Approach for Defining Actions in Rules of the CaSenSa Application. ITEA2 Symposium
• MSc Thesis
  • Debruyne, C. (2009) A Method and Tool for Ontology Reuse in the DOGMA Ontology Framework, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Other presentations

• Presentation of the Collibra tool suite at the ORM Workshop during on the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems 2011.
• Presentation on the research of STARLab, the DOGMA initiative and the GOSPL method and tool at the second IFIP WG12.7 Workshop (26-27 April 2012, Amsterdam, The Netherlands).
• On the Social Dynamics of Ontological Commitment. A presentation in the context of the ECCO Seminar Series (01 June 2012, Brussels, Belgium)

MSc Theses Supervised

• Halalo, M. (2012) Away with doubles: Object Identification in Data, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Alkhaldi, N. (2011) Using Product Ontologies for the Semi-automatic Annotation of Vendor Offers, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Coosemans, W. (2010) Business Semantics Elicitation from Software Models: a Model to Model Transformation Approach, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
• Mulmi, A. (2010) An Ontological Meta-model for Communities and Request for Proposals, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Activities

Participation in projects and working groups

• Member of IFIP WG 12.7 Social Networking Semantics and Collective Intelligence (under TC12 Artificial Intelligence)

• Open Semantic Cloud for Brussels (OSCB, 2011-2014): INNOViris Call for Strategic Platforms (Brussels, Belgium)
• Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services (TAS3, 2008-2011): EU FP7 project
• Community Driven Requests for Proposals (COMDRIVE RFP, 2009-2010): IWT SME Innovation project (Flanders, Belgium)
• Ambient Intelligence for the Elderly (AmIE, 2007-2010): ITEA2 project with local funding through IWT
• Process Oriented Learning and Information Exchange (PROLIX, 2005-2008): EU FP6 project

Talks and Attended Conferences

• Int. IFIP Working Conf. on Value-Driven Social Semantics & Collective Intelligence (VaSCo), Paris, France, 1 May 2013
• Software Quality Days 2013 (SWQD 2012), Vienna, Austria, 15-17 January 2013
• Int. Conf. on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2012), Poznan, Poland, 17-21 September 2012
• OnTheMove 2012 Federated Conferences (OTM 2012), Rome, Italy, 10-14 September 2012
• Second European Business Intelligence Summer School (eBISS 2012), Brussels, Belgium, 15-21 July 2012 - As a lecturer
• Int. Conf. on Conceptual Modeling (ER 2011), Brussels, Belgium, 31 October - 3 November 2011
• OnTheMove 2011 Federated Conferences (OTM 2011), Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 17-21 October 2011
• Int. Conf. on Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2011), Vienna, Austria, 20-23 September 2011
• Int. Conf. on Knowledge Capture (KCAP 2011), Banff, Canada, 25-29 June 2011
• Int. Conf. on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2011), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, 6-9 May 2011
• OnTheMove 2010 Federated Conferences (OTM 2010), Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 25-29 October 2010
• ICT 2010, Brussels, Belgium, 27-29 September 2010
• Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2010), Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 30 May - 3 June 2010
• Int. Conf. on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG 2010), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 11-13 April 2010
• OnTheMove 2009 Federated Conferences (OTM 2009), Vilamoura, Portugal, 1-6 November 2009
• OnTheMove 2008 Federated Conferences (OTM 2008), Monterrey, Mexico, 10-14 November 2008
• Reasoning Web 2008 Summer School, San Servolo Island, Venice, Italy from the 7-11 September 2008

Other activities

• Visiting researcher at the Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute (DEBII) at Curtin University in Perth, WA, Australia from January the 6th to January the 20th 2010. Co-chaired with Davor Meersman the first BrainSSHOPPP (Brainstorming over Social Semantic and Hybrid Ontologies: Papers Projects and Proposals).

Teaching

I am also an assistant (pro bono) for Web Information Systems taught by prof. dr. Meersman at UHasselt in 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, 2011-2012, 2011-2013.

Miscellaneous

Erdös Number

My Erdös number is 5:

1. Christophe Debruyne, Pieter De Leenheer, Robert Meersman: A Method and Tool for Fact Type Reuse in the DOGMA Ontology Framework. OTM Conferences (Monterrey, Mexico, 2009), 1147-1164, LNSC, 5871, Springer, Berlin, 2009.
2. Meersman, R.; Rozenberg, G. Two-level meta-controlled substitution grammars. Mathematical foundations of computer science (Proc. Sixth Sympos., Tatranská Lomnica, 1977), 390-397. LNSC, 53, Springer, Berlin, 1977.
3. Herman, G. T.; Lee, K. P.; van Leeuwen, J.; Rozenberg, G. Characterization of unary developmental languages. Discrete Math. 6 (1973), 235-247.
4. van Leeuwen, J.; Santoro, N.; Urrutia, J.; Zaks, S. Guessing games and distributed computations in synchronous networks. Automata, languages and programming (Karlsruhe, 1987), 347-356, LNSC, 267, Springer, Berlin, 1987.
5. Erdös, P.; Koren, I.; Moran, S.; Silberman, G. M.; Zaks, S. Minimum-diameter cyclic arrangements in mapping data-flow graphs onto VLSI arrays. Math. Systems Theory 21 (1988), no. 2, 85-98.