Astronomers of the information universe
Do you like astronomy, the universe? Great, 'cause we are the astronomers of the information universe. The STKO Lab is an information observatory that investigates the role of Space and Time for Knowledge Organization. Thus, if you like, you can also spell out the STKO acronym as Spatio- Temporal Knowledge Observatory. Our work spans across different scientific disciplines such as geoinformatics & GIScience, cognitive science, computer science, and the broader earth sciences. While our research interests vary, we typically work on topics related to geospatial semantics, ontologies, and the Semantic Web, social networks and volunteered geographic information, information retrieval and data mining, Linked Data, Big Data, and data-intensive science, similarity and analogy-based reasoning, as well as mobile computing and location-based services.
A key driver for our work is the question of how to foster the publishing, retrieval, reuse, and integration of data without restricting semantic heterogeneity which we consider a motor of (interdisciplinary) science. We are also very interested in exploratory user interfaces and novel interaction paradigms to browse and navigate unfamiliar data. Methodologically, our niche is the combination of theory-driven (e.g., semantics) and data-driven (e.g., data mining) approaches.