Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Computing Speaker Series: Juan Sequeda

Juan Sequeda is the Principal Scientist and Head of the AI Lab at data.world. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin. Juan’s research and industry work has been on the intersection of data and AI, with the goal to reliably create knowledge from inscrutable data, specifically designing and building Knowledge Graph for enterprise data and metadata management. Juan is the co-author of the book “Designing and Building Enterprise Knowledge Graph” and the co-host of Catalog and Cocktails, an honest, no-bs, non-salesy data podcast.

Abstract:
The past decade has seen the rise of data science, organizations striving to democratize data, take data driven decisions following the notion that data is the new oil. The computing field has revolutionized data management by developing efficient and scalable computer systems. However, many of the data management problems that are researched today are the same types of problems from 30 years ago. Per Einstein, we are driving ourselves insane: keep doing the same thing over and over and again and expecting different results.  

In this talk, I will argue that we have focused so much on data and have forgotten an essential ingredient: knowledge! We need to go through a socio-technical paradigm shift and into a Knowledge First world, where people, context and relationships come first in order to build a resilient world prepared for AI. 

Relevant Publications:
Etienne Toussaint, Paolo Guagliardo, Leonid Libkin, Juan Sequeda. Troubles with Nulls, Views from the Users. PVLDB 2022. https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol15/p2613-guagliardo.pdf

Claudio Gutierrez, Juan F. Sequeda. Knowledge graphs. Commun. ACM 2021
https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/3/250711-knowledge-graphs/fulltext

Juan F. Sequeda, Willard J. Briggs, Daniel P. Miranker, Wayne P. Heideman. A Pay-as-you-go Methodology to Design and Build Enterprise Knowledge Graphs from Relational Databases. ISWC 2019
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-30796-7_32

We continue the CIRSS speaker series in Fall 2023 with a focus on “Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Computing”. We will meet on Fridays, 9-10am Central Time, on Zoom. To join a session, go to the current week’s session and click the “access” link, which will lead you to a calendar entry. There, click the “PARTICIPATE online” button to join a session. Recordings of past talks can be found next to "access" if available. The event is open to the public, and everyone is welcome to attend! This series is hosted by the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS). If you have any questions, please contact Jana Diesner and Halil Kilicoglu.

If you are interested in this speaker series, please subscribe to our speaker series calendar: Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar.