Matthew Rowe

News

Funds are available for Computer Science Ph.D. studentships at Lancaster University. If you are interested in studying for a Ph.D. in any of the following topics then contact me: social network evolution, recommender systems, digital identity, and attention economics. Deadline: 1st March 2013.
Concept Extraction Challenge at the third Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2013) workshop has been launched. Deadline: 17th March 2013. $1500 prize sponsored by eBay!
The third Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2013) workshop has been accepted at the World Wide Web Conference 2013. Stay tuned for details!

About

My research interests centre around the Social Semantic Web and how information can be processed and interpreted by machines via formal semantics. In particular my work focuses on automated disambiguation methods using machine learning techniques, and assessing digital identity and user behaviour information that is provided by users and subsequently spread over the Web.

Before joining Lancaster I worked for two years (2010-2012) as a Research Assciate at the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) at the Open University, Milton Keynes, on the EU-Funded Integrated Project ROBUST. On the project I worked on semantic models of user behaviour, role mining and community health and behaviour change prediction methods. Before joining KMi I studied for a Ph.D. (2006-2010) under the supervision of Prof. Fabio Ciravegna at the University of Sheffield. My Ph.D. thesis explored automated identity disambiguation methods and how such methods could be supported using Social Data leveraged from Social Web platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Prior to my Ph.D. studies I studied for a Masters in Software Engineering at the University of Sheffield (2002-2006). I am currently studying part time for a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics with the Open University.

Recent Publications

Measuring the Topical Specificity of Online Communities. M Rowe, C Wagner, M Strohmaier and H Alani H. To appear in the proceedings of the Extended Semantic Web Conference. Montpellier, France. (2013)
Harnessing Linked Knowledge Source for Topic Classification in Social Media. A Varga, E A Cano, M Rowe and F Ciravegna. To appear in the proceedings of the ACM Hypertext and Social Media Conference. Paris, France. (2013)
Production and Consumption of University Linked Data. F Zablith, M Fernandez and M Rowe. To appear in the proceedings of Interactive Learning Environments Journal. (2012)
Who will follow whom? Exploiting Semantics for Link Prediction in Attention-Information Networks. M Rowe, M Stankovic and H alani. To appear in the proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference 2012. Boston, US. (2012)
What makes Communities Tick? Community Health Analysis using Role Compositions. M Rowe and H Alani. To appear in the proceedings of the Fourth IEEE International Conference on Social Computing. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (2012)

For a full list of my publications click here.

Teaching

SCC130 Information Systems (2012-2013) - Teaching social and professional issues of information systems (censorship, privacy, surveillance, copyright, patent law, malware, viruses)

Supervision

I currently co-supervise the following Ph.D. student:

Maria Terzi - researching review-based recommendation systems

I am currently looking for other Ph.D. students to supervise, so if you have a good idea for a Ph.D. then please contact me. Funding can be sought through a range of channels, but one of the best that we offer at Lancaster is the Highwire Doctoral Training centre.

Program Committee Memberships

Other Activities

Co-organiser of Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2013) workshop at the World Wide Web Conference 2013
Editorial Board member for the International Journal on Web Engineering and Technologies
Publicity and Communications Chair for the International Conference on Knowledge Capture 2013
Guest Editor for a Special Issue on Visualisation of and Interaction with Semantic Web Data in the International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems
Co-organiser of Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2012) workshop at the World Wide Web Conference 2012
Tutor at the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2012 Summer School in Kalamaki, Crete
Invited Keynote Speaker at the Detecting and Exploiting Cultural Diversity on the Social Web Workshop at the 20th Annual ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
Guest Editor for a Special Issue on 'the Semantics of Microposts' in the Semantic Web Journal
PhD Symposium mentor at the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2011
Co-organiser of Making Sense of Microposts (#MSM2011) workshop at the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2011
Tutor at the IEEE Summer school on Semantic Computing, University of Berkeley, CA, USA, August 2011
Coordinator of Semantic Web Technologies Activity at the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2011
Co-organiser of Essential HCI for the Semantic Web Tutorial at the Extended Semantic Web Conference 2010
Invited Expert for the W3C Social Web Incubator Group

Where I can be found:

Dr Matthew Rowe

Lecturer in Social Computing