News Story

Shaping the future of Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Graphs: KMi at ISWC 2025

Wednesday 12 Nov 2025

Last week, many researchers from around the globe gathered in Nara (Japan) for the 24th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC).

Dr. Angelo Salatino, Prof. John Domingue, Dr. Alba Morales Tirado, Prof. Harith Alani, and Dr. Gregoire Burel represented KMi at the prestigious event. Crucially, Dr. Francesco Osborne and Prof. Miriam Fernandez also contributed to the organisation.

In particular, Angelo acted as Resource Track chair, one of the main tracks at the conference, and organised the “Scientific Knowledge: Representation, Discovery, and Assessment” workshop. The latter was a satellite event, now at its 5th edition, in which participants discussed how to produce and consume Scientific Knowledge Graphs. At this workshop, Greg presented his work co-authored with Harith on “ClimaFactsKG: Towards an Interlinked Knowledge Graph of Scientific Evidence to Fight Climate Misinformation.” Beyond organising, both Angelo and Harith contributed to developing future talent by mentoring students at the doctoral consortium and a dedicated mentoring lunch. Finally, Angelo chaired Denny Vrandečić’s keynote.

John chaired a Dagstuhl-style workshop on “Trust, Autonomy and Accountability in Personal Knowledge Graph-Based Agentic AI”. The event kicked off with a panel, chaired by John, featuring senior AI research scientists from around the world, including IBM. The panel discussion centered on critical research issues: ensuring AI users can trust their personal agents while retaining autonomy, and establishing accountability for these systems. These topics are vital to the Open University as we begin deploying AI Digital Assistants for teaching. Thus, the input from the attendees, who brainstormed in breakout groups, will feed into the work of AIDA and AIMWA. John also presented his recent journal paper “Trust, Accountability, and Autonomy in Knowledge Graph-Based AI for Self-Determination” at a special session “Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge”.

(Image caption: KMiers, ex-KMiers and close friends pictured at the ISWC gala dinner. From left to right Vanessa Lopez (ex-KMier 2003 to 2011, now Research Scientist and Manager – AI for Health and Social Care at IBM Research, Ireland), Harith Alani, Raphaël Troncy (Associate Professor, Eurocom), Maria Maleshkova (ex-KMier 2009 to 2012, now Professor at Helmut-Schmidt University), Juan Sequeda (Principal Researcher at ServiceNow), Denny Vrandečić (Head of Special Projects at the Wikimedia Foundation and visiting Professor at King’s College London), Alba Morales Tirado, Angelo Salatino, Gregoire Burel, Marta Sabou (ex-KMier 2005 to 2010, now Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business) and John Domingue.)

Alba presented her Resource paper, “Co-creating an Ontology of Online Gender-Based Harms: An Interdisciplinary Perspective,” which was co-authored with Miriam and Angel. The paper detailed a recent effort by the Centre for Protecting Women Online (CPWO) to co-create a comprehensive, gender-aware ontology of online harms. This project aims to establish a shared, interdisciplinary knowledge structure that will bridge fragmented responses and inform cohesive interventions across sectors like law, human behaviour, technology, and policing. Additionally, Alba volunteered to chair the “Knowledge Graphs and LLMs” session.

Francesco organised the 2nd edition of “Retrieval-Augmented Generation Enabled by Knowledge Graphs” workshop, and co-organised with Angelo the Sci-K workshop.

Finally, Harith, Miriam, and John are part of the Semantic Web Science Association, which provides the scientific and organisational oversight for the conference. Harith is currently vice president for sustainability.

This past year has seen SWSA expand its purview by incorporating the European Semantic Web Conference, on whose Steering Committee John serves as Chair, under its governance. This move strengthens the link between the European and global symbolic AI communities.

ISWC is a premier venue showcasing the recent work on the semantic web, knowledge engineering, linked data, artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models. The program featured 9 workshops and 11 tutorials, a doctoral consortium, 4 Dagstuhl-style workshops, a panel on “Reimagining Knowledge: The Future and Relevance of Symbolic Representation in the Age of LLMs”, various article presentations spread over 15 sessions, and 3 keynote speeches. These keynotes collectively underscored the transformative power of AI and the Semantic Web across society and business, while stressing the absolute necessity of responsible development. Harayama’s keynote explored AI’s widespread impact, calling for global efforts to ensure trustworthy and responsible AI. This focus was reinforced by Sekine’s keynote, which highlighted a team’s work in developing LLMs to ensure transparency, safety, and accountability in generative AI, drawing on the underlying structured knowledge principles of the Semantic Web and noting Japan’s contribution to safe development. Ultimately, as Vrandečić’s keynote stressed, achieving this real and sustainable impact requires a foundation of dedicated long-term collaboration, iteration, and community involvement.

Overall, the conference was intense, full of activities, and insightful discussions. We look forward to attending next year’s edition, which will take place in Bari (side note: Angelo’s home city) from 25 to 29 October 2026.