Elena Simperl

Elena Simperl FRSA FBCS
Born	May 1978 (age 47)
Alma mater	Technical University of Munich Free University Berlin
Scientific career
Fields	Knowledge engineering and human-machine collectives
Institutions	King's College London
Website	elenasimperl.eu

Elena Simperl FRSA FBCS (born May 1978)^{[ citation needed ]} is professor of computer science in the Department of Informatics at King's College London ^{[1] [2] [3]} and the Director of Research of the Open Data Institute. ^[4] She is also Co-Director of the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence. ^[5] She is best known for her work in human-machine collectives, with applications to crowdsourcing, citizen science, knowledge communities, and human data interaction, and for her leadership in data-driven innovation and data policy. ^{[6] [7] [8]}

Education

Simperl trained as a computer scientist at the Technical University of Munich and completed a PhD in knowledge engineering (Dr rer nat) at the Free University Berlin in 2007.^{[ citation needed ]}

Career and research

She was the director of Data Pitch, ^[9] a data innovation programme helping start-ups solve societal challenges through shared data ^[10] and also the director of Open Data Incubator for Europe (ODINE). ^[11] which supported start-ups in generating value from open data. ^[12]

Simperl serves as scientific advisor of data.europa.eu, Europe's flagship initiative in opening up public sector datasets for wider use. ^[13] She co-chairs the MLCommons task force on standardising metadata for machine learning datasets. ^[14]

Honors and awards

According to AMiner, she is in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade, as well as in the Women in AI 2000 ranking. ^[15]

Simperl is a fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), President of the Semantic Web Science Association ^[16] and a former Turing Fellow. ^[17]

She is also a recipient of the Siemens' Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship at the Technical University of Munich, ^[18] working on safe and trusted AI with knowledge graphs. In 2024, she became an ACM Distinguished Member. ^[19]

References

1. Elena Simperl publications indexed by Google Scholar
2. "Professor Elena Simperl". Kcl.ac.uk. 3 February 2025.
3. "Elena Simperl – Professor of computer science, King's College London". Elenasimperl.edu. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
4. "Professor Elena Simperl". theodi.org.
5. London, King's College (2025-05-20). "King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence appoints new co-Directors". King's College London. Retrieved 2025-07-17.
6. "What does 2017 hold for open data initiatives?". The Guardian . January 6, 2017.
7. "Presentations from the fifth meeting of the Working Group on Digital Innovation Hubs: Big Data and Artificial Intelligence | Shaping Europe's digital future". Archived from the original on 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2022-07-05.
8. Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon; Alison Knight; Eleonora Rosati; Elena Simperl; Johanna Walker (April 2017). "BUILDING THE EUROPEAN DATA ECONOMY POSITION PAPER ON THE PROPOSAL FOR A NEW RIGHT IN NON-PERSONAL DATA" (PDF). Ec.europa.eu. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
9. "Datapitch | Helping startups and SMEs innovate with data". datapitch.eu.
10. "Europe funds another data accelerator to get startups tackling societal problems". Social.techcrunch.com. 9 April 2017. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
11. "ODINE". Opendataincubator.eu.
12. "Creating a European ecosystem for data innovation: reflections on ODINE : ODINE". Opendataincubator.eu.
13. "data.europa.eu". data.europa.eu.
14. "Croissant github". Croissant github.
15. "Professor of Computer Science Elena Simperl named in top 100 most influential Artificial Intelligence researchers". Kcl.ac.uk.
16. "Introduction | swsa". swsa.semanticweb.org.
17. "Elena Simperl". The Alan Turing Institute.
18. "Elena Simperl". ias.tum.de.
19. "Renowned Computing Society Announces New Class of Distinguished Members: 56 Professionals Celebrated for Innovation and Service". Association for Computing Machinery . February 12, 2025. Retrieved January 9, 2026.