Sebastian Schaffert

Hello, my name is Sebastian Schaffert (or short “Wastl”) and this is – as you can see – my homepage. I am a researcher, German and Swedish citizen and live in the Bavarian city of Bad Reichenhall (in the Alpes of Berchtesgaden) together with my wife Sandra and my little daugthers Anna and Elisa. I hold a PhD (Dr.rer.nat.) in Computer Science and work as a senior researcher and project manager at Salzburg Research, unit for knowledge-based information systems (KIS), in Salzburg/Austria since August 2005. Since autumn 2006, I am also Scientific Director of Salzburg NewMediaLab, Austria’s industrial competence centre for new media, which is concerned about the convergence of Social Software, Semantic Web, and Multimedia Content. Until July 2005, I worked as a research and teaching assistant at the teaching unit for programming and modelling languages at the University of Munich/Germany, where I finished my PhD in December 2004.

Starting March 2008, I am also coordinator of the EU specific targeted research project KIWI – Knowledge in a Wiki (project no. 211932) funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Union. KIWI is concerned with knowledge management in Semantic Wikis, and I am really looking forward to the work we’ll do in this project. The KIWI consortium consists of 7 partners; besides Salzburg Research, these are the Aalborg University in Denmark, the Technical University of Brno in the Czech Republic, the University of Munich, Germany, Sun Microsystems in Prague, Czech Republic, Semantic Web Company in Vienna, Austria, and Logica/WM-Data in Copenhagen, Denmark.

My current research interests are in the areas of Web 2.0, Semantic Web technologies, particularly knowledge representation and reasoning, and Social Software. These strands converge in the Semantic Wiki system IkeWiki, of which I am the main developer. I have also developed the first version of the Semantic Web query and reasoning language Xcerpt as part of my PhD thesis. Recently, I have been more and more recognised as the “Social Semantic Web” guy, which probably pretty accurately describes my current work.

Perhaps somewhat exceptional for the average Computer Science researcher, I actually know how and like to develop software, and also have some background in system administration. As a consequence, I see myself as an application-oriented researcher that can bridge the gap between science and industry.

Since I am living in the Berchtesgaden area, I am very fond of the mountains and the pure nature and fascinating discoveries they offer. In my spare time, I therefore like to go to the mountains for hiking, mountain biking or ski mountaineering.

These pages contain information about me that might be of interest to you. In particular, you will find here my blog, a more or less complete list of publications, selected slides, and information about Activities as Chair and Programme Committee Memberships.