INTRODUCTION
Symbolic AI offers representation, reasoning and engineering methods to complement data-driven AI and better perform tasks. In cooperation with the Hybrid Intelligence Centre (HI), the School for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS) will offer a course on Knowledge Graphs providing an overview of the main research areas and most recent applied technologies. This 2-ECTS-course will take place online over four afternoons, and will include: introductory lectures, invited research talks from the experts, and practical sessions where students work with KG libraries and tool under guidance of the course organisers.
This four-day course offers a comprehensive introduction to knowledge graphs, starting with core representation techniques like RDF, RDFS, and OWL, and progressing to querying with SPARQL and hands-on practice using RDFLib. Participants will explore how to manage and validate knowledge graphs through triplestores, SHACL, and compliance frameworks, supported by practical demos and exercises. The program also covers ontology engineering and knowledge extraction, guiding learners in building and extending their own graph models through structured assignments. Finally, the course examines advanced topics such as the integration of machine learning and neurosymbolic AI, enriched by expert guest lectures from academia and industry.
The course will be highly interactive and require active student participation. The course will be given in English and is part of the educational program for SIKS PhD candidates. It is a course with a broad focus, aimed at all SIKS PhD candidates regardless of the research area they are currently working on.
DATES
Monday, 15 June 2026, 13.00-17.00 CET
Tuesday, 16 June 2026, 13.00-17.00 CET
Monday, 22 June 2026, 13.00-17.00 CET
Tuesday, 23 June 2026, 13.00-17.00 CET
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTORS
Prof. dr. Rineke Verbrugge (RUG)
Dr. Ilaria Tiddi (VU Amsterdam)
Dr. Victor de Boer (VU Amsterdam)
PROGRAMME
15 June 2026: KG Representation (RDF(S), OWL, RDFLib)
13.00-14.00 Lecture : Introduction to KG – (Ilaria & Victor)
14.00-15.00 Lecture : Basics of representing & querying (RDF, RDFs,OWL, basics pattern querying) – (Victor & Ilaria)
15.00-16.00 Hands-on : RDFLib (Ilaria)
16.00-17.00 Invited Talk : KG in the Real World (Rinke Hoekstra, Elsevier)
16 June 2026: Querying, Validation and KG Management (Triplestores, SPARQL, SHACL, Compliance)
13.00-14.00 Lecture : Introduction to Triples stores and SPARQL (Victor)
14.00-15.00 Hands-on : Demo GraphDB + Exercises SPARQL (Victor)
15.00-15.30 Lecture : Introduction to SHACL (I)
15.30-16.00 Hands-on : Exercise SHACL (I)
16.00-17.00 Invited Talk : Compliant Knowledge Graphs (Anna Fensel, Wageningen University)
22 June 2026: KG Creation (Ontologies, Knowledge/Ontology Engineering, Knowledge Extraction methods)
13.00-14.00 Lecture : Reasoning with OWL (Modelling domain knowledge) (Victor & Ilaria)
14.00-14.30 Hands-on : Exercise OWL (Ilaria)
14.30-15.30 Invited Talk: OWL and Foundational ontologies (Giancarlo Guizzardi, UTwente)
15.30-16.30 Lecture: Introduction to to Knowledge Engineering + methodologies (Stefano de Giorgis, VU)
16.30-17.00 Hands-on: Knowledge Engineering with your homework graph (extend the ontology based on CQs) (Ilaria & Victor)
23 June 2026: Learning and Reasoning on KGs
13.00-14.00 Lecture : Neuro-symbolic AI (Daniel Daza, VUA)
14.00-15.00 Hands-on : Exercise Learning over KGs (Link prediction) (V/IT)
15.00-16.00 Invited Talk: Paul Groth (UvA) Data Taste: Foregrounding Choices in Knowledge Graph Construction
16.00-17.00 Hands-on : Exercise LLM4KGC (Jan Christoph Kalo, UvA)
Registration
Registration is now closed.
