RESEARCH AREA AND FOCUS
I am a database researcher with a keen interest in data integration problems. Data integration is the task of bringing together information from different sources and harmonizing its semantics in a manner that people and automated processes can make good use of it.
Specifically, in my research I attempt to challenge existing state of the art data integration and machine-learning-based approaches with a unique problem from the real world. By using a real world problem to challenge current paradigms I find the places where these fail and require new ideas and solutions. I have done this in the context of medical diagnosis, cultural heritage data, and oceanic data.
PROJECTS
I am currently involved with a few projects that will be coming with me to AAU. The Ocean Data Integration initiative (https://odini.net/) is a project trying to find ways to integrate the huge amounts of oceanographic data being generated daily in a meaningful way for researchers. The Middle East Heritage Data Integration Endeavour (https://mehdie.org/) is interested in developing technologies for multi-lingual data integration over entites derived from historical texts.
At AAU I am currently collaborating with Prof. Katja Hose and researchers from the Aalborg University Hospital on a project to create patient profiles from their medication history and another project with Dr. Matteo Lissandrini looking at the ability to tune RDF databases according to the workload they face.
PRIVATE/FUN FACTS
I come from Israel from a northern city named Haifa that is very similar to Aalborg. It lies on the sea as well and is the fourth largest city in Israel, but you are always meeting people you know on the street. It was historically a port and heavy industry city that is now becoming an IT industry and academic hub.
However, in contrast to Aalborg, Haifa is nestled in a forest on the slopes of a mountain (Mt. Carmel). During the pandemic lockdowns, the forest animals have taken a liking to roaming the streets and now we have wild boar and coyotes walking around in the neighborhood and taking naps on people’s lawns (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/world/middleeast/haifa-israel-wild-boars.html).