Gerhard Weikum is a Research Director at the Max-Planck Institute for Informatics (MPII) in Saarbruecken, Germany, where he is leading the department on databases and information systems. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Computer Science of Saarland University  in Saarbruecken, Germany, and he is a principal investigator of the Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction. Earlier he held positions at Saarland University in Saarbruecken, Germany, at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, at MCC in Austin, Texas, and he was a visiting senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington. He received his diploma and doctoral degrees from the University of Darmstadt, Germany.

Gerhard Weikum's research spans transactional and distributed systems, self-tuning database systems, data and text integration, and the automatic construction of knowledge bases. He co-authored a comprehensive textbook on transactional systems, received the VLDB 10-Year Award for his work on automatic DB tuning, and is one of the creators of the YAGO knowledge base. Weikum is an ACM Fellow and a member of several academies. He has served on various editorial boards and as PC chair of conferences like SIGMOD, ICDE and CIDR. He received a Google Focused Research Award in 2010, the ACM SIGMOD Contributions Award in 2011, an ERC Synergy Grant in 2013, and the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 2016.

• Seoul Test of Time Award, presented at the Web Conference (WWW) 2018 ((jointly with Fabian Suchanek and Gjergji Kasneci)
• AIJ (Artificial Intelligence Journal) Influential Paper Award, presented at IJCAI 2017 (jointly with Johannes Hoffart, Fabian Suchanek and Klaus Berberich)
• ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award
• Robert Piloty Prize
• ERC Synergy Grant (jointly with Michael Backes, Peter Druschel and Rupak Majumdar)
• Member of the (German) Academy of Sciences and Literature
• Member of the Academia Europaea
• ACM SIGMOD Contributions Award
• Google Focused Research Award
• Fellow of the German Computer Society (GI)
• Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech)
• ACM Fellow 2005
• CIDR 2005 Timeless Idea Award
• VLDB 10-Year Award 2002
• Best Paper Awards at WWW 2018, CIKM 2010, CIKM 2006, SIGMOD 1998 (with co-authors)
• Best Demo Award at WWW 2011 (with co-authors)

• Distributed information systems
• Database performance optimization (automatic tuning) and self-organization (autonomic computing)
• DB & IR integration (database systems & information retrieval)
• information extraction and knowledge harvesting

• What Computers Should Know,
  Keynote at China Conference on Knowledge Graph and Semantic Computing,
  Beijing, September 22, 2016
  Slides
• Adventure in Data,
  Awards Session of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data,
  San Francisco, June 30, 2016
  Slides
• What Computers Know, Should Know, and Shouldn't Know,
  Keynote at 19th International Workshop on the Web and Databases (WebDB),
  San Francisco, June 26, 2016
  Slides
• Knowledge Graphs: From a Fistful of Triples to Deep Data and Deep Text,
  Invited Talk at Australasian Database Conference,
  Melbourne, June 5, 2015
  Slides
• Big Text: from Names and Phrases to Entities and Relations,
  Keynote at ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM),
  Shanghai, November 5, 2014
  Slides
• Big Text: from Language to Knowledge,
  Keynote at Brazilian Symposium on Databases (SBBD),
  Curitiba, October 7, 2014
  Slides
• Big Text: from Language to Knowledge,
  Keynote at Annual Conference of the German Society for Computer Science (GI-Jahrestagung),
  Stuttgart, September 24, 2014
  Slides
• Knowledge Harvesting in the Age of Big Data Analytics (jointly with Fabian Suchanek),
  Tutorial at International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB),
  Hangzhou, September 3, 2014
  Tutorial page
• Knowledge Harvesting in the Big-Data Era (jointly with Fabian Suchanek),
  Tutorial at ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data,
  New York, June 26, 2013
  Tutorial page
• Knowledge Harvesting from Text and Web Sources (jointly with Fabian Suchanek),
  Tutorial at IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE),
  Brisbane, April 9, 2013
  Tutorial page
• Semantic Search: from Names and Phrases to Entities and Relations,
  Keynote at VLDS Workshop 2012,
  Istanbul, August 31, 2012
  Slides
• Knowledge Harvesting from the Web (Récolte des Connaissances de la Toile),
  Lecture at Collège de France,
  Paris, May 16, 2012
  Slides
  Video
• For a Few Triples More,
  Keynote at ISWC 2011,
  Bonn, October 27, 2011
  Slides
• Database Researchers: Plumbers or Thinkers?,
  Keynote at EDBT 2011,
  Uppsala, March 24, 2011
  Slides
• From Information to Knowledge: Harvesting Entities, Relationships, and Temporal Facts from Web Sources,
  Keynote at KONVENS 2010,
  Saarbruecken, September 8, 2010
  Slides
• From Information to Knowledge: Harvesting Entities and Relationships from Web Sources,
  Invited Tutorial at PODS 2010,
  Indianapolis, June 7, 2010
  Slides   Paper
• Heart of Gold: Searching and Ranking Web Nuggets,
  Keynote at KEYS 2010,
  Indianapolis, June 6, 2010
  Slides
• Knowledge on the Web: Towards Robust and Scalable Harvesting of Entity-Relationship Facts,
  Keynote at DASFAA 2010,
  Tsukuba, April 1, 2010
  Slides
• Harvesting, Searching, and Ranking Knowledge from the Web,
  Keynote at WSDM 2009,
  Barcelona, February 11, 2009
  Slides   Video
• Harvesting and Organizing Knowledge from the Web,
  Talk at Microsoft Research,
  Redmond, June 2, 2008
  Slides
• Harvesting and Organizing Knowledge from the Web,
  Keynote at ADBIS'07,
  Varna, October 1, 2007
  Slides
• DB & IR: Both Sides Now,
  Keynote at SIGMOD'07,
  Beijing, June 14, 2007
  Slides
• Peer-to-Peer Web Search with Minerva,
  Talk at Google,
  Mountain View, August 3, 2006
  Slides
• Efficient Top-k Queries for XML Information Retrieval,
  Yahoo! Workshop on the Future of Web Search
  Barcelona, May 19, 2006
  Slides
• Distributed Statistics for Peer-to-Peer Web Search,
  Workshop on Algorithmic and Numerical Aspects in Web Search
  Pisa, February 7, 2006
  Slides
• Foundations of Automated Database Tuning,
  Tutorial (with Surajit Chaudhuri), ACM SIGMOD Conference, Baltimore, June 15, 2005
  
• DELIS Highlights: Efficient and Intelligent
  Top-k Search in Peer-to-Peer Systems,
  Highlights of EU FET Projects on Complex Systems, Budapest, March 9, 2005
  Slides
• Informations- und Wissensmanagement im Jahr 2025,
  Conference on Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web (BTW)
  Karlsruhe, Germany, March 2, 2005
  
• Towards a Statistically Semantic Web,
  International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER Conference)
  Shanghai, November 11, 2004
  Slides
• The BINGO! System for Information Portal Generation and Expert Web Search,
  1st Semi-annual International Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR),
  Asilomar, California, January 6, 2003
  Slides (Powerpoint)
• Self-tuning Database Technology and Information Services: from Wishful Thinking to Viable Engineering,
  10-Year Award Talk, 8th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB),
  Hong Kong, China, August 22, 2002
  Slides (Powerpoint)
• Dependable Workflow Technology,
  EDBT Summer School, Cargese, France, August 27, 2002
  Slides Part 1 (Powerpoint), Slides Part 2 (Powerpoint)
• The Index-based XXL Search Engine for Querying XML Data with Relevance Ranking,
  8th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT), Prague, March 26, 2002
  Slides (Powerpoint)
• Database Recovery - Heisenbugs, Houdini's Tricks, and the Paranoia of Science,
  Ringvorlesung of the Graduate Studies Program on "Quality Guarantees for Computer Science",
  Saarbruecken, Germany, February 18, 2002
  Slides (Powerpoint)
• Quality of Service Guarantees for Multimedia Digital Libraries and Beyond,
  Invited Keynote, 10th International Conference on Management of Data (COMAD),
  Pune, India, December 15, 2000
  Slides (Powerpoint)
• The Web in 2010: Challenges and Opportunities for Database Research,
  Informatics - 10 Years Back, 10 Years Ahead, Dagstuhl 10th Anniversary Conference,
  Saarbruecken, Germany, August 28, 2000
  Slides (Powerpoint)
  
• Rethinking Database System Architecture: Towards a Self-Tuning RISC-Style Database System,
  26th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases (VLDB),
  Cairo, Egypt, September 11, 2000
  Slides (Powerpoint)
  

See the homepage of my research group, my complete list of publications, my DBLP entry, or my Google Scholar entry.

• Co-Organizer of the Dagstuhl Seminar "Data, Responsibly" (with Serge Abiteboul, Gerome Miklau, Julia Stoyanovich)
  more information here
• Member of the Editorial Board of ACM Books
  more information here
• Co-Chair of 4th International Workshop on "Data Engineering meets the Semantic Web" (DESWEB), in conjunction with ICDE 2013, Brisbane, April 2013
  more information here
• Lecturer at VLDB Database School, Kunming, July 2012
  more information here
• Editorial Board of ACM Transactions on the Web
  more information here
• Program Chair of the VLDB 2011 Challenges and Visions Track, Seattle, September 2011
  more information here
• Lecturer at EDBT/RuSSIR Summer School on the Web of Data, Saint Petersburg, August 2011
  more information here
• Member of the German Council for Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat)
  more information here
• Program Committee Co-Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), Long Beach, March 2010
  more information here
• Principal Investigator in the DFG Excellence Cluster "Multimodal Computing and Interaction"
  more information here
• Member of the Editorial Board of Communications of the ACM (CACM)
  more information here
• Member of the Coordination Committee of the DFG Priority Program on Scalable Visual Analytics
  more information here
• Co-Organizer of the Dagstuhl Seminar "Ranked XML Querying" (with Sihem Amer-Yahia and Divesh Srivastava)
  more information here
• Program Committee Chair of the 3rd Biennial International Conference on Innovative Data Systems (CIDR), Asilomar, January 2007
  more information here
• Co-Organizer of the Dagstuhl Seminar "Atomicity: a Unifying Concept in Computer Science" (with David Lomet, Cliff Jones, and Alexander Romanovsky)
  more information here
• Member of the Board of Trustees and President of the VLDB Endowment
  more information here
• Member of the ACM SIGMOD Advisory Board
  more information here
• Member of the Scientific Directorate of Schloss Dagstuhl International Conference and Research Center for Computer Science
  more information here
• Spokesperson of the International Max-Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Computer Science
  more information here
• Member of the Editorial Board of Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS)
  more information here
• Program Committee Chair of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, Paris, France, June 2004
  
• Program Committee Chair of the 10the German Conference on Database Systems for Business, Technology, and Web (BTW), Leipzig, Germany, March 2003
• Co-author of the book "Transactional Information Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and the Practice of Concurrency Control and Recovery" (with Gottfried Vossen), Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2001
  (Amazon page)