About
My name is Alexandre Passant and I am a (Semantic) Web (2.0) geek and postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland, Galway since September 2008. I got a Ph.D. from Université Paris-IV Sorbonne on the topic of "Semantic Web Technologies for Enterprise 2.0" that I defended in June 2009. During my Ph.D. I worked 3.5 years at Electricité de France R&D where I applied my research work on the previous topics. Previously I worked as a software developer in different compagnies, studying at the same time. Then, I also hold two (eq.) Ms.C. from Université Paris-IX Dauphine on "Intelligent Systems" (DEA, 2005) and "Web Technologies for Organisation" (DESS, 2003).
My main research interests - as you may guess - are Social Software and the Semantic Web, especially how to combine both. More specifically, I'm interested in Semantic Tagging, Semantic Wikis, Linked Data, ontologies and socially-aware information systems, via projects such as SIOC, MOAT and CommonTags. More generally, I got an interest in everything that concerns the future of the Web as a means to make people and machines interacting more efficiently. Focusing on a pragmatic approach, I also like developing software and Web services related to these themes, such as foafmap or SPARCool, in addition of the usual academic publications as well as dissemination and research activities. Finally, I'm also interested in standardisation and am involved in W3C activities by being a member of the SPARQL Working Group and of the Social Web Incubator Group.
Here's also a short academic bio sketch about me (where I speak of myself at the third person) that can be reused if needed.
Dr. Alexandre Passant is a postdoctoral researcher at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway. His research activities focus around the Semantic Web and Social Software: in particular, how these fields can interact with and benefit from each other in order to provide a socially-enabled machine-readable Web, leading to new services and paradigms for end-users. Prior to joining DERI, he was a PhD student at Université Paris-Sorbonne and carried out applied research work on "Semantic Web technologies for Enterprise 2.0" at Electricité De France. He is the co-author of SIOC, a model to represent the activities of online communities on the Semantic Web, the author of MOAT, a framework to let people tag their content using Semantic Web technologies, and is also involved in various related applications as well as standardization activities.
Finally, from a personal point of view, I'm 29, living in the beautiful city of Galway with my wife, and in addition of Computer Science and the Web, I enjoy traveling, photography, football, music and tattoing. I can also be found on various on-line services, generally under the nickname "terraces". However, the best way to contact me if by email - that you shoud easily find on my DERI's homepage.
NB: This page contains RDFa and can be considered as my main FOAF profile, my reference URI being <http://apassant.net/alex>
