Bio: Elena Simperl is a Professor of Computer at King’s College London and the Director of Research for the Open Data Institute (ODI). She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of Arts, and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow. Elena’s work is at the intersection between AI and social computing. She features in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade and in the Women in AI 2000 ranking. She is the president of the Semantic Web Sciences Association.

Abstract: Knowledge engineering focuses on the creation and stewardship of knowledge‑based systems. As a field, it occupies a unique niche between software engineering, which involves crafting software that represents knowledge computationally, and AI, where software can reason upon knowledge representations to emulate human thought. Like many areas of knowledge work, the field is being reshaped by generative AI. This brings new opportunities to address long‑standing challenges of scale and inclusivity, while also raising concerns about accuracy, bias, and the responsible use of automation. In this talk, I will explore recent work in AI and human computer interaction that examines how to design better knowledge engineering assistants.