PhD research

Querying knowledge through time

Research on answering complex questions over temporal knowledge while making closed-world assumptions explicit.

My doctoral research explored query answering in temporal description logics: how systems can reason over knowledge that changes through time, including questions involving incomplete information and negation.

The underlying problem

Real knowledge bases are incomplete, time-dependent, and often need to answer questions whose absence conditions matter. The research developed formal semantics and methods for making those questions precise.

Why it still matters

The work shaped how I approach production knowledge systems today: make assumptions visible, separate what is known from what is merely absent, and treat time as part of the model rather than an annotation added later.