ICDE 2024 Recap: Shaping the Future of Data and Information Engineering
This month has been particularly eventful for the STELAR project, with one of our highlights being the participation in EEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) 2024. For 5 days in May, this years’ ICDE proved, through groundbreaking workshops like MulTiSA and DECOR, as well as pioneering research contributions, that the conference continues to shape the future of data and information engineering.
About ICDE 2024
This year, the IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), renowned as a premier event in the field of data and information engineering, celebrates its 40th edition. Held in Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, from May 13th to 17th, ICDE continues its tradition of gathering leading researchers and practitioners from academia, industry and government worldwide.
It tackles critical research issues related to the design, construction, management, and evaluation of sophisticated data-intensive systems and applications. This conference serves as a platform for researchers, practitioners and developers to explore the latest advancements and exchange insights in the domain.
The audience includes leading data scientists and professors, entrepreneurs, developers, talented young researchers/students, and other thought leaders from major vendors and academia.
STELAR's Involvement: Empowering Agriculture with Data Insights
As a Horizon Europe project, STELAR is committed to advancing simple and intelligent data discovery, promoting AI-ready data, and fostering semantic interoperability in applications focused on smart agriculture and food safety.
Recognizing the significance of this mission, STELAR actively engaged with the ICDE to leverage its insights, expertise, and networking opportunities. This collaboration aimed to further STELAR’s objectives and enhance its contributions to the field.
MulTiSA 2024 Workshop Highlights
As part of ICDE, the MulTiSA 2024 workshop brought together leading minds in the field. Our project coordinator, Dimitris Skoutas from the Athena Research Center (ARC), and Odysseas Papapetrou from Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) spearheaded the event’s organisation. Adding to the team, Jens d’Hondt from TUE took on the role of Web and Publicity Chair, ensuring the workshop reached a wide audience.
This workshop centred on the challenges and advancements in managing and analysing multivariate time series data, which is generated from sources like modern sensors, financial markets, and specialised scientific apparatus. Although the need for effective multivariate time series analysis is clear, existing algorithms are limited and often tailored to specific needs. Consequently, this event aimed to gather researchers and practitioners to discuss requirements, open problems, and current approaches, while fostering collaborations.
DECOR 2024 Workshop Highlights
In addition to MulTiSA, another integral component of ICDE 2024 is the 7th International Workshop on Data Engineering meets Intelligent Food and Cooking Recipes (DECOR). This workshop brought together researchers to accelerate innovation at the intersection of Data Engineering and Intelligent Food and Cooking Recipes. Focusing on data science advancements, the workshop aims to enhance the organisation, integration, access, and sharing of digital objects to revolutionise food experiences and promote health-conscious eating habits.
Research Contributions: Papers and Presentations
Dimitris Skoutas and Vasiliki Pitsilou from the Athena Research Center, George Papadakis from the University of Athens, and TUE’s Jens d’Hondt presented groundbreaking research papers:
- A Critical Re-evaluation of Benchmark Datasets for (Deep) Learning-Based Matching Algorithms by George Papadakis, Nishadi Kirielle, Peter Christen, Themis Palpanas
- MultiCast: Zero-Shot Multidimensional Time Series Forecasting Using LLMs by Georgios Chatzigeorgakidis, Konstantinos Lentzos, Dimitrios Skoutas
- Beyond the Dimensions: A Structured Evaluation of Multivariate Time Series Distance Measures by Jens d’Hondt, Odysseas Papapetrou, John Paparrizos
- Using LLMs to Extract Food Entities from Cooking Recipes by Vasiliki Pitsilou, George Papadakis and Dimitrios Skoutas
Additionally, ARC’s Petros Skoufis showcased a demo titled “KGSEC: A Modular Framework for Knowledge Graph Schema Extraction and Comparison,” developed in collaboration with Dimitrios Skoutas. Following this, Odysseas Papapetrou presented a lightning talk on “Multivariate Similarity Search: A Call for a New Breed of Similarity Search Algorithms.” Moreover, Ekaterini Ioannou from Tilburg University delivered a lightning talk titled “Unveiling Dis-Integration,” which acknowledged the STELAR project and its contributions to the field.
Conclusion
Our active involvement in ICDE 2024 exemplifies STELAR’s commitment to driving innovation and fostering collaboration within the data engineering community. As we continue our journey, we look forward to building on the insights and connections gained from this conference.
Stay tuned for more updates on our progress and upcoming events where we will further our mission to revolutionise data discovery and application in smart agriculture and food safety. For the latest news and insights, be sure to check out our Blog and follow us on LinkedIn.
