Mid-Year Milestones: STELAR's Remarkable Progress
The previous period has been full of progress, from the development of the STELAR toolkit to engaging events, podcasts, and interviews. Discover all these updates and more in the following text.
1st Version of the STELAR Toolkit Now Available!
A first version of the STELAR Toolkit is now available to those who wish to explore the developed tools so far! The tools will be integrated into the STELAR KLMS (Knowledge Lake Management System) as individual components, as well.
- Data Profiler – A software component that automatically extracts metadata from various dataset types and outputs it in HTML, JSON, and RDF formats to enhance data description and facilitate discovery and exploration.
- Synopses Data Engine – A tool for computing data summaries over high-speed data streams.
- KGSEC – A software component that takes a Knowledge Graph (KG) as input and produces, as output, an implicit schema of the graph that can facilitate exploration, query formulation and insight extraction.
- pyJedAI – This is a python-based open-source tool for data integration that supports numerous established and new techniques for schema and entity matching that applies to both textual and geospatial data.
- TS-Impute – A time series imputation tool that aims to improve the quality of EO data through cloud removal.
- EO Data Fusion – Tool for the alignment and fusion of Earth Observation (EO) data.
- Correlation Detective – A fast and scalable family of algorithms for finding interesting multivariate correlations in large datasets.
- Food Entity Extraction tool – Tool that performs named entity recognition and text classification leveraging a large variety of techniques, ranging from traditional string matching to Large Language Models.
- Field Segmentation tool – This tool aims to segment satellite images into individual fields.
- Crop Classification tool – A tool for labelling satellite images into different crop types.
The Toolkit has an open-source code and is available at the GitHub link.
ICDE 2024 Recap: Shaping the Future of Data and Information Engineering
This period has been particularly eventful for the STELAR project, with our participation in May at the IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) 2024. 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.
Our project coordinator Dimitris Skoutas and Vasiliki Pitsilou from the Athena Research Center, George Papadakis from the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, and Jens d’Hondt from the Eindhoven University of Technology presented several research papers:
- A Critical Re-evaluation of Benchmark Datasets for (Deep) Learning-Based Matching Algorithms
- MultiCast: Zero-Shot Multidimensional Time Series Forecasting Using LLMs
- Beyond the Dimensions: A Structured Evaluation of Multivariate Time Series Distance Measures
- Using LLMs to Extract Food Entities from Cooking Recipes
Additionally, Petros Skoufis from the Athena Research Center showcased a demo titled “KGSEC: A Modular Framework for Knowledge Graph Schema Extraction and Comparison,” developed in collaboration with Dimitris Skoutas.
Following this, our consortium member Odysseas Papapetrou from the Eindhoven University of Technology 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.
STELAR's AgTech Progress Spotlighted at Collaborative Webinar
On June 4th, STELAR’s Project Coordinator, Dimitris Skoutas from Athena Research Center, presented our progress during the webinar “AgTech Innovations that will transform the sector,” co-organized by Wikifarmer and AgriBIT.
The webinar, attended by hundreds of participants, also featured five other EU-backed projects. This event provided a platform for initiatives to showcase their contributions to enhancing agricultural resilience to climate change and improving efficiency.
A Look at the 2024 International Agricultural Fair
The 91st International Agricultural Fair, held from May 18th to 23rd, fostered a vibrant environment for collaboration. Representatives from Foodscale Hub organised an engaging quiz that attracted 40 participants, facilitating discussions about the pressing issues faced by modern agriculture.
Additionally, the event provided a platform for STELAR to connect with potential partners – research institutes, small businesses, tech firms, and farming suppliers. These valuable interactions opened doors for future collaborations that have the potential to revolutionise the agricultural landscape.
STELAR's Impact at ICWE
STELAR recently made a significant mark at the prestigious International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE), known as the premier annual conference on Web Engineering and associated technologies. During this event, Konstantinos Nikoletos presented the tutorial “The Five Generations of Entity Resolution on Web Data,” authored by Konstantinos Nikoletos, Ekaterini Ioannou, & George Papadakis.
This tutorial not only showcased STELAR’s innovative contributions but also highlighted our project’s active engagement in shaping advancements in web engineering.
Prof. Dragan Boskovic in Spotlight for STELAR: On the Importance of Data Formats in ICT
This period marked the launch of STELAR’s new podcast: Data Stories 360°!
For our inaugural episode, we had a chat with Professor Dragan Boscovic – a senior data technology expert, innovator and entrepreneur who holds the position of a Clinical Professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business – Arizona State University, and is a founder of VizLore LLC.
Our conversation was released in two parts:
Part I: Applying data management principles to improve agricultural processes and the challenges of handling various data formats.
Part II: Data privacy and security, and advice on ensuring data accuracy and quality to those in the agricultural business.
Insights Into Data Science and Database Design: A Conversation with Dr. Ivan Luković
With the aim of addressing data integration challenges, the STELAR project turns to experts for valuable insights. Our latest interviewee, Dr Ivan Luković, brings a wealth of expertise as a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a dedicated Professor at Serbia’s University of Belgrade and its Faculty of Organizational Sciences.
Celebrating Global Connections: STELAR’s International Day Highlights
STELAR continues to celebrate international dates, such as those that celebrate ITC advancements, EU values and food safety topics.
