Author: Salomé Wagner
Bridging Knowledge Engineering to Interdisciplinary Research
SPOTLIGHT
Prof. Dr. Marta Sabou, Scientific Programme Coordinator Vienna Doctoral College on Digital Humanism
Digital Humanism has emerged as a critical framework for understanding and shaping the interaction between digital technologies and human values.
Marta Sabou, Head of the Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) and Scientific Programme Coordinator of our Doctoral College embodies this perspective consistently. Her academic trajectory illustrates how knowledge engineering and interdisciplinary research can converge to address complex socio-technical challenges.
“The central and enduring question is: how do we transfer human knowledge into the computer in a way that preserves meaning, context, and causality?”
A key technical answer to this question has been the development of knowledge graphs, a knowledge representation format whose conceptual roots can be traced back to the 1960s. Long before contemporary AI applications, graph-based knowledge representations were designed to model entities, relations, and semantics explicitly. Marta’s research situates knowledge graphs not as static data structures, but as agile socio-technical artifacts that connect data, processes, and human understanding—an approach that aligns directly with the principles of digital humanism.
A defining element of Marta Sabou’s career is her experience at Siemens, where she served as Key Expert for Semantic Technologies. Working on concrete use cases in smart infrastructures, such as smart grids and smart buildings within the Aspern Smart City Research project, sharpened her understanding of the importance of research collaboration between industry and academia.
This insight is directly reflected in her role within the Vienna Doctoral College on Digital Humanism, where interdisciplinarity is not optional but essential. Addressing digital humanism requires collaboration across computer science, social sciences, economics, and philosophy. Marta also highlights that the valorization of PhD research occurs on multiple levels – ranging from scientific excellence and publications to societal impact and industrial transfer.
Marta Sabou’s career demonstrates how digital humanism can be realized through knowledge-based AI, interdisciplinary collaboration, and a reflective approach to building intelligent systems—systems that do not merely compute but meaningfully engage with the real world.
“What problems we want to solve, which systems are appropriate, how data is collected, and what kind of causal knowledge is embedded in digital infrastructures? This perspective moves beyond classical software engineering toward a more reflective, human-centered approach to AI and data-driven systems.”
Marta Sabou
Marta presenting at the DigHum College Kick-off on November 17, 2025
About Prof. Dr. Marta Sabou
Marta Sabou is Professor for Information Systems at WU Wien. In her research, she focuses on creating advanced AI systems for solving tasks with positive societal impact. Her main background is in symbolic AI (knowledge engineering, ontologies, knowledge graphs), human computation, and neurosymbolic systems.