Research interests

  • Logic-based knowledge representation and reasoning in artificial intelligence
  • Defeasible reasoning, belief change, reasoning about actions
  • Non-classical logics, modal logic, description logics
  • Automated theorem proving

Recent publications

Most recent publications (for the full list of Ivan’s publications, click here):

  • Situated Conditional Reasoning. Artificial Intelligence, volume 319, 2023. Joint work with Giovanni Casini and Thomas Meyer.
  • Defeasible Linear Temporal Logic. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, volume 33, issue 1, 2023. Joint work with Anasse Chafik, Fahima Cheikh, and Jean-François Condotta.
  • KLM-Style Defeasibility for Restricted First-Order Logic. Proceedings of the 6th International Joint Conference on Rules and Reasoning (RuleML+RR’2022), Berlin, Germany, September 2022. Joint work with Giovanni Casini, Thomas Meyer, and Guy Paterson-Jones. [PDF] [Bib]
  • Region-Based Merging of Open-Domain Terminological Knowledge. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR’2022), Haifa, Israel, August 2022. Joint work with Zied Bouraoui, Sébastien Konieczny, Truong-Thanh Ma, and Nicolas Schwind. [PDF] [Bib]
  • Tree Edit Distance Based Ontology Merging Evaluation Framework. Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management (KSEM’2022), online, August 2022. Joint work with Zied Bouraoui, Sébastien Konieczny, and Truong-Thanh Ma. [PDF] [Bib]

Editorial boards and steering committees

Event organisation

  • Co-chair of the Recently Published Research track of KR’2022.
  • Program chair of FoIKS’22.
  • Program co-chair of RW’21.
  • Co-chair of NMR’20.
  • Co-chair for the Workshop and Tutorial Program of KR’2018.
  • Co-chair of the LPNMR’17 workshop DARe.
  • Publicity and Sponsorship Chair for KR’2016.
  • Co-chair of the ECAI’16 workshop DARe.
  • Co-chair of the IJCAI’15 workshop DARe.
  • Co-chair of the FOIS’14 workshop WoMO.
  • Co-chair of the ECAI’14 workshop DARe.
  • Co-organizer of the research school on Foundations and Challenges of Change in Ontologies and Databases, Bolzano, Italy, 2014.
  • Co-chair of the LPNMR’13 workshop ARCOE-LogIC.
  • Co-chair of the ECAI’12 workshop ARCOE.
  • Co-chair of the IJCAI’11 workshop ARCOE.
  • Co-chair of the ECAI’10 workshop ARCOE.
  • Co-chair of the IJCAI’09 workshop ARCOE.

Invited talks

  • Defeasible Description Logics. 7th World Congress and School on Universal Logic. Kolymbari, Crete, Greece, April 2022.
  • Foundations and Challenges of Reasoning Defeasibly over DL Ontologies. Workshop on ASP technologIes for Querying large scale multisource heterogeneous web information (WASPIQ). Arras, France, June 2017.
  • Pushing the Frontiers of Defeasible Reasoning in Description-Logic Ontologies. Journées sur l’Intelligence Artificielle Fondamentale (JIAF). Montpellier, France, June 2016.

Participation in program committees and journal refereeing

Refereeing of project proposals

Student supervision

  • Co-supervision of Renan Fernandes’s Ph.D. thesis (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil). Title of work: Connection Method for Defeasible Description Logics. Defended in August 2024.
  • Co-supervision of Truong-Thanh Ma’s Ph.D. thesis (Université d’Artois, France). Title of work: On Merging of Open-Domain Ontologies. Defended in December 2022.
  • Co-supervision of Anasse Chafik’s Ph.D. thesis (Université d’Artois, France). Title of work: Defeasible temporal logics for the specification and verification of exception-tolerant systems. Defended in September 2022.
  • Co-supervision of Anasse Chafik’s M.Sc. internship (Université d’Artois, France). Title of work: Preferential Linear Temporal Logic. 2018.
  • Co-supervision of Ayoub El Gueddi’s M.Sc. internship (Université d’Artois, France). Title of work: Agrégation et pré-ordre partiel. 2017.
  • Supervision of Issam Zebdi’s M.Sc. internship (Université d’Artois, France). Title of work: Implémentation de deux méthodes de fermeture rationnelle pour la logique de typicité propositionnelle. 2017.
  • Co-supervision of Glauco Trindade’s M.Sc. (PESC-COPPE and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Title of dissertation: Video Game Development Ontology. 2015.
  • Co-supervision of Kodylan Moodley’s Ph.D. (CSIR Meraka Institute and University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). Title of dissertation: Defeasible Reasoning for Description Logic Ontologies. Since 2011.
  • Co-supervision of Kodylan Moodley’s M.Sc. (CSIR Meraka Institute and University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). Title of dissertation: Debugging and Repair of Description Logic Ontologies. 2009-2011.
  • Co-supervision of Maurice Ndashimye’s honours (African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, South Africa). Title of essay: Tableau Methods for Epistemic Modal Logics. 2011.

Examining boards

  • Examining of Bernardo Alkmim’s Ph.D. (PUC-Rio, Brazil). Thesis title: Law and Order(ing): Providing a Natural Deduction System and Non-monotonic Reasoning to an Intuitionistic Description Logic. 2023.
  • Examining of Igor de Camargo e Souza Câmara’s Ph.D. (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Thesis title: Quantification in Description Logics of Typicality. 2023.
  • Examining of Simone Coetzer’s M.Sc. (Stellenbosch University, South Africa). Dissertation title: Repairing Classical Ontologies using Defeasible Reasoning Techniques. 2021.
  • Examining of Adam Kaliski’s M.Sc. (University of Cape Town, South Africa). Dissertation title: An Overview of KLM-Style Defeasible Entailment. 2020.
  • Examining of Antoine Gréa’s Ph.D. (University of Lyon, France). Thesis title: Endomorphic metalanguage and abstract planning for real-time intent recognition. 2020.
  • Examining of Cleyton Mário de Oliveira Rodrigues’s Ph.D. (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil). Thesis title: Uma Abordagem Ontológica para Simulação de Ação Legal e Consistência Semântica Aplicada à Legislação Brasileira. 2019.
  • Examining of Leonard Botha’s M.Sc. (University of Cape Town, South Africa). Dissertation title: The Bayesian Description Logic BALC. 2018.
  • Examining of Eunice Palmeira da Silva’s Ph.D. (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil). Thesis title: Conversão de Provas em Lógica de Descrições ALC Geradas pelo Método de Conexões para Sequentes. 2017.
  • Examining of Willem Coetzer’s Ph.D. (University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa). Thesis title: A Knowledge-Based System for Automated Discovery of Ecological Interactions in Flower-Visiting Data. 2017.
  • Examining of Dimas de Melo Filho’s M.Sc. (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil). Dissertation title: A Connection-based Reasoner for ALC Ontologies. 2015.
  • Examining of Ryan Ribeiro de Azevedo’s Ph.D. (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil). Thesis title: Um sistema de diálogo inteligente baseado em lógica de descrições. 2015.
  • Examining of Raphael Mendes de Oliveira Cóbe’s Ph.D. (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Thesis title: Integração entre múltiplas ontologias: reuso e gerência de conflitos. 2014.
  • Examining of José David Fernández Curado’s M.Sc. (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Dissertation title: Typicality in description logics. 2014.
  • Examining of Riku Nortjé’s M.Sc. (University of South Africa). Dissertation title: Module Extraction for Inexpressive Description Logics. 2011.