The day before the SEMANTiCS 2026 conference in De Bijloke, we’re hosting a second Trust Triggers event. The event is a collaboration with the KG4DI FWO WoG network and aims to bring together experts in SEMANTiCS in Belgium and beyond.
Program
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 13:00 | Welcome and introduction to the KG4DI network and the Trustflows network by Anastasia Dimou, Ben De Meester and Pieter Colpaert |
| 13:30 | Keynote: “Beyond Data: Why the Future of AI is Neurosymbolic” by Prof. Marta Sabou |
| 14:15 | Panel discussion (panelists TBC) |
| 15:00 | Coffee break (30 minutes) |
| 15:30 |
After-break program
|
| 16:15 | The Trustflows community joins the KG4DI Network drink at De Krook café |
Keynote: “Beyond Data: Why the Future of AI is Neurosymbolic”
Prof. Marta Sabou from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business will give the keynote. Prof. Sabou heads the Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management at WU Vienna and works at the intersection of semantic technologies, knowledge graphs and applied AI.
The increasing deployment of artificial intelligence in complex settings—including smart grids or intelligent manufacturing—has exposed the limitations of purely data-driven approaches. Indeed, these environments are characterised not only by large-scale, heterogeneous data, but also by rich domain knowledge, operational constraints, and formal rules that are essential for robust and trustworthy decision making.
Therefore, such complex application settings are one of the key motivations behind the emerging paradigm of neurosymbolic AI, which seeks to integrate the complementary strengths of sub-symbolic and symbolic AI. Sub-symbolic methods, including machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI, provide powerful mechanisms for extracting patterns and representations from data. Symbolic approaches, in contrast, encode structured knowledge through artefacts such as ontologies, taxonomies, knowledge graphs, and logical rules, enabling explicit reasoning, explainability, and the incorporation of domain expertise. The keynote will present the motivation for neurosymbolic AI and introduce representative architectural patterns for combining learning from data and reasoning with explicitly specified knowledge. Through selected system examples, it will illustrate how neurosymbolic AI is reshaping the design of intelligent systems and why it may represent one of the most important directions for the future of artificial intelligence.
Why you should attend
Trustflows is a network of experts working in very specific domains, yet modeling their trust flows with domain-agnostic and therefore reusable technologies.
Reasons to attend this edition:
- This edition is a collaboration with the academic network of KG4DI, and is one day before the SEMANTiCS conference
- Connect with experts: We foresee long breaks so you can talk to everyone.
- Get to know researchers who are ready to continue their career in industry or government.
- Find out about real industry or governmental use cases with the Trust Triggers pitches.
- Learn from the keynote how knowledge graphs and AI can reinforce each other in Neurosymbolic AI.
- Find a consortium for project calls.
Location
You can reach the De Blauwe Vogel room in De Krook Library in Ghent via the main entrance at Miriam Makebaplein 1 or via the side entrance at Platteberg 11. At the main entrance, you can take the stairs down to the bicycle shed and reach the room.
See the previous edition.
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