#IJCAI2023 distinguished paper: Interview with Maurice Funk – knowledge bases and querying

Maurice Funk, and co-authors Balder ten Cate, Jean Christoph Jung and Carsten Lutz, won a distinguished paper award at the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) for their work SAT-Based PAC Learning of Description Logic Concepts. In this interview, Maurice tells us more about knowledge bases and querying, why this is an interesting area for study, and their methodology and results. Our research is in the area of knowledge representation, or more specifically knowledge bases and querying. A knowledge base contains facts like a traditional database e.g. "Bob is a fish" and "Amelia is a dog", but also background knowledge formulated in some formal language e.g.