PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michael Cochez

Michael Cochez is a Belgian computer scientist who works on machine learning for knowledge graphs, including how to answer complex queries on incomplete graphs. After a bachelor's degree in information systems at the University of Antwerp, he completed a master's and a doctorate at the University of Jyväskylä under Vagan Terziyan and Ferrante Neri, then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Fraunhofer FIT in Aachen. In 2021, he was Discovery Lab Manager and an assistant professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and his paper Complex Query Answering with Neural Link Predictors, written with Erik Arakelyan, Daniel Daza and Pasquale Minervini, received an ICLR 2021 Outstanding Paper Award. He also coauthored the survey Knowledge Graphs in 2020 and a 2023 survey that introduced Neural Graph Databases. He is a Principal Investigator at ELLIS Institute Finland and a professor at Åbo Akademi University.

Timeline

  1. By 2015

    Doctoral studies at Jyväskylä

    A Belgian, he earns a bachelor's degree in information systems at the University of Antwerp after a year as an exchange student at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. He stays at Jyväskylä for a master's and a doctorate, guided by Vagan Terziyan and Ferrante Neri. In 2015, he publishes Twister Tries at ACM SIGMOD, an approximate hierarchical clustering method for average distance in linear time.

  2. By 2017

    Postdoctoral research in Aachen

    After his PhD, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT, based at RWTH Aachen University and hosted by Stefan Decker. In 2017, he presents Global RDF vector space embeddings at the International Semantic Web Conference in Vienna, part of his work on turning the nodes of large graphs into vectors that can train neural networks.

  3. March 2020

    The Knowledge Graphs survey

    In March 2020, he appears among the 18 authors of Knowledge Graphs, alongside Aidan Hogan and Eva Blomqvist. The paper gives a comprehensive introduction to graph data models, the roles of schema, identity and context, and deductive and inductive ways to represent and extract knowledge.

  4. By 2021

    Discovery Lab at VU Amsterdam

    In 2021, he is Discovery Lab Manager and an Assistant Professor in the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The Discovery Lab is a collaboration between Elsevier, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the University of Amsterdam that aims to drive scientific discovery using machine intelligence.

  5. 2021

    An ICLR Outstanding Paper Award

    With Erik Arakelyan, Daniel Daza and Pasquale Minervini, he writes Complex Query Answering with Neural Link Predictors, which receives an ICLR 2021 Outstanding Paper Award. Daza reports that the method uses about 60 times less training data than earlier methods.

  6. March 2023

    Neural Graph Databases

    In March 2023, he coauthors a survey of complex logical query answering with Hongyu Ren, Mikhail Galkin, Zhaocheng Zhu and Jure Leskovec. The survey covers multi-hop logical reasoning over incomplete graphs in a latent space and introduces the concept of Neural Graph Databases.

  7. As of October 2026

    Professor at Åbo Akademi

    He is a Principal Investigator at ELLIS Institute Finland and Professor at Åbo Akademi University, and keeps a part-time post as Assistant Professor in the Learning and Reasoning group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Career

  1. Since 2021Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamAssistant Professor
  2. NowELLIS Institute FinlandPrincipal Investigator
  3. NowÅbo Akademi UniversityProfessor
  4. From 2021Discovery LabDiscovery Lab Manager
  5. Fraunhofer-GesellschaftPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. University of AntwerpBachelor's degree in information systems
  2. University of JyväskyläMaster's degree

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Michael Cochez. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Home - Michael Cochez cochez.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Research - Michael Cochez cochez.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Knowledge Graphs (arXiv:2003.02320) arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Filling in the blanks of knowledge graphs elsevier.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Neural Graph Reasoning: Complex Logical Query Answering Meets Graph Databases (arXiv:2303.14617) arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Michael Cochez | European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems ellis.eu. Checked 21 October 2026.