PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Riccardo Rosati

Riccardo Rosati is a knowledge representation researcher at Sapienza University of Rome whose work on description logics and ontology-based data access ties logical reasoning to database technology. He published on ground nonmonotonic modal logics in 1997, proposed the description logic DL-Lite in 2005 with Diego Calvanese, Giuseppe De Giacomo, Domenico Lembo and Maurizio Lenzerini, and coauthored the MASTRO system for ontology-based data access in 2011. In 2016 he became a EurAI Fellow, and the DL-Lite paper received the AAAI Classic Paper Award in 2021. A 2024 paper on controlled query evaluation won an IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award, and the KR 2006 paper on data complexity received the KR Test of Time Award in 2025. At Sapienza, he is a full professor in the Dipartimento di Ingegneria informatica, automatica e gestionale (DIAG).

Works
289
Citations
10,583
h-index
51
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1997

    Ground nonmonotonic modal logics

    With Francesco M. Donini and Daniele Nardi, he publishes "Ground Nonmonotonic Modal Logics" in the Journal of Logic and Computation in 1997. The paper studies a family of nonmonotonic modal logics and their use in knowledge representation.

  2. 2005–2007

    The DL-Lite family of logics

    With Diego Calvanese, Giuseppe De Giacomo, Domenico Lembo and Maurizio Lenzerini, he proposes the description logic DL-Lite at AAAI 2005, designed to capture basic ontology languages while keeping the complexity of reasoning low. The 2007 Journal of Automated Reasoning paper on the DL-Lite family concludes that these logics are the maximal Description Logics supporting efficient query answering over large amounts of instances.

  3. 2011

    The MASTRO system

    He coauthors the 2011 Semantic Web article on MASTRO, a Java tool for ontology-based data access developed at Sapienza and at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. MASTRO manages systems whose ontology is specified in DL-Lite_A,id, a logic of the DL-Lite family.

  4. 2016

    A EurAI Fellowship

    He becomes a EurAI Fellow in 2016. The European Association for Artificial Intelligence limits its Fellows Program to a maximum of 3% of the total membership of its member societies.

  5. 2021

    AAAI Classic Paper Award

    In 2021, the 2005 DL-Lite paper he coauthored with Calvanese, De Giacomo, Lembo and Lenzerini receives the AAAI Classic Paper Award, for proposing basic knowledge representation languages with low complexity of reasoning.

  6. 2024

    An IJCAI distinguished paper

    In 2024, "Enhancing Controlled Query Evaluation through Epistemic Policies", coauthored with Gianluca Cima, Domenico Lembo, Lorenzo Marconi and Domenico Fabio Savo, wins a Distinguished Paper Award at IJCAI in Jeju, South Korea. The paper proposes epistemic dependencies to express data protection policies in Controlled Query Evaluation.

  7. 2025

    KR Test of Time Award

    In 2025, the paper "Data Complexity of Query Answering in Description Logics", coauthored with Calvanese, De Giacomo, Lembo and Lenzerini, receives the Test of Time Award at KR 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. Presented at KR 2006, it shows that the DL-Lite logics are the maximal logics allowing conjunctive query answering through standard database technology.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Sapienza

    He is a full professor at Sapienza's Dipartimento di Ingegneria informatica, automatica e gestionale (DIAG), where he belongs to the Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Representation research group. His current research projects include dAIbetes, on predicting treatment outcome in type 2 diabetes.

Most-cited works

  1. Tractable Reasoning and Efficient Query Answering in Description Logics: The DL-Lite Family2007 · Journal of Automated Reasoning · 1,342 citationsWith Diego Calvanese, Giuseppe De Giacomo and Maurizio Lenzerini
  2. Linking Data to Ontologies2008 · Lecture notes in computer science · 881 citationsWith Diego Calvanese, Giuseppe De Giacomo and Maurizio Lenzerini
  3. DL-Lite: tractable description logics for ontologies2005 · 344 citationsWith Diego Calvanese, Giuseppe De Giacomo and Maurizio Lenzerini
  4. Ontology-Based Data Access: A Survey2018 · International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 339 citationsWith Diego Calvanese
  5. On the decidability and complexity of query answering over inconsistent and incomplete databases2003 · ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS) · 285 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Sapienza University of Rome. 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.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Sapienza University of Rome. 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.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Sapienza University of Rome. 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.
  4. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Sapienza University of Rome. 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.

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. Ground Nonmonotonic Modal Logics diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. DL-Lite: Tractable Description Logics for Ontologies diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Tractable Reasoning and Efficient Query Answering in Description Logics: The DL-Lite family diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. The MASTRO system for ontology-based data access diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. The Mastro System for Ontology-based Data Access semantic-web-journal.net. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Awards | European Association for Artificial Intelligence eurai.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Home page of Riccardo Rosati diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. AAAI Classic Paper Award - AAAI aaai.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Enhancing controlled query evaluation through epistemic policies - AIhub aihub.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. Enhancing Controlled Query Evaluation through Epistemic Policies | IJCAI ijcai.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Test of Time Award at KR 2025 | Dipartimento di Ingegneria informatica, automatica e gestionale diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Data Complexity of Query Answering in Description Logics diag.uniroma1.it. Checked 20 October 2026.