The Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) is a former

research institute A research institute, research centre, research center or research organization, is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often i ...

NUI Galway The University of Galway ( ga, Ollscoil na Gaillimhe) is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. A tertiary education and research institution, the university was awarded the full five QS stars for excellence in 201 ...

. It is now part of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Insight was established in 2013 by Science Foundation Ireland with funding of €75m. DERI's focus is research into the Semantic Web and

linked data In computing, linked data (often capitalized as Linked Data) is structured data which is interlinked with other data so it becomes more useful through semantic queries. It builds upon standard Web technologies such as HTTP, RDF and URIs, but r ...

. It was originally established as a ''Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET)'' in 2003 with funding from

Science Foundation Ireland Science Foundation Ireland (SFI; ga, Fondúireacht Eolaíochta Éireann) is the statutory body in Ireland with responsibility for funding oriented basic and applied research in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM ...

. Additional funding sources were EU Framework Programs,

Enterprise Ireland Enterprise Ireland is an Irish state economic development agency focused on helping Irish-owned business deliver new export sales. The aim of Enterprise Ireland is . History Enterprise Ireland was established by the Industrial Development (E ...

, IRCSET, and industry.

History

DERI was opened in 2003 with funding from Science Foundation Ireland. In addition projects from the European Commission and Enterprise Ireland extended the research program. As scientific director Dieter Fensel was hired from the University of Innsbruck. As executive director Christoph Bussler was hired from Oracle. Additional leadership was provided by Stefan Decker (Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California) and David O'Sullivan (National University of Ireland). In 2006 Stefan Decker took over the Director position, and Michael Turley took over the Chief Executive Position. Manfred Hauswirth became deputy director. DERI grew rapidly from 2 persons in 2003 to about 40 in 2006, and then to about 100 in 2008. In 2008 DERI secured a second funding round from Science Foundation Ireland of about 12 Million Euro, and established itself as a premier research facility for Web research in general, and Semantic Web and Linked Data research in particular. In 2013 Science Foundation Ireland decided to establish a new centre for Data Analytics by combining four existing centers operating in the space: DERI (NUI Galway), Clarity (UCD), TRILL(UCD), 4C (UCC) & CLIQUE (UCD). With the establishment of the Insight Centre the DERI brand, after more than 10 years of successful operation, was retired. Subsequently Manfred Hauswirth became director of Fraunhofer FOCUS, and Stefan Decker of Fraunhofer FIT, both in Germany.

Description

Employees and financials

In late 2011, DERI employed around 130 people. In 2011, DERI had about 6 million Euro in revenue. In 2010, the Science Foundation Ireland consisted of 55% of awards by value; the remainder was composed of the European Commission (40%); and businesses (5%).

Facilities

DERI was based at the Dangan Business Park in

Galway Galway ( ; ga, Gaillimh, ) is a City status in Ireland, city in the West Region, Ireland, West of Ireland, in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Connacht, which is the county town of County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lo ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

Organisation

DERI now operates as part of the Insight Centre for Data Analytics. It is still part of the National University of Ireland, Galway and is organised around a number of research units and application domains.

Contributions

DERI contributed or initiated a number of technologies, standards and initiatives. Some notable technologies include the Semantic Web, the Semantic Desktop, scalable RDF information processing,

Open Data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

Government Portals,

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

Standards and efforts like

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle" , a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description F ...

and

Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Project (SIOC ( )) is a Semantic Web technology. SIOC provides methods for interconnecting discussion methods such as blogs, forums and mailing lists to each other. It consists of the SIOC ontology, an o ...

. In its data centers it hosted several big data facilities for indexing what was called the "web of data" the web of pages annotated with metadata (also Semantic Web). Among these the early SWSE engine, led by Dr. Andreas Hearth and the Sindice engine (the Semantic ''Indice'' - italian for index) engine led by Dr. Giovanni Tummarello and Dr. Renaud Delbru, which then evolved into the Siren.io company.

Spin-Off companies

Spin-Off companies included music-tech start-up MDG Web, data intelligence and analytics company Siren.io (previously Sindicetech, developed out of the Sindice), and financial analytics start-up Peracton (building MAARS),

Memberships

DERI was a

member organization and a founding member of the

Web Science Trust The Web Science Trust (WST) is a UK Charitable Trust with the aim of supporting the global development of Web science. It was originally started in 2006 as a joint effort between MIT and University of Southampton to formalise the social and te ...

Network.

References

External links

Official website

DERI International