Zdenko "Denny" Vrandečić (born 27 February 1978 in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, Germany) is a Croatian

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He was a co-developer of Semantic MediaWiki and

Wikidata Wikidata is a collaboratively edited multilingual knowledge graph hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a common source of open data that Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, and anyone else, are able to use under the CC0 public domain ...

, the lead developer of the Wikifunctions project, and an employee of the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

as a Head of Special Projects, Structured Content. He published modules for the German role-playing game '' The Dark Eye''. He lived in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

in California, United States, until mid 2024, after which he returned to Stuttgart.

Education

Vrandečić attended the in Stuttgart and from 1997 he studied computer science and philosophy at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...

. He received his doctorate in 2010 at the

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founde ...

(KIT), where he was a research associate in the Knowledge Management Research Group at the Institute for Applied Computer Science and Formal Description Languages (AFIB), with Rudi Studer, from 2004 to 2012. In 2010, he visited the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

(ISI).

Career and research

Vrandečić is involved in knowledge bases, data mining, massive web-based collaboration, and the Semantic Web. In 2012/2013, he was project manager for

(Wikipedia sister project) at Wikimedia Germany. Together with Markus Krötzsch (who was also at KIT in the Knowledge Management group), he is co-developer of the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), which was also the inspiration for Wikidata. In 2013 Vrandečić worked as an ontologist at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

on the

Knowledge Graph In knowledge representation and reasoning, a knowledge graph is a knowledge base that uses a Graph (discrete mathematics), graph-structured data model or topology to represent and operate on data. Knowledge graphs are often used to store interl ...

, the knowledge base used by Google to compile its search engine results with semantic information from various sources. In September 2019, Vrandečić announced that he was taking on a new role in Google's development department as

Wikimedian in Residence A Wikipedian in residence or Wikimedian in residence (WiR) is a Wikipedia editor, a Wikipedian (or Wikimedian), who accepts a placement with an institution, typically an art gallery, library, archive, museum, cultural institution, learned societ ...

, which consisted of explaining

Wikimedia projects The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

to other employees. In July 2020, he left Google to join the

, where he has since been involved in building Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia. It aims to use structured data from Wikidata to create a multilingual, machine-driven knowledge platform. In his essay contribution to Wikipedia's 20th anniversary publication, Wikipedia @ 20 ''-'' ''Stories of an Unfinished Revolution'', he elaborates both technical and personal reasoning on urgencies for smaller and even for bigger language Wikipedia editions. Vrandečić is one of the founders and administrators of Croatian Wikipedia. In 2008, he served as head of the scientific program of

Wikimania Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by Wikimedian, volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source ...

. Vrandečić served on the

Board of Trustees A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

from 2015 to 2016.

Publications

Vrandečić's publications include: * * * * * * *

Personal life

Vrandečić family and his parents are from

Pučišća Pučišća () is a coastal town and a municipality on the island of Brač in Croatia. It is often listed as one of the prettiest villages in Europe. It is known for its white limestone and beautiful bay. The town has a population of 1,351 (2021 ce ...

on island of

Brač Brač is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, with an area of , making it the largest island in Dalmatia, and the third largest in the Adriatic. It is separated from the mainland by the Brač Channel, which is wide. until summer 2024 when they moved to Stuttgart.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Vrandečić, Denny Wikipedia people Google employees Wikimedia Foundation staff members Karlsruhe Institute of Technology alumni 21st-century Croatian scientists 1978 births Living people Computer scientists