Theses/ Abschlussarbeiten

Knowledge Graphs (KGs) are widely regarded as one of the most promising ways to manage and link information in the age of Big Data. Large-scale knowledge graph visualizations are one of the critical challenges in this domain. A well-designed interactive visualization system can facilitate users’ understanding and consumption of the information

This thesis research would be a part of the iKNOW projectExternal link, which already its web application has been developed. In the iKNOW project, for the given tabular datasets the respective Knowledge Graph will be built. So, in this thesis research, we aim to provide an interactive visualization for the Knowledge Graphs. The visualization technique and the prototype can be evaluated with the help of the project’s partners in the biodiversity domain.

What are the tasks?

• An interactive graph-based visualization to facilitate users’ browsing of the generated Knowledge Graph.

This task can be divided into the following sub-tasks:

• Analysis of the needs and requirements of the KG-visualization
• Analyzing the existing KG-visualization and find the best appropriate visualization technique for the iKNOW project
• Adapt (re-design) and customize the selected technique for the project
• Develop the prototype
• Embedding the prototype in the current portal of iKNOW
• User evaluation

What do we offer?

• A nice working environment
• An interdisciplinary and international team

Supervisors: Samira Babalou (samira.babalou@uni-jena.de), Birgitta Koenig-Ries (birgitta.koenig-ries@uni-jena.de)

BEXIS 2External link is a free and open source software supporting researchers in managing their data throughout the entire data life cycle. BEXIS 2 has a lot of core data management features supporting the FAIR data principles. Beside data management features additional functionalities could enhance the system usage. Some modulesExternal link with additional components are already developed.

Many scientific projects are requested to provide their insights to the general public. The demand for information can be very immense for some projects and differ from simple general project information to the provision of simple-language practice-oriented knowledge. However, a way of getting in contact and to communicate are interactive communication tools. There exists different possibilities of such tools e.g. using concepts of a forum, a chat, or a question-and-answer system.

The task is to develop and implement a concept of a question-answer(-comment) system in BEXIS2.

 The task is simply summarized:

Develope a cellphone app that displays a star chart. The user shall touch on a star when (s)he sees the star. In the very moment, (i) the time is saved, (ii) the geo. position of the observer and the (iii) and an identifier of the star (number in star catalogue). The user shall have the option to provid information on the quality of her/his eyes and whether or not (s)he is a trained observer. The app shall also query data from the closest weather station.

Requirements:

• willing to learn
• there is an extant app that should be developed further

Use cases:

1. Observations in twilight and close to the horizon will improve the computations in history of science and archaeology.
2. “green research”: if many people all over the world use the app, the obtained data shall allow conclusions on the climatic change and weather-related variability of the transparency of the atmosphere, e.g.:
   1. during covid-lockdown in 2020, the news reported that the Himalaya mountains have been visible again in India (which had not been the case since decades before)
   2. there had been military studies in the 1940s (with rather small test samples) that showed some effects of humidity on twilight visibility – but astronomy requires broader and more detailled knowledge. A call for participation of hobby astronomers from Vienna in the 1980s suffered from low response. Modern media and cellphones could serve very well to overcome those day’s constrains and make it easier for people to participate.
3. “medical/ biological research: ophtalmology knows that there are differences between the eyes of humans from Asia and Europe (because on different pressure on the eye ball) but apart from myoptic epidemic in China and Japan it is poorly known how these biological differences effect vision – in particular night vision.

There is already an alpha version of such a smartphone app with a big documentation (developed some years ago by a very industrious student); it served for feasibility studies.

http://urania-uhura.de/stars-above-horizon.htmlExternal link

Additionally, there is a new version in AppStore and PlayStore. This one should now be improved.

A master thesis should

• develop the extant app
• add a few more functions as described
• possibly (if time allows that) even develope a first analysis tool to display some results for the user (gamification)

Reproducibility is vital in science. Reproducibility of published results is one of the challenges faced in science in the present era. We provide several thesis topics on this and related areas.

The task is to explore reproducibility and study which features of the publications correlate with reproducibility. The work is developed on top of the existing solution developed in our group. The task involves developing a solution to implement the recommendations to improve reproducibility.

We provide some thesis topics which can be explored further. If interested in any of these topics, please feel free to contact us.

What are the topics?

• Develop solutions for practitioners with the implementation of our recommendations for reproducibility.
• Study how certain features of the articles (e.g. data availability, ethics statement, journal, etc.) correlate with reproducibility
• Zoom in on reproducibility by subject, e.g. cell lines or invasive species
• Incorporate feedback from stakeholders
• Build a validator to assess the fit of some workflow with the recommendations
• Also consider the integration of computational and non-computational steps (e.g. biospecimens) in reproducibility workflows
• timeline/ continuous service, including visualizations
• Environmental footprint

What do we expect?

• Programming knowledge in Python
• Any bio knowledge is a plus

Start: May or later

Supervisor: Sheeba Samuel (sheeba.samuel@uni-jena.de), Daniel Mietchen, Birgitta König-Ries

Please contact Sheeba Samuel (sheeba.samuel@uni-jena.de) or Birgitta König-Ries (birgitta.koenig-ries@uni-jena.de) to discuss more on the topic.