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Prof Peter Wood

Positions held:
  • Professor of Computer Science, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
Address

Room 257, Malet Street

Email
  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I obtained my BSc and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town (UCT). I then worked for the Institute for Applied Computer Science at the University of Stellenbosch for 18 months, before leaving for the University of Toronto where I obtained a PhD in Computer Science in 1989. I subsequently spent 9 years as a member of the Department of Computer Science at UCT, before joining the Department of Computer Science at King's College London in 1998. I moved to Birkbeck in 2001.

    Highlights

    • The work arising from my PhD has been recognised as providing the foundation for one of the major components used in current, recently standardised query languages for graph databases.

    Qualifications

    • PhD, University of Toronto, 1989

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Postgraduate Education Lead for Computing and Mathematical Sciences

    Professional memberships

    • Member of the Association for Computing Machinery since 1981

    ORCID

    0000-0003-3704-1431
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Data management
    • Data querying
    • Query optimisation
    • Graph databases

    Research overview

    My main interest has always been in languages for querying data: their design, computational complexity and optimisation. The topic of my PhD was Queries on Graphs, an area which has seen renewed interest over the past couple of decades with the advent of the semantic web and social networks. Other areas I have worked on in the past include XML querying, active rule languages (similar to database triggers), deductive rule languages (e.g. Datalog), and compression techniques for XML.

    More recently, I have worked on relational query optimisation when selectivity information is uncertain, flexible querying for SPARQL (the semantic web query language) and Cypher (the Neo4j graph query language), query rewriting in description logic, and similarity measures for relational queries.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research clusters and groups

    Research projects

    GCRF Action against Stunting Hub.

    Funded by
    Medical Research Council

    Museum closure in the UK 2000-2025.

    Funded by
    Arts and Humanities Research Council

    Post doctoral staff

    • Val Katerinchuk
    • George Wright
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    4

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • KHALED ALYOUBI
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2016
    • MANIZHEH MONTAZERIAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2014
    • MOHAMMAD JABER
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2015
    • PETRA SELMER
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor
      Awarded:
      2017

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Advances in Data Management (COIY025H7)
    • Internet and Web Technologies (COIY063H7)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    • Frosini, Riccardo (2017) Optimisation techniques for flexible querying in SPARQL 1.1. In: Calì, Andrea and Wood, Peter T. and Martin, Nigel and Poulovassilis, Alexandra (eds.) Data Analytics. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 106-110. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 9783319607948.
    • Jaber, M. and Wood, Peter T. and Papapetrou, Panagiotis and Gonzalez-Marcos, A. (2016) A multi-granularity pattern-based sequence classification framework for educational data. In: Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA), 2016 IEEE International Conference on. New York, U.S.: IEEE Computer Society. pp. 370-378. ISBN 9781509052066.
    • Dimartino, Mirko and Calì, Andrea and Poulovassilis, Alexandra and Wood, Peter T. (2016) Query rewriting under linear EL knowledge bases. In: Ortiz, M. and Schlobach, S. (eds.) Web Reasoning and Rule Systems: 10th International Conference, RR 2016, Aberdeen, UK, September 9-11, 2016, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 61-76. ISBN 9783319452753.
    • Dimartino, Mirko and Calì, Andrea and Poulovassilis, Alexandra and Wood, Peter T. (2015) Implementing peer-to-peer semantic integration of linked data. In: Maneth, S. (ed.) Data Science. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. New York, U.S.: Springer. pp. 41-45. ISSN 0302-9743. ISBN 9783319204239.
    • Montazerian, M. and Wood, Peter and Mousavi, S.R. (2007) XPath query satisfiability is in PTIME for real-world DTDs. In: Barbosa, D. and Bonifati, A. and Bellahsene, Z. and Hunt, E. and Unland, R. (eds.) XSym 2007: Database and XMLTechnologies, 5th International XML Database Symposium. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 17-30. ISBN 9783540752875.
    • Hurtado, C.A. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2006) A relaxed approach to RDF querying. In: Cruz, I.F. and Decker, S. and Allemang, D. and Preist, C. and Schwabe, D. and Mika, P. and Uschold, M. and Aroyo, L. (eds.) ISWC 2006: The Semantic Web. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 314-328. ISBN 9783540490296.
    • Poulovassilis, Alex and Papamarkos, G. and Wood, Peter (2006) Event-condition-action rule languages for the semantic web. In: Grust, T. and Hopfner, H. and Illarramendi, A. and Jablonski, S. and Mesiti, M. and Muller, S. and Patranjan, P.-L. and Sattler, K.-U. and Spiliopoulou, M. and Wijsen, J. (eds.) EDBT 2006: current trends in database technology. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 855-864. ISBN 9783540467908.
    • Bailey, J. and Papamarkos, G. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2004) An event-condition-action language for XML. In: Levene, Mark and Poulovassilis, Alex (eds.) Web Dynamics: Adapting to Change in Content, Size, Topology and Use. Springer. pp. 223-248. ISBN 9783642073779.
    • Keenoy, K. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Christophides, V. and Rigaux, P. and Papamarkos, G. and Magkanaraki, A. and Stratakis, M. and Spyratos, N. and Wood, Peter (2004) Personalisation services for self e-learning networks. In: Koch, N. and Fraternali, P. and Wirsing, M. (eds.) ICWE 2004: Web Engineering. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 215-219. ISBN 9783540225119.
    • Papamarkos, G. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2004) An event-condition-action language for RDF. In: Levene, Mark and Poulovassilis, Alex (eds.) Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Web Dynamics. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. CEUR-WS.org. pp. 62-75.
    • Papamarkos, G. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2003) Event-condition-action rule languages for the semantic web. In: Cruz, I.F. and Kashyap, V. and Decker, S. and Eckstein, R. (eds.) SWDB 03: The first International Workshop on Semantic Web and Databases. SWDB. pp. 309-327.
    • Wood, Peter (2003) Containment for XPath fragments under DTD constraints. In: Calvanese, D. and Lenzerini, M. and Motwani, R. (eds.) ICDT 2003: Database Theory. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 297-311. ISBN 9783540003236.
    • Bailey, J. and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2002) An event-condition-action language for XML. In: Lassner, D. and De Roure, D. and Iyengar, A. (eds.) WWW 2002: Proceedings of the Eleventh International World Wide Web Conference. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 486-495. ISBN 9781581134490.
    • Wood, Peter (2001) Minimising simple XPath expressions. In: Mecca, G. and Simeon, J. (eds.) WebDB 2001: Proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Web and Databases. WebDB. pp. 13-18.
    • Wood, Peter (2000) On the equivalence of XML patterns. In: Lloyd, J.W. and Dahl, V. and Furbach, U. and Kerber, M. and Lau, K.-K. and Palamidessi, C. and Pereira, L.M. and Sagiv, Y. and Stuckey, P.J. (eds.) CL 2000: Computational Logic. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 1152-1166. ISBN 9783540449577.
    • Wood, Peter (2000) Rewriting XQL queries on XML repositories. In: Lings, B. and Jeffery, K.G. (eds.) BNCOD 17: Advances in Databases. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 209-226. ISBN 9783540677437.
    • Wood, Peter (1999) Optimising web queries using document type definitions. In: Shahabi, C. (ed.) CIKM 99: 2nd Workshop on Web Information and Data Management. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 28-32. ISBN 9781581132212.
    • Welz, M.G. and Wood, Peter (1998) The TENTACLE database system as a web server. In: Embury, S.M. and Fiddian, N.J. and Gray, W.A. and Jones, A.C. (eds.) BNCOD 16: Advances in Databases. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 169-170. ISBN 9783540646594.
    • Welz, M.G. and Wood, Peter (1998) TENTACLE: a database system for the world wide web. In: Quirchmayr, G. and Schweighofer, E. and Bench-Capon, T.J.M. (eds.) DEXA 98: Database and Expert Systems Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 658-667. ISBN 9783540649502.
    • Chavda, M. and Wood, Peter (1997) Combining constraints and data-flow in a visual query language. In: Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages. IEEE Computer Society. pp. 125-126. ISBN 9780818681446.
    • Chavda, M. and Wood, Peter (1997) Towards an ODMG-compliant visual object query language. In: Jarke, M. and Carey, M.J. and Dittrich, K.R. and Lochovsky, F.H. and Loucopoulos, P. and Jeusfeld, M.A. (eds.) VLDB 97: Proceedings of 23rd International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 456-465. ISBN 9781558604707.
    • Consens, M.P. and Mendelzon, A.O. and Vista, D. and Wood, Peter (1995) Constant propagation versus join reordering in datalog. In: Sellis, T. (ed.) RIDS 95: Rules in Database Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 245-259. ISBN 9783540603658.
    • Wood, Peter (1995) Magic factoring of closure programs. In: Yannakakis, M. and Abiteboul, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourteenth ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 174-183. ISBN 9780897917308.
    • Paterson-Jones, R. and Wood, Peter (1993) Extending the WAM for HiLog. In: Miller, D. (ed.) Logic Programming: Proceedings of the 1993 International Symposium. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262631525.
    • Vista, D. and Wood, Peter (1993) Efficient evaluation of visual queries using deductive databases. In: Ramakrishnan, R. (ed.) Applications of Logic Databases. The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Kluwer. pp. 143-161. ISBN 9781461522072.
    • Vista, D. and Wood, Peter (1993) Efficient visual queries for deductive databases. In: Ramakrishnan, R. (ed.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Programming with Logic Databases, in Conjunction with ILPS. University of Wisconsin. pp. 44-59.
    • Wood, Peter (1993) Bottom-up evaluation of DataHiLog. In: Paton, N.W, and Howard Williams, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Rules in Database Systems. Workshops in Computing. Springer. pp. 401-415. ISBN 9783540198468.
    • Wood, Peter (1991) Syntactic characterizations of 1-bounded datalog. In: Delobel, C. and Kifer, M. and Masunaga, Y. (eds.) DOOD 91: Deductive and Object-Oriented Databases. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 208-225. ISBN 9783540550150.
    • Wood, Peter (1990) Factoring augmented regular chain programs. In: McLeod, D. and Sacks-Davis, R. and Schek, H.-O. (eds.) 16th International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 255-263. ISBN 9781558601499.
    • Wood, Peter (1990) Graph views and recursive query languages. In: Brown, A.W. and Hitchcock, P. (eds.) BNCOD 8: Proceedings of the 8th British National Conference on Databases. Pitman Publishing. pp. 124-141. ISBN 9780273088370.
    • Mendelzon, A.O. and Wood, Peter (1989) Finding regular simple paths in graph databases. In: Apers, P.M.G. and Wiederhold, G. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Very Large Data Bases. Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 185-193. ISBN 9781558601017.
    • Cruz, I.F. and Mendelzon, A.O. and Wood, Peter (1988) G+: recursive queries without recursion. In: Kerschberg, L. (ed.) Expert Database Systems: Proceedings from the Second International Conference. Benjamin Cummings series in database systems and applications. Benjamin-Cummings Publishing Company. pp. 645-666. ISBN 9780805303111.
    • Wood, Peter and Mendelzon, A.O. and Atzeni, P. (1988) Idempotent single-predicate horn clauses. In: Gyssens, M. and Paredaens, J. and Van Gucht, D. (eds.) ICDT 88: 2nd International Conference on Database Theory. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer. pp. 129-143. ISBN 9783540501718.
    • Cruz, I.F. and Mendelzon, A.O. and Wood, Peter (1987) A graphical query language supporting recursion. In: Dayal, U. and Traiger, I.L. (eds.) Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Management of Data 1987 Annual Conference. Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 323-330. ISBN 9780897912365.

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