About

Elisabeth Lex

Short CV: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Lex is a full professor at Graz University of Technology (TUG). She is an ELLIS scholar and affiliated with the ELLIS unit Graz. At TU Graz, Elisabeth serves as the dean of study for the master's program Computational Social Systems. She has a habilitation (venia docendi) in Applied Computer Science, and her postdoctoral thesis is on "Modeling and Predicting User Behavior in Web-based Systems". Her areas of expertise include machine learning with a particular focus on recommender systems and information retrieval, data science, user modeling, HCI, and inclusive technologies. Elisabeth Lex received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Graz University of Technology in 2011. After completing the Ph.D. program, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Universidad National de San Luis, Argentina, and RWTH Aachen, Germany. Elisabeth was a work package leader in the FP7 IP Learning Layers project, in which she researched cognition-informed recommender systems and task leader in the H2020 Analytics for Everyday Learning (AFEL) project, in which she researched psychology-informed recommender systems. Elisabeth was a member of the Expert Group on Altmetrics, which advised the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation. The expert group developed policies for the commission on how to use altmetrics to assess the impact of scientific artifacts. She has published more than 160 scientific publications in venues such as ACM WebConf, RecSys, UMAP, ECIR, ISMIR, as well as in journals such as Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, UMUAI, EPJ Data Science, Frontiers in AI, Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR), or the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. Elisabeth regularly gives invited talks about her research and acts as Senior PC member, PC member, co-organizer, track chair, and co-track chair at venues such as RecSys, UMAP, WebConf, IUI, Web Science, or HT. Elisabeth is a passionate teacher at TU Graz, where she teaches Advanced Information Retrieval, Recommender Systems and Computational Methods for Statistics, among other courses.

Research Topics: Machine Learning, Recommender Systems, Information Retrieval, User Modeling, Data Science, HCI and Inclusive Technologies

Contact: Graz University of Technology (TU Graz)
Sandgasse 36/III
A-8010 Graz, Austria
Email: firstname DOT lastname AT tugraz DOT at

Selected Publications:

  • Lex, E., Kowald, D., Seitlinger, P., Tran, T. N. T., Felfernig, A., Schedl, M., (2021). Psychology-informed Recommender Systems. Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, 15(2), 134-242 ( .pdf)
  • Kowald, D., Muellner, P., Zangerle, E., Bauer, C., Schedl, M. & Lex, E. (2021). Support the Underground: Characteristics of Beyond-Mainstream Music Listeners. EPJ Data Science, 10(1), . ( .pdf)
  • Muellner, P., Kowald, D., & Lex, E. (2021). Robustness of Meta Matrix Factorization Against Strict Privacy Constraints. In Proceedings of the 43rd European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR'2021). Springer. ( .pdf)
  • Lex*, E., Kowald, D., Schedl, M. (2020) Modeling Popularity and Temporal Drift of Music Genre Preferences. Transactions of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (TISMIR). * both authors contributed equally to this work. ( .pdf)
  • Lacic, E., Reiter-Haas, M., Kowald, D., Dareddy, M., Cho, J., & Lex, E. (2020). Using Autoencoders for Session-based Job Recommendations. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction (UMUAI). Springer. ( .pdf)

Selected Community Activities:

  • Tutorial Co-Chair at ACM RecSys 2025
  • Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair at ACM RecSys 2024
  • Track Co-Chair at ACM UMAP 2022 for Intelligent User Interfaces (with Prof. Marko Tkalcic)
  • Senior PC at ACM RecSys
  • Senior PC at WebConf
  • Track Chair at ACM HT 2020 for Recommender Systems and Social Media
  • Senior PC at ACM IUI
  • Senior PC at ACM Web Science 2019
  • Senior PC at Social Informatics 2019
  • Associate Chair at OpenSym 2017
  • Best Paper Judging Committee ACM Web Science 2015

Supervised theses

  • Kevin Innerebner (PhD thesis, ongoing). Neuro-symbolic Recommender Systems.
  • Gregor Mayr (PhD thesis, ongoing). Inclusion and Accessibility in Personalized Systems
  • Vedad Misirlic (PhD thesis, ongoing). Hybrid Models for Recommender Systems and Decision Support.
  • Tomislav Duricic (PhD thesis, ongoing). Sparsity and Interpretability in Social-based Recommender Systems.
  • Peter Muellner (PhD thesis, ongoing). Privacy-aware Recommender Systems.
  • Markus Reiter-Haas (PhD thesis finished). Computational Framing Analysis.
  • Emanuel Lacic (PhD thesis finished).Tackling Real-World Requirements in Recommender Systems
  • Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi (PhD thesis finished).Influence of Status on Consensus Building in Social Networks (co-supervision with Assoc. Prof. Denis Helic)
  • Simone Kopeinik (PhD thesis finished ). Applying Cognitive Learner Models for Recommender Systems in Small-Scale Learning Environments.
  • Dominik Kowald (PhD thesis finished ). Modeling Activation Processes in Human Memory to Improve Tag Recommendations.
  • Peter Muellner (Master thesis finished ). Music Recommender Systems.
  • Markus Reiter-Haas (Master thesis finished ). Job Recommender Systems.
  • Edina Mulahasanovic(Bachelor's thesis finished ). Music Genre Classification.
  • Gregor Mayr(Bachelor's thesis finished ). Calibrated Recommender Systems}.

If you are interested in collaboration, and/or in doing a project and/or thesis (bachelor, master) with me, get in touch!

Awards



  • 10/2015 Demo Honorable Mention Award 15th International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data Driven Business (i-KNOW'15)
  • 09/2015 Special Mention Third Demo Award at the Tenth Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL'15)
  • 06/2015 Outstanding Paper Award 15th International Society of Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (ISSI'15)
  • 12/2012 Industrial Research Prize (Universitätsforschungspreis der Industrie 2012), 2. Place
  • 10/2011-01/2012 Marie Curie IRSES fellowship (visiting researcher at UNSL Argentina)
  • 09/2010 Runner Up at ECML/PKDD Discovery Challenge 2010
  • 05/2010 SIGWEB Student Travel Award for Hypertext 2010
  • 2009 Scholarship: Career Program for female Scientists, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria

Grants



  • Transuniversity Project Route 63: Polarization in Public Opinion. 160k EUR to fully fund a Ph.D. student for my group (overall volume: 325k EUR for 2 fully funded Ph.D. projects for 4 years) in an interdisciplinary, collaborative setting. Designed the idea, the Computer Science Ph.D. project and co-wrote the proposal with the PI from Sociology. Funded by the rectorates of TU Graz and University of Graz.
  • FFG COMET DDAI. Volume: 700k EUR for my group as the PI for Social Computing (overall 3.7 Mio. EUR for 4 years). Responsible for designing and describing two Ph.D. projects on explainability in recommendation services and on privacy-aware recommendation services. Contributed to the overall proposal and added novel scientific partners to the consortium.
  • H2020 TRIPLE. 120k EUR for my group as co-writer and task leader (overall volume: EUR 5.6 Mio. EUR for 3.5 years). Responsible for describing the tasks on recommendation services to increase the accessibility of scientific outputs and integration. Contributions to the overall proposal. (2019-)
  • H2020 AI4EU. 73.5k EUR for my group as co-writer and task leader (overall volume: EUR 20 Mio. EUR for 3 years). Responsible for describing a task on automatic matchmaking services and brokerage (2019-)
  • FFG COMET Know-Center FFG – K1 Research Center Grant. 3.6 Mio. EUR as the PI for Social Computing (overall 20.4 Mio. EUR for the funding period 2019 - 2022 of the Know-Center GmbH). Significant contribution to the whole proposal as head of Social Computing. Developed strategic research plan with scientific and industry partners for the Social Computing area, one of six research areas at the Know-Center.
  • H2020 OpenUp. 238k EURO for my group as co-writer and work package leader (overall volume: EUR 2.3 Mio. for 2.5 years). Responsible for writing the work package on novel dissemination methods for Open Science, contributed to task descriptions on alternative, social media-based indicators to measure scientific impact (2016-2019)
  • H2020 AFEL - Analytics for Everyday Learning. 200k EUR for my group as co-writer and task leader (overall volume: 2.6 Mio. EUR for 4 years). Responsible for describing the tasks on semantic enrichment and recommendation services.
  • H2020 MoreGrasp. 160k EUR for my group as co-writer and task leader (overall volume: 3.5 Mio. EUR for 3 years). Responsible for describing the tasks on matchmaking services.
  • FFG Leitprojekt DMA. 170k EUR for my group as co-writer and work package leader (overall volume: 3.8 Mio. EUR for 3 years). Responsible for the work package on matchmaking and brokerage services for the Data Market Austria.
  • Gesundheitsfonds Steiermark Heli-D. 37.5 EUR for my group as co-writer and work package leader (overall volume: 75k EUR for 3 years). Responsible for the work package on learning analytics services and recommender systems.
  • OpenAire Matchmaker. 15k EUR for my group as co-writer. Tender to extend the OpenAire Open Science infrastructure with a matchmaking and recommendation service for funders and proposals.
  • Besides, significant contribution to the FFG – K1 Research Center Grant with an overall funding of 20.4 Mio. EUR for the funding period 2015 - 2018 of the Know-Center GmbH as co-PI and deputy head of Social Computing. Co-designed the Social Computing area as a novel area. Co-developed strategic research plan with scientific and industry partners for the Social Computing area with focus on social media analytics, information quality and web content credibility; thematic coordinator for life sciences.

Service



Conference and Workshop Organization
  1. ACM UMAP 2022, Track Co-Chair for Intelligent User Interfaces, with Assoc. Prof. Marko Tkalcic
  2. Workshop on Interfaces and Human Decision Making for Recommender Systems (IntRS), co-located with 15th ACM International Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys), 2021, Co-organizer
  3. ACM RecSys 2021, 2022, Senior PC
  4. ACM HT 2020, Track Chair for Recommender Systems and Social Media
  5. Computer Science Talks (CS Talks) at TU Graz, Faculty of CS, since 2018
  6. ACM IUI (2014-ongoing) Senior PC
  7. ACM Web Science 2019, Senior PC
  8. Social Informatics 2019, Senior PC
  9. OpenSym 2017, Associate Chair
  10. Workshop on Recommender Systems, Big Data Analytics & Social Network Analysis and Digital Humanities, co-located with i-KNOW 2017, Co-organizer
  11. Workshop on Recommender Systems and Big Data Analytics, co-located with i-KNOW 2016, Co-organizer
  12. Web 2.0 Models, Methods and Tools in Knowledge Management, Mini-Track at the 17th European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM 2016), Co-organizer
  13. Quantifying and Analyzing Scholarly Communication on the Web (#ascw2015) - Workshop at ACM Web Science conference 2015, Co-organizer
  14. Barcamp Science 2.0, co-located with the Science 2.0 Conference 2015, Hamburg, Germany. Co-Organizer
  15. i-Know 2015: International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-driven Business, Program Chair Social Computing
  16. i-Know 2015: International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-driven Business, Program Chair Open Science and Science 2.0
  17. i-Know 2015: International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-driven Business, Program Chair Special Track Recommender Systems: From Algorithms to Big Data Recommendation Systems
  18. i-Know 2014: International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-driven Business, Program Chair Science 2.0 Track
Selected Program Committee Memberships and Reviewing
  1. The Web Conference
  2. RecSys
  3. HT
  4. ECML/PKDD
  5. ISMIR
  6. IC2S2
  7. UMAP
  8. ECIR 2021
  9. IUI
Selected Editorial Activities and Reviewing
  1. EPJ Data Science
  2. UMUAI
  3. ACM Transactions on Recommender Systems (review editor)
  4. Frontiers in Big Data: Recommender Systems section (review editor)
  5. Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering
  6. Information Processing and Management
  7. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Selected Affiliations and Community Activities
  • ELLIS scholar (since 2025)
  • Graz Center for Machine Learning Board (since 2024)
  • Member of advisory board GenerationR: Exploring new ways to research (since 2019)
  • Member of EU Expert Group on Altmetrics, DG Research and Innovation (2016/2017)
  • Advisory board of the non-profit organization Open Knowledge Maps (since 2017)
  • Member of Open Access Network Austria (since 2015)
  • Member of Leibnitz-Forschungsverbund Open Science (since 2015)
  • Member of the ACM
  • Member of Best Paper Judging Committee ACM WebScience (2015)

Talks



  • Algorithmen und Recommender Systems in der Musik, Panelist at m4music festival, Zurich, Switzerland, 2022
  • Psychology-informed Recommender Systems. Keynote at SMAMS 2021 conference - The Eighth International Conference on Social Networks Analysis, Management and Security, 2021
  • Using Human Memory Theory to Model and Predict the Preferences of (Non-Mainstream) Music Consumers. Keynote in the Joint Workshop on Interfaces and Human Decision Making for Recommender Systems (INTRS) workshop, co-located with ACM Conference on Recommender Systems 2020
  • Leveraging Data Science to Understand User Behavior in Digital Media. Invited talk at University of Tuebingen and Institute of Knowledge Media, Germany, 2020
  • Cognitive-inspired Recommender Systems. Invited talk at AAU Klagenfurt, Austria, 2020
  • Using Recommender Systems to improve Information Organization and Access. Invited talk at Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany, 2020
  • Modeling User Behavior in RecSys: Psychology-inspired approaches. Invited talk at the Passauer Data Science Summit, 2018
  • The Future of Open Science in Research Policies. Panelist at the OpenUP final conference, 2018
  • The impact of user and network properties on opinion dynamics in online collaboration networks. Invited talk Complexity Hub - Social Informatics: En Route Towards Asimov’s Psychohistory?
  • Understanding, Predicting and Controlling Social Behavior in Complex Networks and Systems. Invited talk at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Institute AIFB, 2018
  • Cognitive-inspired Recommender Systems. Invited talk in the GESIS CSS seminar, 2017
  • Social Computing and Recommender Systems. Invited talk at ACIS at RWTH, 2017
  • Data-driven Innovation in Research and Education. Keynote at Didacta 2016.
  • Research Data Explored: Citations versus Altmetrics. Invited talk at Austrian Librarian Days 2015
  • Science 2.0 and Big Data. Invited talk at ABDOS Tagung 2015

Press

  1. Musik-Algorithmen tun sich mit Hardrockern und Hip-Hop-Hoerern schwer, 2021 (Der Standard).
  2. Musik-Algorithmen tun sich mit Hardrockern und Hip-Hop schwer, 2021 (Die Presse).
  3. Algorithmen treffen nicht jeden Geschmack, 2021 (science.orf.at).
  4. Ecco perche l’algoritmo delle app di streaming non indovina i tuoi gusti musicali, 2021 (Rolling Stone Italia).
  5. Hard rock and hip-hop fans get less relevant music streaming recommendations than pop listeners, 2021 (The Academic Times).
  6. Wie die Welt funktioniert: CS Talks. - AirCampus - Podcasts der Grazer Universitaeten, 2019.
  7. Chatter makes popular metric unreliable. Nature News Index, 2017
  8. Big Data and Data Science: Auf den Spuren der Zukunft. OCG Journal, 2016
  9. Ich bin Open Science! Der Bewegung ein Gesicht geben. YouTube
  10. ResearchGate Score: Good Example Of A Bad Metric. LSE Impact Blog, 2015
  11. Offene und datengetriebene Innovationen fuer Bildungsmedienanbieter. IPN Bibliothek Blog, 2015.