Research Grants

DeFiTrace (10/2023-09/2025), FFG KIRAS, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. The DeFiTrace project aims to create algorithmic methods to detect illegal transactions in cross-ledger DeFi systems.

AMALFI (03/2023-08/2025), FFG - Bridge, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. This project will investigate the applicability and effectiveness of automated graph learnig techniques in large multilayer cryptoasset transaction networks.

INTERACTIVE (04/2021-03/2023), FFG - Production of the Future, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. This project will design and develop workflows and algorithmic methods that enable machine learning in distributed edge computing environments despite missing or insufficient ground-truth data

KRYPTOMONITOR (10/2020-09/2022), FFG KIRAS, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. This project will develop generic cryptoasset analysis methods that support the analysis of smart contracts and off-chain transactions in addition to native cryptocurrency transactions.

COGNITUS (10/2019-09/2022), FFG - ICT of the future, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. The goal of COGNITUS is to provide a Deep Learning pipeline equipped with a set of generic algorithmic building blocks for predicting outages of machineries based on sensor data streams.

Austrian Blockchain Center (ABC) (10/2019-10/2023), FFG COMET, Area Lead Data Science Methods for Blockchain Analytics & Predictions. The Center's mission is to be the one-stop-shop Austrian Research Center for Blockchain (and related) technologies to be applied in industrial applications like industry 4.0 / IoT as well as financial, energy, logistics, government and administrative applications. Those new applications and business models resulting from collaborations between established players, innovative startups and top R&D institutes will be the key for the creation of new jobs and establishing Austria among the top ten innovative countries in Europe.

TRAVELOGUES (04/2018-03/2021), FWF DACH, Co-Principal Investigator. This interdisciplinary international (DACH FWF-DFG) digital humanities project aims at gaining insight into the perception of the Other (focusing on the Orient) by analyzing an extensive collection of German language travelogues covering the period from 1500 until 1875. It will bring together a team of researchers from history, computer science, as well as library and information science from Austria and Germany. They will jointly develop a novel mixed qualitative and quantitative method for the serial analysis of large-scale text corpora and apply that method on a comprehensive corpus of travelogues originally published in the German language (ca. 3,000 - 3,500 books) and drawn from the Austrian Books Online (ABO) project (ca. 600,000 books) of the Austrian National Library.

VIRTCRIME (01/2018-06/2020), FFG KIRAS, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. The goal of the VIRTCRIME project lies in the development of novel algorithms and methods for tracing criminal transactions in post-Bitcoin era cryptocurrencies, while considering illegitimate activities in Darknet market places. Orthogonally, the project will provide novel criminological procedures and law enforcement approaches, and investigate legal pre-conditions and consequences.

TITANIUM (05/2017-05/2020), EU Horizon 2020, Senior Scientist. TITANIUM will research, develop, and validate novel data-driven techniques and solutions designed to support Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) charged with investigating criminal or terrorist activities involving virtual currencies and/or underground markets in the darknet.

GraphSense (09/2015-11/2017), FFG - IKT der Zukunft, Project Coordinator, Principal Investigator. The goal of the GraphSense project is to research and develop novel algorithmic solutions for detecting anomalies in large-scale, dynamically changing graph datasets. The focus will be on developing anomaly detection techniques for transaction networks constructed from virtual currencies (Bitcoin) and investigate their applicability for enterprise financial fraud detection settings.

BITCRIME (10/2014-09/2016), Bilateral: BMBF (DE) + BMVIT (AT), Scientist, WP Lead. Research and develop methods to prevent and prosecute organised crime in virtual currencies. The project also investigates novel Anti Money Laundering (AML) strategies taking into account the pseudo-anonymity of Bitcoin users.

ResourceSync (12/2011-04/2014), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Researcher. Research, develop, prototype, test, and deploy mechanisms for the large-scale synchronization of web resources. Building on the OAI-PMH strategies for synchronizing metadata, this project will enhance that specification using modern web technologies, but will allow for the synchronization of the objects themselves, not just their metadata.

SciLink (03/2011-02/2014), EU PEOPLE IOF (Marie Curie), Research Fellow (beneficiary). Research on (i) interactive links discovery in scholarly publications, (ii) strategies for maintaining link integrity, and (iii) novel Web-based resource aggregation and presentation interfaces for scholarly publication workflows.

Maphub (12/2011-02/2013), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Principal Investigator. Examine application of the Open Annotation Specification in the context of digitized historical maps. Design and build a collaborative Web environment in which scholars and citizens can contribute their knowledge to digitized high-resolution online maps. We experimented with designs that integrate the annotation process with the re-use of data from public data sources, such as Wikipedia.

MEKETRE (07/2009-12/2012), Austrian Research Fund (FWF), Proposal Co-author. An interdisciplinary project with the Institute for Egyptology at the University of Vienna. It aimed at building a collaborative Web-based solution for efficiently organizing the collected and digitized content objects from the Egyptian middle kingdom period by means of open collaboratively developed vocabularies.