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Dr Lars Vogt has been Head of the Centre for Biodiversity Knowledge Science (zcb) at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB) since January 2026.
His research focuses on ontologies, knowledge graphs, and semantic modelling, with the aim of making biodiversity knowledge more formally structured, machine-actionable, and interoperable. A central concern of his work is the development of theoretical and practical frameworks for FAIR and CLEAR data, enabling scientific knowledge to be shared, reused, and understood across disciplinary and institutional boundaries. He has also conducted extensive research on granularity perspectives and their role in conceptual modelling, work that is of particular relevance for representing and reasoning about highly complex structures such as organisms and ecosystems, where knowledge must be integrated coherently across multiple levels of biological organizsation. At the LIB, as part of the zcb team, he contributes expertise in knowledge science and conceptual modelling research to strengthen the institute's capacity to represent and link complex biological knowledge at scale.
After completing his studies and doctorate at the University of Göttingen and Bielefeld respectively, Lars Vogt held a series of postdoctoral research positions in zoology and evolutionary biology at the Freie Universität Berlin, Harvard University, and the University of Bonn. He subsequently moved into the field of research infrastructure and knowledge organisation, holding positions at the TIB Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology in Hannover, where he led the area Curation & Community Buidling for the Open Research Knowledge Graph and ontology-based approaches to interoperability in materials science and in the manufacturing industry.
In addition to his scientific activities, Lars Vogt contributes to numerous national and international scientific bodies, including the FAIR Mappings Working Group of the Research Data Alliance, the Open Energy Ontology Steering Committee, and the EnArgus Advisory Board.
Biodiversity knowledge is only as powerful as our ability to connect, understand, and use it. The Centre for Biodiversity Knowledge Science (zcb) exists to make that possible.
The zcb conducts research in biodiversity knowledge science, developing the scientific foundations for how biodiversity data and knowledge is semantically modelled, represented, integrated, and made machine-actionable, while remaining intuitively interpretable and cognitively accessible to human users. This includes work on ontologies and knowledge graphs, semantic interoperability, FAIR and CLEAR principles, and the modelling of information granularity across biological levels of organisation, from DNA and individual specimens and their traits to taxa and ecosystems.
Building on this research, the Centre provides services and infrastructure that support digitisation and research across the LIB. This includes tools and pipelines for the digitisation and quality control of collections, standardised workflows for data publication and reuse, and persistent identifier and citation mechanisms that ensure biodiversity data and knowledge remain findable, attributable, and usable over the long term. A central element of this infrastructure will be the LIB Open Knowledge Space, a shared, knowledge infrastructure that connects collections, research outputs, and environmental data into a coherent, semantically structured and fully interoperable whole. This enables urgent questions about biodiversity change, where species are declining, how ecosystems are shifting, what evidence links these changes to environmental drivers, to be answered more reliably and at scale.
The Centre also advances human-centred AI and hybrid intelligence approaches, in which AI-assisted tools support data integration, exploration, and discovery, while scientific authority and curatorial responsibility remain with human experts. In doing so, it acts as a cross-sectional innovation hub connecting research, collections, and communication across the LIB.
Publications
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2026/05
Actionable Understanding: Action Units for Bridging the Knowledge-Action Gap in Post-FAIR Knowledge Infrastructures
2026/03
The Semantic Ladder: A Framework for Progressive Formalization of Natural Language Content for Knowledge Graphs and AI Systems
2026/01
Rosetta Statements: simplifying FAIR knowledge graph construction with a user-centred approach
Database, 2026
2025/09
The Grammar of FAIR: A Granular Architecture of Semantic Units for FAIR Semantics, Inspired by Biology and Linguistics
2025/09
Ecolink: Towards a Knowledge Graph Schema for Complex Environmental Systems
2025/08
A Framework for FAIR and CLEAR Ecological Data and Knowledge: Semantic Units for Synthesis and Causal Modelling
2025/04
Suggestions for extending the FAIR Principles based on a linguistic perspective on semantic interoperability
Scientific data, 1, 12
2025/03
Towards Machine-Actionable Scientific Knowledge as FAIR Digital Objects
2024/07
Rosetta Statements: Simplifying FAIR Knowledge Graph Construction with a User-Centered Approach
2024/07
Rethinking OWL Expressivity: Semantic Units for FAIR and Cognitively Interoperable Knowledge Graphs Why OWLs don't have to understand everything they say
2024/05
FAIR 2.0: Extending the FAIR Guiding Principles to Address Semantic Interoperability
2024/01
Scalable data pipeline: Ontology-based OPC UA data access for the industrial internet of things
2023/11
FAIR Knowledge Graphs with Semantic Units: a Prototype
2023/11
Building an atlas of knowledge for invasion biology and beyond! 2nd enKORE-INAS Workshop
Research Ideas and Outcomes, 9
2023/07
Converging on a Semantic Interoperability Framework for the European Data Space for Science, Research and Innovation (EOSC)
2023/07
Towards a Rosetta Stone for (meta)data: Learning from natural language to improve semantic and cognitive interoperability
2023/04
Knowledge Graph Building Blocks: An easy-to-use Framework for developing FAIREr Knowledge Graphs
2023/04
Formalizing Invertebrate Morphological Data: A Descriptive Model for Cuticle-Based Skeleto-Muscular Systems, an Ontology for Insect Anatomy, and their Potential Applications in Biodiversity Research and Informatics
Systematic Biology, 5, 72
2023/01
The FAIREr Guiding Principles: Organizing data and metadata into semantically meaningful types of FAIR Digital Objects to increase their human explorability and cognitive interoperability
2023/01
Semantic Units: Organizing knowledge graphs into semantically meaningful units of representation
2022/03
SKG4EOSC - Scholarly Knowledge Graphs for EOSC: Establishing a backbone of knowledge graphs for FAIR Scholarly Information in EOSC
Research Ideas and Outcomes, 8
2022/01
Formalizing Insect Morphological Data: A Model-Based, Extensible Insect Anatomy Ontology and Its Potential Applications in Biodiversity Research and Informatics
2021/12
Phenotyping in the era of genomics: MaTrics—a digital character matrix to document mammalian phenotypic traits
Mammalian Biology, 1, 102
2021/05
ORKG: Facilitating the Transfer of Research Results with the Open Research Knowledge Graph
Research Ideas and Outcomes, 7
2020/11
Improving Access to Scientific Literature with Knowledge Graphs
BIBLIOTHEK Forschung und Praxis, 3, 44
2020/08
Toward Representing Research Contributions in Scholarly Knowledge Graphs Using Knowledge Graph Cells
2019/06
From Data to Knowledge: A semantic knowledge graph application for curating specimen data
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 3
2019/06
FAIR.ReD: Semantic knowledge graph infrastructure for the life sciences
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 3
2019/06
Using Named Graphs and Knowledge Graph Template Patterns for Efficiently Organizing FAIR Anatomy Data and Metadata
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 3
2019/06
Anatomy Knowledge Graphs: Toward FAIR morphological data
Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 3
2019/01
Bona Fideness of Material Entities and Their Boundaries
2017/04
Levels and building blocks—towards a domain granularity framework for the life sciences
2017/03
Towards a semantic approach to numerical tree inference in phylogenetics
Cladistics, 2, 34
2016/11
Assessing similarity: on homology, characters and the need for a semantic approach to non‐evolutionary comparative homology
Cladistics, 5, 33
2016/09
Levels metaphor and building blocks—towards a domain granularity framework for the life sciences
2016/08
Discovering the genomic basis of morphological and physiological differences between mammalian species with Forward Genomics
Mammalian Biology, 81
2015/12
Emerging semantics to link phenotype and environment
PeerJ, 3
2015/07
Assessing similarity: a semantic approach to non-evolutionary comparative homology
2015/01
Finding Our Way through Phenotypes
PLoS Biology, 1, 13
2014/01
20 Documenting Morphology: Morph·D·Base
2013/09
eScience and the need for data standards in the life sciences: in pursuit of objectivity rather than truth
Systematics and Biodiversity, 3, 11
2013/07
The need for data standards in zoomorphology
Journal of Morphology, 7, 274
2011/12
Signs and terminology: Science caught between language and perception
Bionomina, 1, 4
2010/05
Spatio-structural granularity of biological material entities
BMC Bioinformatics, 1, 11
2010/01
Invertebrate neurophylogeny: suggested terms and definitions for a neuroanatomical glossary
Frontiers in Zoology, 1, 7
2009/11
A multilocus approach to harvestman (Arachnida: Opiliones) phylogeny with emphasis on biogeography and the systematics of Laniatores
Cladistics, 4, 26
2008/12
Learning from Linnaeus: towards developing the foundation for a general structure concept for morphology
Zootaxa, 1, 1950
2008/12
The future role of bio-ontologies for developing a general data standard in biology: chance and challenge for zoo-morphology
Zoomorphology, 3, 128
2007/10
The unfalsifiability of cladograms and its consequences
Cladistics, 1, 24
2007/05
A falsificationist perspective on the usage of process frequencies in phylogenetics
Zoologica scripta, 4, 36
2005/01
Molecular phylogeny of lugworms (Annelida, Arenicolidae) inferred from three genes
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 3, 34
2003/08
A contribution to sedentary polychaete phylogeny using 18S rRNA sequence data
Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, 3, 41
2003/05
New insights into polychaete phylogeny (Annelida) inferred from 18S rDNA sequences
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 2, 29
2002/01
Weighting indels as phylogenetic markers of 18S rDNA sequences in Diptera and Strepsiptera
Organisms, Diversity & Evolution, 4, 2
2002/01
Testing and weighting characters
Organisms, Diversity & Evolution, 4, 2