Welcome!
I am an enthusiastic computer scientist from Lüdenscheid and work as a PhD student and research associate in the Semantic Computing Group at the Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University. My research as part of the SAIL project ("SustAInable Life-cycle of Intelligent Socio-Technical Systems") deals with issues in the area of Question Answering over Linked Data, Semantic Web, Lexical Knowledge and Compositionality in AI. My research interests can be found at "research".
I graduated from TU Dortmund University with a Master of Science with honours in Computer Science (minor in German Studies) in March 2023. A short CV can be found at "about me".
I am always happy to exchange ideas with other researchers and like-minded people, whether for networking, possible collaborations, or discussing technical or other topics.

Research Interests
Question Answering over Linked Data
- Building a compositional Question Answering over Linked Data (QALD) pipeline based on Dependency-based Underspecified Discourse Representation Structures (DUDES) and lexical knowledge using the Lemon ontology, generating SPARQL queries for, e.g., DBpedia and Wikidata
- Combining the strengths of LLMs and symbolic approaches, as well as incorporating explainability by design
Lexcial Knowledge
- Leveraging lexical knowledge in QALD pipelines, e.g., for ontology matching and disambiguation
- AI-assisted lexicon creation for, e.g., supporting crowdsourcing projects as well as fully automatic lexicon generation
- Lexica based on the Lemon and LexInfo ontologies
Compositionality in AI
- Testing the limits of the compositional abilities of LLMs by operationalizing the systematicity and productivity properties as described by Szabó, Z. G. (2012)
- Development of a dataset and compositionality metric for testing the systematicity property of LLMs in the context of QALD, exploring both in-context learning and fine-tuning
Structure Generation & Information Extraction
- Using grammar-constrained decoding to, e.g.,
- extract outcomes from clinical trial abstracts, following the C-TrO ontology
- reliably generating structured output like SPARQL or Lemon lexical entries
Social Media Listening for Quality of Life Estimation
- Estimating the answers of cancer patients to quality of life questionnaires based on their posts in online healthcare communities using AI methods
- Special focus on breast cancer patients and the EORTC QLQ-C30 questiionnaire in combination with the QLQ-BR23 module
About me
Curriculum Vitae
Hobbies and Volunteer Work
Current
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Since 20152015-2016 participant of the annual events of Jugend hackt under the motto "Make the world a better place with code", since 2017 support as mentor
- Playing the piano since 2004 and the guitar since 2013
Former
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2020-2024During the Corona crisis participation in the #WirVsVirus-Hackathon of the German Federal Government as part of Teams "Machbarschaft", since then supporting the project in the area of bot hotline and fundraising, board member of Machbarschaft e.V. since 2022
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2014-2023Part of the editorial team of the "PORTAL" parish newspaper
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2017, 2018, 2019Visit of the Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig
- Valet of our Catholic Church St. Joseph and Medardus Lüdenscheid
- Scout at DPSG, tribe St. Medardus Lüdenscheid
- Kid Kune Do/Zhăngdà Kung Fu (youth form of Wing Chun Kung Fu)
Publications
A list of publications that I have contributed to:2025
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Sanchez-Graillet, O., Schmidt, D. M., Kullik, C., & Cimiano, P. (2025). Open challenges for the automatic synthesis of clinical trials. BMC Research Notes, 18(1), 50. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13104-025-07121-6
[tool] -
Schmidt, D. M., & Cimiano, P. (2025). Grammar-constrained decoding for structured information extraction with fine-tuned generative models applied to clinical trial abstracts. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 7, 1406857. https://doi.org/10.3389/frai.2024.1406857
[artifact] [repo]
2024
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Schmidt, D. M., Elahi, M. F., & Cimiano, P. (2025). Lexicalization is all you need: Examining the impact of lexical knowledge in a compositional QALD system. In M. Alam, M. Rospocher, M. van Erp, L. Hollink, & G. A. Gesese (Eds.), Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (pp. 102–122). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-77792-9_7
[preprint] [artifact] [repo] [docker] - Schmidt, D. M., & Cimiano, P. (2024). Question answering from healthcare fora. DataNinja sAIOnARA Conference, DataNinja sAIOnARA 2024 Conference. https://doi.org/10.11576/DATANINJA-1159
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Witte, C.*, Schmidt, D. M.*, & Cimiano, P. (2024). Comparing generative and extractive approaches to information extraction from abstracts describing randomized clinical trials. Journal of Biomedical Semantics, 15(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13326-024-00305-2
[artifact] [repo]
2021
- Jasper, M., Schlüter, M., Schmidt, D., & Steffen, B. (2021). Every component matters: Generating parallel verification benchmarks with hardness guarantees. In T. Margaria & B. Steffen (Eds.), Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Tools and Trends (Vol. 12479, pp. 242–263). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83723-5_16
- Howar, F., Jasper, M., Mues, M., Schmidt, D., & Steffen, B. (2021). The RERS challenge: Towards controllable and scalable benchmark synthesis. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer, 23(6), 917–930. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10009-021-00617-z
Articles and Reports (German)
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19.10.2023SchülerUni feiert 20-jähriges Bestehen Picture: Martina Hengesbach/TU Dortmund. More publishments: Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2 Screenshot 3
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17.10.202320 Jahre SchülerUni - Meine Erfahrungen als Schülerstudent an der TU Dortmund. More publishments: Screenshot 1 Screenshot 2
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01.12.2020Informatik an der TU Dortmund studieren? David erzählt, warum. More publishments: TU Dortmund
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04.06.2020"Machbarschaft" schlägt Brücke zwischen Bedürftigen und Freiwilligen David Schmidt, Informatikstudent und Deutschlandstipendiat an der TU Dortmund, engagiert sich im Team "Machbarschaft". More publishments: PDF
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05.10.2018"SchülerUni der Technischen Universität Dortmund feiert ihr 15-jähriges Bestehen". More publishments: TU Dortmund University, focus.de (no longer online).
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26.10.2015"David Schmidt aus Lüdenscheid – Schüler und erfolgreicher Student der TU Dortmund", Article Picture: "Prof. Metin Tolan, Prorektor Studium der TU Dortmund, zeichnete David Schmidt für sein erfolgreiches Studium aus." Picture: Roland Baege/TU Dortmund. More publishments: Westfalenpost, Der Westen, TU Dortmund University (no longer online).
- Portrait by "Talentscouting" of TU Dortmund University
- Portrait by project "Stipendienkultur Ruhr"
Contact
I am always happy to get in contact with other enthusiastic and like-minded people. I can be reached best by an E-Mail to contact [at] davidmschmidt.deResearch
Social Media & Co.
Office
CITEC 2-310
Cognitive Interaction Technology Center (CITEC)
Universität Bielefeld
Inspiration 1
33619 Bielefeld
Germany
Postal Address
David M. Schmidt
Cognitive Interaction Technology Center (CITEC)
Universität Bielefeld
Inspiration 1
33619 Bielefeld
Germany