I am an associate professor at the Faculty of Computer Science of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (FUB). I received a M.Sc. degree in CS from the TU Vienna (1989) and a Ph.D. degree in CS from the RWTH Aachen (1996).

My research interests include data intensive systems with a particular focus on advanced database technologies for processing time and space referenced data, data warehousing and analysis, and approximate query answering.

I am a member of the Center for Database and Information Systems (DIS) at the FUB. DIS pursues research in the field of advanced data management and analysis technologies. Research methods include fundamental research, system development, and empirical evaluation. The research problems originate from applications e.g. in eGovernment, eTourism, and Health-care Informatics.

Research Projects

• AQuiST: The project aims to advance current query processing technologies in spatial network databases, concentrating mainly on the following queries: (1) Isochrones to determine all space points from where a query point is reachable within a given time span; they are used, for example, in urban planning to assess the coverage of a city with services such as schools. (2) Sequenced spatio-temporal aggregation to compute aggregations over moving objects in road networks, e.g., to determine the traffic density. [more]

• FITTS: The fast development of GPS technologies and GIS-based services offers new possibilities for advanced services in the tourism sector. In this project we investigate and develop solutions for the following problems: interactive itinerary planning with user preferences and domain constraints, mining historical trips to discover the most interesting (sequences of) points of interests (POIs), search for similar trips.

• MEDAN: This project aims at creating competences in data warehousing and analysis technologies for the health care sector. A specific focus is on multidimensional modeling of time-varying data, in particular (slowly) changing dimensions, and on complex event set pattern matching, where the order of matching events is irrelevant. MEDAN is a collaboration with the Hospital of Meran and builds on real-world use cases from the hospital. [more]

• Finished projects: eBZ, eMayor

Selected Publications (Full list, DBLP)

1. A. Dignös, M.H. Böhlen, J. Gamper. Temporal alignment. SIGMOD 2012.
2. B. Cadonna, J. Gamper, M.H. Böhlen. Efficient event pattern matching with match windows. KDD 2012.
3. J. Gordevicius, J. Gamper, M.H. Böhlen. Parsimonious temporal aggregation. VLDBJ 2012.
4. N. Augsten, M. Böhlen, C. Dyreson, J. Gamper. Windowed pq-grams for approximate joins of data-centric XML. VLDBJ 2012.
5. I. Timko, M. Böhlen, J. Gamper. Sequenced spatiotemporal aggregation for coarse query granularities. VLDBJ 2011. [pdf]
6. M. Akinde, M.H. Böhlen, D. Chatziantoniou, J. Gamper. Theta-constrained multi-dimensional aggregation. IS 2011.
7. B. Cadonna, J. Gamper, M. Böhlen. Sequenced event set pattern matching. EDBT 2011.
8. N. Augsten, M. Böhlen, J. Gamper. The pq-gram distance between ordered labeled trees. TODS 2010. [pdf]
9. I. Timko, M. Böhlen, J. Gamper. Sequenced spatio-temporal aggregation in road networks. EDBT 2009.
10. N. Augsten, M. Böhlen, C. Dyreson, J. Gamper. Approximate joins for data centric XML. ICDE 2008.
11. N. Augsten, M. Böhlen, J. Gamper. An incrementally maintainable index for approximate lookups in hierarchical data. VLDB 2006. [pdf]
12. M. Böhlen, J. Gamper, C.S. Jensen. An algebraic framework for temporal attribute characteristics. AMAI 2006. [pdf]
13. M. Böhlen, J. Gamper, C.S. Jensen. Multi-dimensional aggregation for temporal data. EDBT 2006. [pdf]
14. N. Augsten, M. Böhlen, J. Gamper. Approximate matching of hierarchical data using pq-grams. VLDB 2005. [pdf]

Teaching

I am teaching the following courses:

• Database Warehouse and Data Mining, MSc students, Winter term
• Seminars in Databases, BSc/MSc students, Winter term
• Database Management Systems, BSc students, Summer term

Proposals for BSc/MSc theses are available here. Contact me if you are interested in one of these topics and want to do a thesis under my supervision.