Michaël Thomazo
Inria Researcher · ENS–PSL Adjunct Professor
Research
I am a researcher at Inria, in the Valda team at DI ENS (École Normale Supérieure, Université PSL, CNRS, Inria), and Adjunct Professor at ENS–PSL. My research lies in knowledge representation and reasoning, especially in its interactions with database theory and database systems — ontology-based query answering, existential rules, description logics, and knowledge graphs.
Recent work looks at temporal reasoning in description logics, termination of the chase for existential rules, and the theory of conjunctive-query answering over expressive rule sets
Selected projects. Expand (ANR, coordinator) · Pagoda · CQFD (local responsibility at ENS).
Positions
- 2022–today
- Adjunct ProfessorENS–PSL, Paris
- 2018–today
- Inria Researcher, Valda teamDI ENS, École Normale Supérieure, Université PSL, CNRS, Inria — Paris
- 2015–2018
- Inria Researcher, Cedar teamInria, LIX, École Polytechnique — Palaiseau
- 2013–2015
- PostdocComputational Logic Group of Sebastian Rudolph, TU Dresden
- 2010–2013
- PhD student, GraphIK teamLIRMM, Université de Montpellier 2 — supervised by Marie-Laure Mugnier and Jean-François Baget
Teaching
- 2018–today
- PSL Databases (L3) · Formal languages, computability, complexity (L3) · Knowledge graphs, description logics, reasoning on data (M2)
- 2022–2024
- Université Paris CitéDescription Logics and Reasoning on Data — M2 LMFI
Earlier teaching (2010–2019)
- 2018–2019
- Télécom ParisTechFormal Language, Complexity — L3
- 2015–2017
- École PolytechniqueDatabases — L3
- 2014, 2015, 2023
- ESSLLISummer school course on ontology-based query answering — Barcelona, Athens, Oslo
- 2013–2014
- TU DresdenExistential Rules
- 2010–2013
- Université Montpellier 2Teaching Assistant — Introduction to algorithms (L1); Algorithms, Complexity, Computability (M1)
Publications
Author ordering is alphabetical by default. I aim to submit few papers at major conferences, and occasionally to smaller community venues. Full list on DBLP and HAL.
- 2026J.-F. Baget, M. Bienvenu, M.-L. Mugnier, M. Thomazo. Answering Path Queries under Linear and Guarded Existential Rules. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research
- 2025C. Bourgaux, A. R. Gnatenko, M. Thomazo. Analysing Temporal Reasoning in Description Logics Using Formal Grammars. ECAI’25.Outstanding Paper Award
- 2025L. Larroque, P. Ostropolski-Nalewaja, M. Thomazo. No Cliques Allowed: The Next Step Towards BDD/FC Conjecture. PODS’25.
- 2021C. Bourgaux, D. Carral, M. Krötzsch, S. Rudolph, M. Thomazo. Capturing Homomorphism-Closed Decidable Queries with Existential Rules. KR’21.Ray Reiter Best Paper Award
Student supervision
PhDQuentin Manière (2019–2022) · Lucas Larroque (2023–present) · Félix Chavelli (2024–present)
M2Maxime Buron (2017) · Quentin Manière (2019) · Sarah Benamara (2023) · Antonia Labarca (2023) · Lucas Larroque (2023) · Laura Gruson (2024)
M1Lucas Larroque (2021) · Gaia Carenini (2022) · Laura Gruson (2023) · Jeanne Coschieri (2025) · Paul Raphaël (2025)
L3Vincent Peth (2022) · Laura Gruson (2022)
PhD thesis committees
- Alexandra Rogova, Design Principles of Property Graph Languages: A Theoretical and Experimental Study, supervised by Amélie Gheerbrant and Leonid Libkin, Université Paris Cité (2024).
- Hui Yang, Knowledge Extraction from Large Ontologies, supervised by Nicole Bidoit-Tollu and Yue Ma, Université Paris-Saclay (2023).
- Yann Ramusat, The Semiring-Based Provenance Framework for Graph Databases, supervised by Pierre Senellart and Silviu Maniu, ENS-PSL (2022).
Community & service
- Co-director of Doctoral School 386, from July 2025.
- Regular program committee member of AAAI, ECAI, IJCAI and KR; member of the IJCAI Program Committee Board, 2022–2025.
- Member of the "Comité de Suivi des Doctorants" at DI ENS, 2022–present (and at Inria Saclay, 2017–2018).
- Local responsibility at ENS for CQFD.
- Signatory of No Free View? No review!.
I try to publish on open-access venues whenever reasonably possible, and support the idea that publicly funded research should be publicly accessible. Consult Antoine Amarilli’s page for an interesting read on academia's problems.
Distinctions
- Outstanding Paper Award, ECAI 2025.
- Ray Reiter Best Paper Award, KR 2021.
- Best paper award, RR 2012 and RR 2016.
- Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.
- AFIA thesis prize, 2014.
- Runner-up, Gilles Kahn – SIF thesis prize, 2014.