The Chair of Knowledge Processing in Hybrid AI Systems at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Osnabrück, headed by Prof. Dr. Till Mossakowski, focuses on ontologies, hybrid AI, and spatial reasoning. They were part of several major open-source software projects related to energy system analysis and were responsible for the software side of setting up the Open Energy Platform (OEP) and the large databases behind it. The former university of Prof. Mossakowski, the University of Magdeburg, currently acts as a neutral player, hosting the OEP and the databases. As part of NFDI4energy, there are plans to relocate the servers to OFFIS.

The chair also contributes ontology expertise to the development of formal ontologies. In particular, the development of the Open Energy Ontology (OEO), which is being reused and further developed in NFDI4energy, and its Steering Committee (OEO-SC) is coordinated by the chair.

In addition, the chair conducts research on neurosymbolic integration, specifically on the connection between high-quality ontological background knowledge and deep learning methods. Large language models (LLMs) and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) are also used in this context.

Task Areas

• University of Osnabrück is involved in Task Area 4 and is responsible for Measure 4.6 which is concerned about the interoperability of energy related ontologies, in NFDI4Energy and beyond. This includes finding common standards and principles for the ontologies with respect to format, publication or development processes. Furthermore, it is addressing the challenges of defining meaningful and non-overlapping scopes between ontologies. Similar to OBO Foundry or IOF, an umbrella initiative called Open Energy Ontologies Foundry (OEO Foundry) was started in beginning of 2025 to coordinate these approaches.

Involvement

The University of Osnabrück is not part of any other NFDI consortia.