Metadata Research Center

What We Do

Leading and innovating metadata solutions for pressing information/data-oriented challenges

The MRC team circa 2024

CCI's Metadata Research Center (MRC) advances research in metadata, semantics and ontologies. Current MRC research initiatives target digital data, data-at-risk, and knowledge organization via leadership and engagement in Dryad, two HIVE datanet collaborations, the DCMI Science & Metadata Community, the DataONE/Preservation & Metadata Working Group, and the CODATA/Data-at-Risk Working Group.

MRC's information environs introduce issues requiring rigorous investigation of metadata generation techniques, applications, knowledge organization systems, linked data, standards, and more. The MRC leads and participates in research addressing significant questions and discovering metadata solutions for today's most pressing information management challenges.

Research Faculty & PhD Students

  • Jane Greenberg, Alice B. Kroeger Professor, center director
  • Yuan An, associate professor
  • David Breen, professor
  • Xiaohua Tony Hu, professor
  • Mat Kelly, Assistant professor
  • Scott McClellan, PhD candidate
  • Joel Pepper, PhD candidate
  • Kio Polson, PhD student
  • Chris Rauch, PhD candidate

Recent Publications

  • Greenberg, J., Boveda-Aguirre, P., …, McClellan, S., Tadmor, E. (2025). Towards MatCore: A Unified Metadata Standard for Materials Science. In: Sfakakis, M., Garoufallou, E., Damigos, M., Salaba, A., Papatheodorou, C. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research. MTSR 2024. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2331. Springer, Cham. Link to paper
  • Polson, K., Potapova, M., Meena, U., Peiper, C., Brown, J., Agar, J., & Greenberg, J. (2025). Making Sense of Metadata Mess: Alignment and Risk Assessment for Diatom Data Use Case. In: Sfakakis, M., Garoufallou, E., Damigos, M., Salaba, A., Papatheodorou, C. (eds) Metadata and Semantic Research. MTSR 2024. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 2331. Springer, Cham. Link to paper
  • An, Y., Kolanupaka, S., An, J., Ma, M., Chhatwal, U., Kalinowski, A., Rogers, M., & Smith, B. (2024). Is the Lecture Engaging? Lecture Sentiment Analysis for Knowledge Graph-Supported Intelligent Lecturing Assistant (ILA) System. IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Print), 3358–3366. Link to paper
  • Greenberg, J., Polson, K., McClellan, S., Zhao, X., Kalinowski, A., & An, Y. (2024, September 17). Enhancing semantic interoperability across materials science with HIVE4MAT. The 1st International Workshop on Semantic Materials Science (SeMatS), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Link to paper
  • Pepper, J., Jones, E., Zhao, X., Furst, J., Langlois, K., Uribe-Romo, F., Breen, D., Greenberg, J. (2024). AI-Ready Data: Knowledge Extraction from Archival Lab Notebooks. IEEE International Conference on Big Data, pages 2489–2495. Link to paper
  • Polson, K., Greenberg, J., and McClellan, S. (2024). Aligning Keywords from Long Form Prose to Controlled Vocabulary. Presentation, Code4Lib, Ann Arbor Michigan, May 14-15, 2024. Link to paper
  • Balk, M., Bradley, J., Maruf, M., Altintaş, B., Bakis, Y., Bart Jr, H., Breen, D., Florian, C., Greenberg, J., Karpatne, A., Karnani, K., Mabee, P., Pepper, J., Jebbia, D., Tabarin, T., Wang, X., Lapp, H. (2024). A FAIR and modular image-based workflow for knowledge discovery in the emerging field of imageomics. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Link to paper
  • McClellan, S., de Oliveira, I. M., Rauch, C., Adriaenssens, S., & Greenberg, J. (2024). Exploratory analysis of a crowdsourcing metadata tool for building terminological consensus in civil engineering. Automation in Construction, 166, 105627-. Link to paper
  • Zhao, X., Langlois, K., Furst, J., An, Y., Hu, X., Gualdron, D. G., Uribe-Romo, F., & Greenberg, J. (2024). Research evolution of metal organic frameworks: A scientometric approach with human-in-the-loop. Journal of Data and Information Science (Warsaw, Poland), 9(3), 44–64. Link to paper
  • Breen, D. (2024). Image Informatics for Metadata Extraction and Verification of Museum Specimen Images. Advances in Digital Media Workshop Series. June 2024.
  • McClellan, S., An, Y., Zhao, X., Lin, X., & Greenberg, J. (2024). Characterizing Semantic Ambiguity of the Materials Science Ontologies. In Knowledge Organization for Resilience in Times of Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities (1st ed., pp. 129–144). Ergon – ein Verlag in der Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. Link to paper

Visit the MRC’s website for more information