Dr. V.R. (Richard) Benjamins is Director of Business Intelligence at Telefonica Digital, the newly created digital branch of Telefoncia. Before that he was responsible for Global BI programs across TEF footprint, and Director of User Modelling, where he was responsible for research and development in areas related to customer intelligence. His responsibilities included the development and technology transfer of products in areas including data mining, big data, targeted advertising, personalisation, and privacy. Richard is a frequent speaker on big data, BI and analytics events. Previously he was Director of Technological Strategy at the same company which he joined in July 2007.

Before that he was director and board member at Intelligent Software Components (iSOCO), which he co-founded in 1999 and he led its international positioning as a Semantic Web company. Based on his work, iSOCO were granted the National Award for Computer Science. Dr. Benjamins has held positions at the Technical University of Madrid, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, the University of Paris-South, France, and the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona.

He has published over 100 scientific articles (http://www.researchgate.net/profile/V_Richard_Benjamins/) in books, journals and proceedings, covering areas such as artificial intelligence, knowledge-based systems, semantic web and technology transfer. He has been guest editor of several journal special-issues and co-chair of numerous international workshops and conferences. He is on advisory boards of several start-ups and international research projects. He is general chair of the K-CAP 2013 Conference.