Unraveling Graph Counterfactual Explainability: from Theoretical Foundations to Technical Mastery (ECML-PKDD 2025)

Tutorial at the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML-PKDD 2025), September 2025, Porto, Portugal.

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have proven highly effective in graph-related tasks, including Traffic Modeling, Learning Physical Simulations, Protein Modeling, and Large-scale Recommender Systems. Their ``black-box’’ nature, however, limits interpretability. This half-day tutorial covered Graph Counterfactual Explainability from theoretical foundations to technical mastery.

Speakers

  • Bardh Prenkaj (TU Munich)
  • Andrea D’Angelo (University of L’Aquila)
  • Stratis Limnios
  • Mario Alfonso Prado-Romero
  • Giovanni Stilo (Luiss University of Rome)

Topics Covered

  • Formal definitions and foundations of GCE
  • Taxonomy and categorization of methods
  • Evaluation metrics and benchmarking with GRETEL
  • Hands-on exercises
  • Latest advancements and research frontiers

Based on the ACM Computing Survey: A Survey on Graph Counterfactual Explanations: Definitions, Methods, Evaluation, and Research Challenges (ACM CSUR, 2024).

Full event page on AIIM Lab