Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have become a central tool for learning on graph-structured data, yet their applicability to real-world systems remains limited by key challenges such as scalability, temporality, directionality, data incompleteness, and structural uncertainty. This thesis introduces a series of models addressing these limitations: SIGN for scalable graph learning, TGN for temporal graphs, Dir-GNN for directed and heterophilic networks, Feature Propagation (FP) for learning with missing node features, and NuGget for game-theoretic structural inference. Together, these contributions bridge the gap between academic benchmarks and industrial-scale graphs, enabling the use of GNNs in domains such as social and recommender systems.
@article{arxiv.2510.21994,
title = {Deep Learning on Real-World Graphs},
author = {Emanuele Rossi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.21994},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
The thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computing at Imperial College London (February 2024), under the supervision of Prof. Michael M. Bronstein. It includes work published at ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, and the Learning on Graphs Conference