Category Archives: Events

Presentation of DEI’s Master Programmes

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The Department of Informatics Engineering will promote a session aimed to introduce the master programmes hosted by this department. The session will be held on Wednesday afternoon, February 14, in FEUP Auditorium.
It will be an opportunity for undergraduate students to find out details about these masters, their areas of study, employability and the prospects associated with attending a second cycle of studies.
This session aims to provide guidance and clarification, thus making the choice a little easier when it comes to submitting an application.

Programme
14:45 | Reception of participants
15:00 | Opening Session
15:15 | Presentation M.EIC – Master in Informatics and Computing Engineering (Prof. Rui Rodrigues)
15:30 | Presentation M.IA – Master in Artificial Intelligence (Prof. João Cardoso/ Prof. João Pedro Pedroso)
15:45 | Presentation MM – Master in Multimedia (Prof. Jorge Barbosa)
16:00 | Presentation MCI – Master in Information Science (Prof. Carla Teixeira Lopes)
16:15 | Presentation MESW – Master in Software Engineering (Prof. João Pascoal Faria)
16:30 | Presentation MECD – Master in Data Science and Engineering (Prof. José Luís Borges)
16:45 | Q&A (with intervention from the secretariat)

The session is free and does not require registration. Everyone is invited!

DEI TALKS | “Architectures for building Extraordinary Software” with Joseph Yoder, Graziela Simone Tonin, Neil Harrison and Filipe Correia

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When building complex systems, it can be all too easy to primarily focus on features and overlook software qualities, specifically those related to the architecture. Pressure to adapt to and shape the market requires organizations to add new features, accommodate new interactions, and have new teams work on adapting the software. Some believe that by simply following Agile practices—starting as fast as possible, keeping code clean, and having lots of tests—a good architecture will magically emerge. While an architecture will emerge, if there is not enough attention paid to the architecture and the code, technical debt, and design problems will creep in until it becomes muddy, making it hard to deliver new features quickly and reliably. Sometimes a straightforward software architecture that starts out small when communication is easy can support guided, incremental architectural changes and can gradually evolve with its environment, remaining fit for its purposes. Other times it is not so simple: the initial software architecture can be poorly suited for supporting required changes, or the accumulation of suboptimal architectural decisions (also known as architectural technical debt) can be too severe. It is essential to have a sustainable architecture that can evolve through the project life-cycle. Sustainable architecture requires ongoing attention, especially when there are evolving priorities, a lot of technical risks, and many dependencies. This will be a roundtable spirited discussion by invited panelists and participants discussing architectural considerations for designing systems, specifically on architectures for building excellent software.

“Architectures for building Extraordinary Software” will be presented February 7, 15:00-16:15, in room B033 and will be moderated by Carlos Duarte (DEI).

 

Short Bios:

 “Joseph (Joe) Yoder is a research collaborator at IME/USP, president and a fellow of the Hillside Group (www.hillside.net), a group dedicated to improving the quality of software development, and is a founder and principal of the Refactory (www.refactory.com), a company focused on software architecture, design, implementation, consulting, and mentoring on all facets of software development. He is best known as an author of the “Big Ball of Mud” pattern, illuminating fallacies in software architecture. Joe is also a co-author of “A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game”; which includes 94 patterns and 2 pattern languages about getting the most out of Scrum. Joe teaches and mentors developers on agile and lean practices, architecture, flexible systems, clean design, patterns, refactoring, and testing. Joe has presented many tutorials and talks, arranged workshops, given keynotes, and helped organize leading international agile and technical conferences. Joe believes software is still too hard to change and wants to do something about this. Recently, the ACM recognized Joe as a Distinguished Member in the category of “Outstanding Engineering Contributions to Computing” and the Hillside Group awarded Joe as a Hillside Fellow.”

“Graziela Simone Tonin has worked in the technology market for over 19 years in Brazil and abroad. Ph.D. in Computer Science. She received the US IBM World Award and the Women of Value Award. Graziela mentors and worked in several national entrepreneurship and innovation programs, such as Innovativa Brasil. Ambassador of Clube Bora Fazer, an entrepreneurship community. She works as a professor at Insper Institution, a Teacher of Executive Education and customized programs for C-Levels, and also is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering program. She led the Women In Tech Project and co-leader in the Gender Front of the Diversity Committee at Insper. Graziela leads volunteer projects throughout Brazil through the Grupo Mulheres do Brasil. In addition, she is part of a worldwide research project that analyzes initiatives aimed at women in software engineering.”

“Neil Harrison is a professor and former head of the Department of Computer Science at Utah Valley University, USA. He led the department for seven years, in which he directed the creation of three new baccalaureate programs and two new emphases within the BS in Computer Science program. He oversaw the rollout of a graduate program. He led the accreditation of the software engineering program, and the re-accreditation of the computer science program.

Dr. Harrison is the author of over twenty-five widely cited articles in the areas of software patterns, software architecture, and software engineering and organizations. He is the co-author of the book, “Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development.” He has been a leader in the software patterns movement and is the namesake of the “Neil Harrison Shepherding Award”, which is awarded annually at patterns conferences. He has been an invited speaker and keynote speaker at conferences, including Agile Portugal. Dr. Harrison holds a PhD from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), an MS from Purdue University and a BS from Brigham Young University, all in computer science.”

“Filipe Correia is a professor of Software Engineering at the University of Porto / FEUP and a researcher at INESC TEC. In the past, he played other roles, from software architect to coach, to developer.His research interests tend to revolve around software design, architecture, agility, and DevOps. In the last few years, his work has been focusing on microservice-based architectures and the highly maintainable and flexible systems they allow to create, and on strategies to improve the Developer Experience across the software development lifecycle. You can find more information on Filipe’s website.”

“Carlos Duarte (Moderador) is a software engineer and researcher at INESC TEC. He is also a PhD student at FEUP’s ProDEI, and an invited assistant lecturer at FEUP (software engineering course). He previously worked at DevScope. His research interests revolve around software architecture, more specifically architectural erosion and evolution. Currently, he is researching the relationship between architectural erosion and technical debt, and how software visualization techniques can help identify and prevent erosion from affecting software systems. His Master thesis focused on improving the refactoring experience in IDEs, allowing the creation of custom refactoring tools by describing detection and transformation patterns using a DSL. The thesis won the 2022 Vestas award for best Master thesis in informatics engineering at FEUP.”

DEI TALKS | “Let’s discuss about Models and Languages for embedded systems in Industry 4.0” by Prof. Julio Medina

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“This talk proposes to have a conversation about the trends in conceptual modelling languages used for the design and analysis of real-time and embedded systems in the context of the ever changing industrial environments but never changing business demands”.

“Let’s discuss about Models and Languages for embedded systems in Industry 4.0” will be presented February 1, at 11:00, room I-105, moderated by Prof. Gil Gonçalves (DEI).

Short Bio:
“Julio Medina is Associate Professor at Universidad de Cantabria, Spain. His main research areas include the modeling of real-time distributed systems for schedulability analysis and dependability, standards and languages for the representation of such models, and their usage for modular and component-based development software engineering strategies. He contributes to the OMG in the standardization of languages like SysML, MARTE, UCM, UTP, among others.”

Talk a Bit is back for its 12th edition

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*Talk a Bit is back on stage at the FEUP Auditorium next Saturday, February 3.

The theme of this 12th edition, “Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s World“, will highlight the profound impact of contemporary technological decisions on the future.

The programme will feature insightful talks and discussions on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its role in health, smart cities and sustainable industries. Several experts will share with the public their knowledge on the latest technological advances and their future implications, promoting an environment conducive to learning and socializing opportunities.

Hugo Neves (MOG), Filipe Portela (IOTECH), Luís Valente (ILOF) and Tiago Reis (DIGESTAID) have all been confirmed as guest speakers in a programme (being updated) that can be seen here.

Registration is free but mandatory and must be submitted here.

*Talk a Bit is a technology conference organized by the students of the Master’s Degree in Informatics and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

PhD Defense in Informatics Engineering : ”Highly reconfigurable smart component system”

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Candidate
Luís Carlos de Sousa Moreira Neto

Date, Time and Place 
January 31, 14:15, Sala de Atos FEUP

President of the Jury
Carlos Miguel Ferraz Baquero-Moreno, PhD, Full Professor, Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto.

Members
Julio Luis Medina Pasaje, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Ingeniería Informática y Electrónica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Cantabria, Espanha;
António Eduardo Vitória do Espírito Santo, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade da Beira Interior;
Pedro Nuno Ferreira da Rosa da Cruz Diniz, PhD, Full Professor, Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto;
Luis Miguel Pinho de Almeida, Associate Professor with Habilitation, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto;
Gil Manuel Magalhães de Andrade Gonçalves, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto (Supervisor).

Abstract:
“Across all sectors of our society, efficiency is an increasingly paramount concern for a sustainable world. While the significance of efficiency spans all levels, it is at a large scale where the impacts of efficient practices are most prominently noticed. Industrial activities are an example of how efficiency traduces in visible results. It doesn’t require extensive reasoning to recognize that everyday increasingly affordable goods we consume are a direct outcome of these efficiency demands. The market is demanding new services and business models that center the end user in the product design. In the near future, consumers will be able to customize a product on-line, place a production order, and see it delivered, all in the same day. This remarkable possibility arises from of a combination of efficiency and flexibility within the production processes. Several names have been used to describe the same fundamental paradigm in both academic and industrial contexts: Factories of the Future, Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, all remounting to the same technological advent. This concept has far-reaching implications, extending its influence across multiple technological domains, presenting a wealth of research opportunities and driving the need for innovative technologies. This thesis delves into two technological domains related with this new paradigm and tackles one key problem in either domain. Within the Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) domain, it addresses the problem of establishing a unified network of industrial assets where software and its connections to other assets are clearly discernible and recognized. On the Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) domain, it addresses the fast pace at which the production lines will have to reconfigure, in particular, how software will have to reconfigure in parallel with the production lines and the ease with which new software can be developed and deployed to meet emerging challenges. A solution to both problems emerges from the field of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE), where this thesis drew inspiration to develop an innovative Smart Component with enhanced software reconfiguration and deployment capabilities. The proposed system exploits using Linux, a general-purpose operating system, as the component runtime environment (RTE). A combination of shared memory for efficient component communication and parallel and reconfigurable computing properties for enhanced throughput allows the proposed system to meet established application performance standards while maintaining a high degree of flexibility and reusability. The Smart Component’s flexibility is demonstrated through the implementation of two component models. The IEC 61499 component model, designed to model event-driven distributed applications for industrial system monitoring and control, and the Smart Object Self-Description (SOSD), developed by the author to describe software components, their interconnections, and their associations with industrial assets. The IEC 61499 implementation was directly compared to existing RTEs, outperforming them in real-world use cases and equaling the performance of one RTE in a literature benchmark. Additional benchmarks to assess the Smart Component’s reconfiguration performance and simplified software component development method were proposed in this thesis. The effectiveness of the SOSD implementation was validated through its application in a real-world use case, furnishing other CPPS nodes with context regarding the origin of the collected data and the software components responsible for its processing. By using Linux as the RTE, a software layer traditionally dedicated to manage components was deemed unnecessary, due to the system’s ability to execute applications conforming to relevant performance standards, while showing superior software flexibility, and even outperforming existing RTEs which employ the traditional approach. Many runtime environments for software components exist, but few allow the deployment of components built in more than one programming language, and none – to the best of the author’s knowledge – allow the development of components in any language – provided that language is at least able to read and write to files. The simplicity of developing regular software program for Linux and converting it into a software component is a promising feature that should benefit the development of industrial control and monitoring applications by bringing along the benefits of multiple high-level programming languages.”

DEI TALKS | “Analyzing and Modeling Intelligent Systems Users’ Behavior in Digital Society” by Prof. Humberto Marques-Neto

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“Information systems are ever-increasingly intelligent and present in the daily lives of people and companies, facilitating and modifying the performance of various activities. In addition to handling each system’s intrinsic data, data from its users’ interactions can contribute to identifying, modeling, and analyzing people’s behavior patterns. The data analysis from the usage of web systems and mobile applications and, in particular, from online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and TikTok (obviously respecting the privacy of users) can contribute to the understanding of some dynamics and specific behaviors of human beings.

In this talk, I will present how our research group has done the characterization, analysis, and modeling of the behavior of users of intelligent information systems, more specifically, users of online social networks and information systems that make information available in open data portals, to induce the development of new software that use machine learning and artificial intelligent algorithms. The information systems user behavior, together with patterns of social interaction and human mobility in urban centers, in addition to subsidizing decisions and policies of government agencies and institutions responsible for urban planning, could foster and even target software developers interested in creating innovative software with the potential to improve people’s lives in a digital and connected society.”

“Analyzing and Modeling Intelligent Systems Users’ Behavior in Digital Society” will be presented January 25, at 14:00, room B006, moderated by Prof. Gil Gonçalves (DEI).

Short Bio:
“Prof. Humberto T. Marques-Neto is a researcher and a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas) in Belo Horizonte – Brazil. He holds a degree in Computer Science from the PUC Minas, a Master’s in Information Science, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, both from the Federal University of Minas Gerais – UFMG. In the last few years, he has published some papers on the characterization and modeling of large-scale distributed system user behavior, online social network analysis and modeling, computing systems for mobile devices, and software engineering. He also coordinates (at PUC Minas) the Center of Technological Innovation and PUCTec, a Hub for Innovation and Business with about 30 startups. Since last August, he has been spending a one-year sabbatical as a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Pisa.”

DEI TALKS| “Aprendizado colaborativo em redes neuronais artificiais” by Prof. Areolino de Almeida Neto

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“Any task that cannot be carried out by a single agent requires the interaction of multiple agents aligned with the solution to the problem. Teamwork usually requires coordination between the members so that there are no conflicts and the result is more efficient. In the field of artificial learning, when one element is unable to fully learn the solution to a problem, it requires the participation of other “intelligent” elements to fully learn the solution. In this way, a collaborative learning system is presented, in which intelligent agents learn to collaborate with each other in order to achieve complete learning in a self-coordinated way (without a coordinator) and without the occurrence of conflicts between the intelligent elements. Specifically, it involves inserting other neural networks or other intermediate layers into an ANN in order to collaborate with the learning already acquired and thus add new knowledge to the system.”

This is how Prof. Areolino de Almeida Neto describes his presentation entitled “Collaborative learning in artificial neural networks”, which will take place on 15 November at 14:30, room B033.

The talk will be moderated by Prof Carlos Soares (DEI).

Short Bio

Areolino de Almeida Neto holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA) in 1990, a Master’s degree in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering from the Technological Institute of Aeronautics (ITA) in 1998 and a PhD in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering from ITA / Universität Hannover (2004). He has experience in Electrical Engineering, Mechatronics and Computer Science, with an emphasis on Mechatronic Systems and Artificial Intelligence, working mainly on the following topics: neural networks, reinforcement learning, mobile robotics and manipulator robotics. Since 2015, he has been working as Coordinator of the Aerospace Engineering WG of the Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (SECTI) of Maranhão, Brazil. He has been a permanent member of the Postgraduate Programme in Computer Science at UFMA since 2010, which has allowed him to publish several scientific articles on neural networks and reinforcement learning, and a book on multiple self-coordinating neural networks.

DEI TALKS | “Research projects and cooperation opportunities with São Paulo – Brazil” by Prof. Alessandro Santiago dos Santos

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This presentation, which will take place on November 6, at 14:30, room I-105 (DEEC), will cover the main lines of research at the Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas, São Paulo, Brazil, with a focus on projects related to Smart Cities and ICTs. Opportunities for collaboration in these areas will also be explored.

The talk will be moderated by Prof. Rosaldo Rossetti (DEI).

“Alessandro Santiago dos Santos, Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Pesquisas Tecnológicas of the state of São Paulo (IPT), working in Brazilian Technological Research and Development for over 20 years, with digital transformation studies and projects. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon, investigating issues related to smart, resilient and sustainable cities. In Brazil, he is the Business Development Manager of IPT’s digital technologies unit; coordinator and professor of the Professional Master’s in Applied Computing at IPT, and was a member of the contingency committee for dealing with the Coronavirus in São Paulo, working on the Intelligent Monitoring System, which supported the government in dealing with the pandemic. He holds a PhD in Transport Engineering and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of São Paulo, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Federal University of Mato Grosso. Awards, academic and business recognitions are part of his professional career, including managerial experience in companies such as SENAC, IBM and IPT. Projects, consultancy and research in areas such as: Intelligent Transport Systems, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, Smart and Sustainable Cities. International cooperation with Europe on R&D projects in IT and Transport, as well as advising the World Economic Forum on the data policy platform at the Centre for the 4th Industrial Revolution (C4IR Brasil).”

INForum 2023 – September 7/8 @FEUP

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The 2023 edition of INForum, now in its 14th edition, will be held at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto on September 7 and 8, with the local organization by Jácome Cunha, João Paulo Fernandes, João Pascoal Faria and Rui Maranhão, Professors at DEI, and João Saraiva from the University of Minho.

Bringing together the national community, INForum is a privileged place for the dissemination, discussion and recognition of scientific work and innovation and technological advances in Computer Science. INForum thus offers a specialised stage to promote, on the one hand, the exchange of knowledge and experience between academia and industry and, on the other hand, the debut of young researchers looking for dissemination, constructive criticism and encouragement of their work. INForum is therefore a national event for sharing and strengthening community spirit.

Computer Science is a consolidated area of Research and Development in Portugal, supported by a network of internationally recognised research centres and the offer of undergraduate and postgraduate courses by practically all Portuguese higher education institutions. It is also an area in which several Portuguese companies present R&D results of international relevance.

INForum is organised in thematic sessions on topics proposed by the community and selected by the organisation. The topics have their own Programme Committees (PC), which liaise with the Chairs of the Programme Committee in the processes of organising the sessions (call for submissions, review and selection of papers, publication of proceedings, etc.) in order to take advantage of a single support infrastructure and guarantee the coherence of the event.

This edition will also feature keynotes from Cristina Videira Lopes (Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine) and Pedro Saleiro (Senior Director of AI Research at Feedzai).

* O Fim da Programação (como a conhecemos)

“Cristina (Crista) Lopes é Chancellor’s Professor na School of Information and Computer Sciences at University of California, Irvine, com interesses de investigação em Linguagens de Programação, Engenharia de Software e Ambientes Virtuais Distribuídos. É IEEE Fellow e ACM Distinguished Scientist. Ela é a vencedora do Prêmio Pizzigati de 2016 para Software de Interesse Público pelo seu trabalho na plataforma de mundo virtual OpenSimulator. O seu livro ‘Exercises in Programming Style’ recebeu críticas excelentes, incluindo ter sido escolhido como ‘Livro Notável’ pelas revisões do ACM Best of Computing.”

** Innovating from within: AI Research at Feedzai

“Pedro Saleiro is Senior Director of Research at Feedzai where he heads the AI research group. Before joining Feedzai in 2019, Pedro did a postdoc in Fair Machine Learning at the University of Chicago and he was a research data scientist at the Center for Data Science and Public Policy working with Rayid Ghani. During his time at UChicago, he co-developed Aequitas, the first open-source library to audit bias and fairness of decision-making systems. Pedro holds a PhD in Machine Learning from University of Porto.”

The conference programme can be found here.

PhD Defense in Informatics Engineering: ”Scaling-up organization of document sets to facilitate their analysis”

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Candidate:
Rui Portocarrero Macedo de Morais Sarmento

Date, Time and Place:
July 24, 14:00, Sala de Atos DEGI (L202A), FEUP

President of the Jury:
Carlos Manuel Milheiro de Oliveira Pinto Soares, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto.

Members:
José Fernando Ferreira Mendes, PhD, Full Professor, Departamento de Física, Universidade de Aveiro;
Bruno Emanuel da Graça Martins, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores, Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa;
Pavel Bernard Brazdil, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto (Co-Supervisor);
Henrique Daniel de Avelar Lopes Cardoso, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto;
Sérgio Sobral Nunes, PhD, Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto.

The thesis was supervised by João Manuel Portela da Gama, PhD, Full Professor at Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto.

Abstract:

“The summarization and organization of document production of an organization in an intuitive and scalable way for massive amounts of data is of great importance in supporting decision-making.

This thesis intends to develop a theoretical and practical study to solve these challenges. The contents of this thesis were born after developing a static software prototype to analyze and provide decision support from text documents and a network of authors of scientific documentation. Several advantages were proved from the use of this mentioned prototype. Nonetheless, there were some concerns regarding the prototype’s ability to cope with higher dimensional networks and also a massive amount of documents. The development case study considers the affinity between authors on a large scale and constantly evolving. The first challenge is to scale the representation methods of documents of the authors. The second challenge is to capture the temporal development of the organization. Considering this context, we developed and implemented streaming techniques for the characterization of each author and other sub-units of the organization. Thus, by integrating into affinity groups identified by keywords and relevance measures that characterize them. We have finished this work by testing several developed algorithms to minor the disadvantages of the original prototype and gathering a panoply of solutions for problems related to text streaming techniques, considering a large-scale approach for the corresponding analysis. Information Retrieval techniques were used, and the analysis of social networks and streaming data was necessary. We solved several associated issues with efficient text streams analysis, using several techniques from pure streams analysis techniques to evolving complex networks techniques. These techniques that served as a base to innovation and contribution with more than ten new algorithms proved to improve the prototype and solve the issues that initially drove us to improve and contribute to several related areas of text analysis and streams.”

keywords: Streaming; Text Mining; Social network Analysis; Social network Visualization.