Category Archives: Highlights

The 23rd edition of U.Porto’s Mostra is on

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From today until Sunday, the Multiusos de Gondomar will host another edition of the U.Porto’s Mostra. Over the course of four days, visitors will be welcomed by students, lecturers and technical staff from the various faculties of the University of Porto, research centres, central services, museums and UPTEC.

Through dozens of stands, the most curious visitors will be able to try out numerous interactive activities and learn about the range of bachelor’s and master’s degree courses on offer.
Students thinking of applying for higher education, and their families, will have the opportunity to attend several information sessions, through conferences covering a variety of topics ranging from the transition from secondary to higher education to the social support available to them, as well as several information sessions.

The Informatics Engineering stand will be attended by several students from NIAEFEUP (Núcleo de Informática da Associação de Estudantes da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto), who will be ready to answer visitors’ questions about the Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Informatics and Computing Engineering, and encouraging them to try out interactive games that allow interaction with the computer through Computer Vision.

All information about the Mostra and its programme can be found on the official website. Visitors can also watch the event live online.

“EUGLOH [you·glow]: Faces behind the Alliance” features António Coelho

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The EUGLOH network has launched the series “EUGLOH [you·glow]: Faces behind the Alliance,” which features inspiring people from the EUGLOH community.

In their most recent interview, they featured António Coelho (DEI), who has been actively involved in EUGLOH since its early stages. António’s work focuses on pedagogical innovation, transversal skills, and supporting initiatives that enhance employability and lifelong learning. Through his engagement with EUGLOH, António has contributed to the design and delivery of blended intensive courses, research conferences, and other transformative initiatives that bring together students, teachers, and staff across Europe.

How has being part of EUGLOH influenced your personal and/or professional growth?

Being part of EUGLOH has been a tremendous challenge and opportunity. The Alliance has encouraged me to focus on pedagogical innovation, expanding my understanding of career services, lifelong learning, and the structures that support student employability. It has also provided an international perspective, allowing me to learn how different universities approach teaching, learning, and professional development—and to integrate the best practices from across the alliance. Personally and professionally, it has been inspiring to participate in a project that aims to shape the future of higher education in Europe.

What has been your favourite experience or moment within EUGLOH so far?

My favourite experiences have been the Blended Intensive Courses. These courses bring students, staff, and professors together to solve challenges collaboratively in just one week. It is incredible to witness the creativity and engagement of participants, and the results are often surprising and highly impactful. Another highlight has been co-creating courses, such as “Putting the students first: Designing the Classroom of the Future,” where diverse participants—professors, staff, and students—work together to design innovative learning experiences that prioritise student well-being and inclusivity. These experiences provide ideas and insights to the community that I can apply directly in my own courses, making them professionally rewarding.

What is your favourite EUGLOH initiative?

I value all initiatives that bring together students, professors, and staff to foster collaboration and learning. This includes blended courses, student research conferences, and the Annual Summit. For example, in 2024, the Annual Summit featured two Nobel Prize winners as keynote speakers, moderated by students themselves—an impressive demonstration of student engagement and excellence. These initiatives not only enhance knowledge but also promote European values, cultural exchange, and professional competencies.

From your perspective, why is EUGLOH important?

EUGLOH equips students and professionals with both technical and transversal skills, including multi-disciplinarity and multicultural understanding. By working together across countries, participants gain diverse perspectives, fostering their growth as European citizens capable of tackling global challenges. Individual universities alone may lack the scale or diversity to compete internationally, but through EUGLOH, we leverage collective strengths and collaboration. This diversity and unity make Europe a stronger, more competitive space in higher education and research, while preparing participants to be agents of positive change.

PhD Defense in Informatics Engineering (ProDEI): ”Low-Resource Machine Translation for Emakhuwa: Transfer Learning, Data Augmentation, and Lexical Resource Integration”

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Candidate:
Felermino Dário Mário António Ali

Date, Time and Location:
20 February 2026, 14:00, Sala de Atos da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

President of the Jury:
Pedro Nuno Ferreira da Rosa da Cruz Diniz (PhD), Full Professor, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

Members:
Maarit Tuulikki Koponen (PhD), Professor at the School of Humanities of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Eastern Finland (Finland);
Maria Luísa Torres Ribeiro Marques da Silva Coheur (PhD), Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa;
Sérgio Sobral Nunes (PhD), Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto;
Henrique Daniel de Avelar Lopes Cardoso (PhD), Associate Professor, Departamento de Engenharia Informática, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (Supervisor).

The thesis was co-supervised by Rui Manuel Sousa Silva (PhD), Assistant Professor at Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.

Abstract:

“This research explores the underrepresentation of low-resource languages in the field of machine translation, with a specific focus on Emakhuwa, the most widely spoken local language in Mozambique. Despite having over 7 million native speakers, Emakhuwa remains underrepresented in both academia and technology due to a lack of digital resources and linguistic tools. To fill this gap, we have developed the first significant machine translation resources for the Portuguese–Emakhuwa language pair. Our contributions include the creation of a parallel corpus through the manual translation of journalistic texts, the digitisation of existing materials, and the translation of established machine translation evaluation benchmarks. We evaluated three central strategies to improve machine translation performance in this low-resource setting: (1) transfer learning using multilingual and Africa-centred models, (2) data augmentation through back-translation, and (3) integration of external linguistic resources such as loan glossaries and bilingual dictionaries. The results show that encoder-decoder models, particularly translation-optimised architectures such as NLLB and M2M-100, perform as well as or better than larger decoder-only models while maintaining computational efficiency. Back-translation offers modest improvements, and the integration of loanwords and dictionary resources, especially in the Portuguese-Emakhuwa direction, significantly improves translation quality, especially with the use of LLMs. This work lays the foundation for future research in NLP for underrepresented languages and demonstrates practical paths for the development of machine translation systems in resource-limited contexts.”

Habilitation Exams | “Fair Resource Sharing in Concurrent Workflow Scheduling for Heterogeneous Systems” by Prof. Jorge Manuel Gomes Barbosa

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Habilitation Exams in the field of Informatics Engineering

Requested by:
Prof. Dr. Jorge Manuel Gomes Barbosa

19 February 2026, at 14:30, in FEUP’s Sala de Atos 
Assessment of the curriculum and report on the course unit “Advanced Parallel Computing”

20 February 2026, at 10:00, in FEUP’s Sala de Atos
Discussion of the synthesis seminar entitled “Fair Resource Sharing in Concurrent Workflow Scheduling for heterogeneous systems”

Chair of the Jury:
Prof. Dr. Jaime dos Santos Cardoso, Full Professor and Vice-President of the Scientific Council of Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

Members:
Prof. Dr. Alba Cristina Magalhaes Alves de Melo, Full Professor at the Departamento de Ciência da Computação do Instituto de Ciências Exatas da Universidade de Brasília, Brasil;
Prof. Dr. Pedro Petersen Moura Trancoso, Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden;
Prof. Dr. Leonel Augusto Pires Seabra de Sousa, Full Professor at the Departamento de Engenharia Eletrotécnica e de Computadores do Instituto Superior Técnico da Universidade de Lisboa;
Prof. Dr. João Manuel Paiva Cardoso, Full Professor at the Departamento de Engenharia Informática da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto;
Prof. Dr. Carlos Miguel Ferraz Baquero-Moreno, Full Professor at the Departamento de Engenharia Informática da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto.

DEI Talks | “The impact of link recommendation algorithms on human social dynamics” by Prof. Fernando Santos (University of Amsterdam)

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The talk entitled “The impact of link recommendation algorithms on human social dynamics” will be presented by Prof. Fernando Pascoal dos Santos (University of Amsterdam) on March the 20th, at 11:00, in room I-105. The session will be moderated by Prof. Sérgio Nunes (DEI).

About the Talk:

“Online social networks increasingly shape human beliefs and behavior. In these environments, algorithms to personalize contents and provide recommendations are pervasive. Link recommendation algorithms are implemented to recommend new connections to online platforms users, based on supposed familiarity, similar interests, or the potential to serve as a source of useful information. These algorithms influence the evolution of social networks, yet their long-term impacts on human social dynamics remain unclear. In this talk, I will discuss models to study such effects. I will discuss how algorithmic link recommendations interplay with opinion dynamics, and the potential long-term impacts of such algorithms on polarization. I will also discuss methods based on agentic multi-systems, powered by LLMs, to test social media interventions aiming at mitigating polarized dynamics. We will observe that preferentially establishing links with structurally similar nodes (i.e., sharing many neighbors) results in network topologies that are amenable to opinion polarization.”

About the Speaker:

Fernando P. Santos is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam. He is a member of the Socially Intelligent Artificial Systems group, where he leads the Prosocial Dynamics Lab. Fernando’s research lies at the interface of AI and Complex Systems: he is interested in understanding behavioral dynamics in systems of adaptive learning agents and designing (pro)Social AI. Previously, Fernando was a James S. McDonnell Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. He completed his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico with Francisco C. Santos, Jorge M. Pacheco, and Ana Paiva. Fernando is an ELLIS Scholar and member of the board of directors of the International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant to study the impact of link-recommendation algorithms on human behavioural dynamics.

DEI Talks | “High Performance Computing for Bioinformatics Applications: the Quest for Performance” by Prof. Alba Melo

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The talk entitled “High Performance Computing for Bioinformatics Applications: the Quest for Performance” will be presented by Prof. Alba Alves de Melo (University of Brasilia) and will take place on the 20th February, at 14:30, in room B018. Prof. João Bispo (DEI) will moderate the session.

About the Talk:

“Bioinformatics applications are often computationally intensive, making High-Performance Computing (HPC) highly desirable. In this lecture, I will present parallel bioinformatics applications developed for High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments over the years by my research group at the LAICO Laboratory at the University of Brasília. The following will be addressed: (a) parallel applications for exact pairwise comparison of long biological sequences in clusters of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and CPUs; (b) exact multiple sequence alignment applications for multithreaded architectures; (c) exact RNA secondary structure prediction (folding and alignment) in GPU; and (d) heuristic protein folding in a supercomputer. Finally, a framework for executing scientific workflows in the HPC cloud will be presented.”

About the Speaker:

Alba Cristina Magalhaes Alves de Melo obtained her PhD in Computer Science from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), France, in 1996. Since 1997, she is with the Department of Computer Science at the University of Brasilia, Brazil, where she is now Full Professor. Prof. Melo is IEEE Senior Member, Vice-Coordinator of the IEEE Technical Community of Parallel Processing (TCPP) since 2024 and Member of the Counselling Committee in Computer Science for CNPq/Brazil since 2025. Prof. Melo received the following awards: 2023 IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) Outstanding Service and Contributions Award; 2019 Wilkes Award for the Best Paper Published in The Computer Journal in 2018, Oxford University Press (joint work with the UPC/BSC team); 2016 Award for Advisor of the Best PhD Thesis in Computer Science in Brazil (Premio Capes de Tese).
She is Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Applications section of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems (JPDC). She is also Associate Editor of many prestigious journals such as IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM Computing Surveys and Future Generation Computer Systems. She was Co-General Chair of IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS) 2024. She has served as Program Chair or Track Chair of many prestigious conferences in high performance computing such as IPDPS, Supercomputing (SC), Euro-Par, HiPEAC, Cluster, ICPP, SBAC-PAD and HiPC. Prof. Melo’s research group has established long lasting collaborations with research teams from the University of Ottawa, Canada (since 2005); INRIA/Saclay and Mines Paris Tech, France (since 2011); Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya/ Barcelona Supercomputing Center (UPC/BSC), Spain (since 2012); and University of Copenhagen, Denmark (since 2017). Her research interests are high performance computing, bioinformatics and cloud computing.

DEI Talks | “NextGen Accelerators: Flexible, Scalable, Efficient – Together” by Prof. Pedro Trancoso

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The talk “NextGen Accelerators: Flexible, Scalable, Efficient – Together” will be presented by Prof. Pedro Trancoso (Chalmers University of Technology) on the 19th February, at 11:00, in room B008. Prof. Diniz (DEI) will be responsible for moderating the event.

About the Talk:

“For a long time, computer systems have been built around an increasingly powerful general-purpose processor. Nevertheless, at some point these monolithic super chips were not able to deliver the expected additional performance due to limitations such as design complexity and power density.
The decline of the monolithic processor gave way to new architectures. With efficiency as a main goal, domain-specific architectures, also known as accelerators, started playing an important role. The realization that one-size does not fit all resulted in an explosion of diverse accelerators for different applications and purposes, from both research and industry.
Designers of these accelerators are usually faced with the tradeoff between a generic architecture that will stand the test of time and an application-dedicated architecture that is very efficient. We want both! As such, we focus on the design of building blocks for the next generation of accelerators. These blocks are efficient but at the same time can be combined in different ways to achieve the required flexibility and scalability. In this talk I will present some of our recent research results towards this goal.”

About the Speaker:

Pedro Trancoso is a Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) of the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. He has an engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) (1993), Portugal and a MSc and PhD (1998) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A. His research interests are in computer architecture (memory hierarchy, multicore processors, reconfigurable computing, and energy efficiency) with main focus on the hardware acceleration for emerging applications such as machine learning. He is currently actively collaborating in several EU research projects (VEDLIoT, eProcessor and EPI SGA2) and SSF Swedish research projects (PRIDE, QuantumStack, AutoPIM), as well as the EUMaster4HPC EU Masters project on HPC. He is also the director of the Masters programme on High-Performance Computer systems (MPHPC) at Chalmers since its start in 2019.

DEI Talks | “Safer Software with Liquid Types” by Prof. Alcides Fonseca

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The talk entitled “Safer Software with Liquid Types” will be presented by Prof. Alcides Fonseca on February 4th at 15:00, in room B006, moderated by Prof. José Campos (DEI).

About the Talk:

“In a world where LLM-generated code is being produced at a faster pace than human written code, verification is more important than ever. Liquid Types (refining types with logical predicates, e.g. {x:Int | x > 10}) have been around for 17 years now but, despite their many applications, they haven’t taken off. In this talk we will answer why (PLDI’25), based on user interviews we conducted, relating them to other verification tools such as Interactive Theorem Provers and Design-by-Contract approaches like Dafny. Finally, we will see how our research group is addressing those challenges in both LiquidJava and Aeon.”

About the Speaker:

Alcides Fonseca is an Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, where he leads the Reliable Software Systems research line. In parallel to his day job as an Associate Professor at U. Lisbon, Alcides has been working for and with several startups over the years, including founding a junior company. In any of those jobs, Alcides uses a mix of programming languages (Python, Haskell, Lean, Scala) and some that his research group have developed, like the Aeon programming language that automatically generates code for you, based on Genetic Programming and Liquid Types.

PhD Defense in Digital Media (PDMD): ”Cultivando a empatia digital: o potencial da produção de narrativas áudio”

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Candidate:
Ivone Manuela Neiva Santos

Date, Time and Location:
29 January 2026, 14:30, Sala de Atos da Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

President of the Jury:
António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho (PhD), Associate Professor with Habilitation from Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto

Members:
Marisa Rodrigues Pinto Torres da Silva (PhD), Full Professor, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa;
Maria Madalena da Costa Oliveira (PhD), Associate Professor, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho;
Maria José Lisboa Brites de Azeredo (PhD), Associate Professor with Habilitation, Faculdade de Comunicação, Arquitetura, Artes e Tecnologias da Informação, Universidade Lusófona;
Ana Isabel Crispim Mendes Reis (PhD), Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto (Supervisor);
Ricardo José Pinheiro Fernandes Morais (PhD), Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto.

The thesis was co-supervised by José Manuel Pereira Azevedo (PhD), Full Professor, Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto.

Abstract:

Empathy, which is defined as the ability to understand and share the emotional state of others, is considered to be fundamental to both personal well-being and social cohesion. Its presence has been linked to pro-social behaviour, while its absence has been associated with a greater predisposition to aggressive behaviour. Empathy is a multidimensional construct integrating affective and cognitive components, and educational interventions appear to positively influence its development. While cognitive empathy is generally considered to be more sensitive to education, the affective component appears to benefit from emotional activities. Empathy is now considered a vital skill for the ‘digital citizen’, but research suggests that empathy displayed online is lower than empathy displayed offline. Tendencies such as inattention, desensitisation and disinhibition, which are stimulated by the internet, seem to make empathy more difficult to achieve. The fact that empathic capacity primarily develops towards the end of adolescence highlights the importance of exploring strategies to foster it throughout education, particularly in an era where digital technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in all areas of social life. This scenario highlights the need to deepen our understanding of digital empathy and consider strategies for promoting it in education. This is reflected in the objectives that guided this thesis. The research underlying this thesis includes a review of the literature on empathy and the methodologies employed to study and encourage it. It features a critical analysis of the role of screens in young people’s daily lives, as well as of the different approaches to the relationship between empathy and digital technology. Given that sound is a privileged vehicle for emotional connection with characteristics that make it resilient to digital environments, the review also explores the literature on the potential of auditory stimuli and audio narratives to promote empathy. Supported by this review, the empirical research comprises two studies: a descriptive study and a quasi-experimental study. These studies involved three educational institutions at different levels and students in the adolescent age group (10–24 years). A total of 279 students participated in the descriptive study and 228 in the quasi-experimental study, of whom 76 were in the experimental group. The descriptive study measured and compared participants’ empathy and digital empathy using a questionnaire based on self-report scales previously used in empathy research with this age group. The quasi-experimental study assessed the impact of an educational programme designed to explore the potential of sound and narrative. Based on the experience-based learning model, the programme combined technical and socio-emotional learning through Media Education. It is organised into two modules. The first module consists of a set of group dynamics exploring the theme of empathy and its relationship with digital environments and auditory stimuli. The second module considers the process of producing audio narratives with emotional content. The intervention’s impact was assessed both quantitatively, via pre- and post-test surveys, and qualitatively, through analysis of the narratives and other texts produced by participants throughout the programme. Overall, the results of the descriptive study indicate that digital empathy is lower than general empathy, with the affective component being lower than the cognitive component on both scales. The results also show that girls have higher levels of both empathy and digital empathy. Age appears to be a differentiating factor in empathy levels, but not in digital empathy. Results suggest that digital empathy does not increase significantly during adolescence, unlike general empathy. These results therefore support the need for educational interventions to stimulate empathy from early adolescence onwards addressing its multidimensionality and various contexts. The quantitative impact of participation in the educational programme evaluated in the quasi-experimental study was not significant. Nevertheless, a qualitative analysis of the data suggests that participation in the programme provided an opportunity to experiment with different empathic practices. The programme can therefore be considered a tool that facilitates the reconciliation of technical learning with the development of empathy. This tool can be applied to different stages of adolescence, levels of education, and school contexts. The findings of this research reiterate the concerns expressed in existing literature about the impact of digital environments on empathy development among young people. The 0findings suggest that programmes based on producing audio narratives with emotional content could promote empathy in educational contexts, addressing the constraints imposed by digital environments. Based on these findings, this research has produced a manual to disseminate the tested educational model and a validated instrument to measure empathy and digital empathy in Portuguese. To our knowledge, this is the first questionnaire of its kind to enhance sound stimuli.

Keywords: digital empathy; audio production; narrative; education.

PhD Defense in Digital Media (PDMD): ”Hibridismo Urbano-Digital e Bem-Estar Social: Estratégias para Fortalecer a Conexão Social nas Cidades”

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Candidate:
Acilon Himercírio Baptista Cavalcante

Date, Time and Location:
26 January 2026, 14:30, Room Professor Joaquim Sarmento (G129), Department of Civil and Georesources Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

President of the Jury:
António Fernando Vasconcelos Cunha Castro Coelho (PhD), Associate Professor with Habilitation, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

Members:
Isabel Alexandra Reis Gonçalves Ferreira (PhD), Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, Universidade de Coimbra;
Ivone Marília Carinhas Ferreira (PhD), Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Sciences, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa;
Ana Isabel Barreto Furtado Franco de Albuquerque Veloso (PhD), Full Professor, Department of Communication and Art, Universidade de Aveiro;
José Manuel Pereira Azevedo (PhD), Full Professor, Department of Communication and Information Sciences, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade do Porto (Supervisor);
Maria Van Zeller de Macedo de Oliveira e Sousa (PhD), Invited Assitant Professor, Department of Informatics Engineering, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto and Researcher at the Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Tecnologia e Ciência (INESC TEC).

Abstract:

This thesis investigates the promotion of social well-being in cities through the concept of urban-digital hybridity, which considers social and spatial interactions—whether physical and/or digital—as inseparable in the urban context. Based on an integrative literature review, a set of indicators was identified and categorised to more comprehensively assess the effectiveness of public policies aimed at improving quality of life in technology-mediated urban environments.
The review of indicators combined traditional methodologies—such as those used in the World Happiness Report, published by the United Nations—with metrics related to physical and mental health, community participation, perception of safety, and cultural vitality, while also incorporating emerging variables derived from the use of digital media. The research methodology adapted the mapping and critical analysis of these indicators to Marichela Sepe’s Cartography of Happiness, applying it to contexts of urban-digital hybridity and combining it with empirical digital placemaking experiments.
Case studies and digital placemaking experiences were conducted in the cities of Porto and Póvoa de Varzim, involving local communities, religious institutions, and schools, exploring technological mediation as a catalyst for social bonds and the activation of public spaces. Heatmaps of interactions, together with qualitative field data, allowed the identification of correlations between patterns of urban activation, city morphology, and landscape.
As its main outcome, the research proposes three core metrics for assessing social well-being in hybrid cities: Sense of Belonging, Sense of Place, and Sense of Community, analysed in their urban, digital, and hybrid dimensions.
The thesis’ main contribution is an integrated model for assessing urban social well-being, combining physical and digital metrics to provide an operational framework for urban planning and public policy design, aiming to foster more inclusive, participatory, and well-being-oriented cities.