“Natural language inference (recognizing textual entailment task in the past) belongs to the most prominent tasks in current NLP, it is a keystone of natural language understanding. NLI can be stated as a classification task whether a given hypothesis can be inferred from a  given premise. In this talk, we are going introduce a large variety of tasks accompanied by illustrative examples and review corresponding state-of-the-art results. This talk may serve as starting point for anyone who want to apply new approaches and models to investigate these not so much known tasks (as well as apply them in downstream applications).”

“A Survey of Tasks Derived from or Related to Natural Language Inference” will be presented February 23, at 17:00, room I 025, moderated by Prof. Carlos Soares (DEI).

“Martin Víta graduated at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague in the field of discrete models and algorithms. Later, he obtained PhD degree at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno in natural language processing. Currently, he serves as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, Prague University of Economics and Business where he teaches mathematics and text analytics. He is also a researcher at Czech Academy of Sciences where he focuses in ML and text mining topics.”

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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.

By the author:

“To support both Artificial Intelligence and High-Performance Computing workloads, new processors have introduced hardware acceleration for matrix multiplication. Examples include the Matrix Multiply Assist (MMA) in the IBM POWER10 and the Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX) in the Intel Sapphire Rapids microarchitecture for Xeon servers. This talk describes how, in a collaboration between the University of Alberta, the University of Campinas, and IBM, we developed compiler technology to support such accelerators. An initial solution delivered a robust pattern matcher for General Matrix Multiplication (GEMM) computation operating at the LLVM intermediate representation that allows the replacement of the computation with an invocation of a high-performance library. A later solution delivered a compiler-only path for code generation by adapting the layered approach used in numerical libraries to the compiler code-generation process. Finally, a modular and automated general strategy for data packing, which can be applied to multiple algorithms, was developed for the Multi-Level Intermediate Representation (MLRI).”

“From Numerical Libraries, To Efficient Matrix Multiplication Compiler-Only Code Generation, To a Modular Automated General Packing Data Transformation” will be presented July 17, at 11:30, room B006, moderated by Prof. Pedro Diniz (DEI) and co-organized by DEI Talks and the University of Porto – Faculty of Engineering ACM Student Chapter.

“J. Nelson Amaral, a Computing Science professor at the University of Alberta with a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin, has published in optimizing compilers and high-performance computing. Scientific community service includes general chair for the 23rd International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques in 2014, for the International Conference on Performance Engineering in 2020, and for the International Conference on Parallel Processing in 2020. Accolades include ACM Distinguished Engineer, IBM Faculty Fellow, IBM Faculty Awards, IBM CAS “Team of the Year”, awards for excellence in teaching, the University of Alberta Graduate-Student Association Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision, an University of Alberta Award for Outstanding Mentorship in Undergraduate Research & Creative Activities, and a recent University of Alberta 2020 COVID-19 Remote Teaching Award.”

https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~amaral/

The Porto Biomechanics Laboratory (LABIOMEP-UP) was created with the intention of bringing together the efforts of the critical mass of the University of Porto in the fields of Biomechanics, whether dedicated to teaching, research and university extension, in the fields of sports, forensics, clinical, health and safety, ergonomics, etc. It is, therefore, a unit whose vocation is transversal to most of the University’s territories and, therefore, eminently trans and interdisciplinary.

Dedicated to the study of the causes and effects of forces and tensions generated and applied by and to biological systems and prosthetic and orthotic devices, LABIOMEP-UP uses the measurement and processing of data related to internal and external forces to biological systems and their effects, namely kinematics and plastic adaptations. The operating domains extend from dynamometry to kinemetry, passing through electromyography, morphometry (internal – using medical imaging – and external – using planar and 3D geometries extraction), thermography, and bioenergetics. In any of these spaces, and particularly in the domain of its cross and integrated interpretation, information technology is recurrently present, either through “customer” applications or through dedicated solutions aimed at solving specific problems. This is, obviously, a virtuous marriage: one that flows without great tension being perceived between the merits and limitations of each party. On the contrary: they can no longer live without each other…

 “Research, teaching and services in Biomechanics: a virtuous marriage with informatics” will be presented June 28, 15:00, room B011 at FEUP, moderated by Prof. Rui Camacho (DEI).

“João Paulo Vilas-Boas was born in 1960; Full Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Porto, Faculty of Sport, since 2004; Head of LABIOMEP-UP – Porto Biomechanics Laboratory, University of Porto; ISBS Geoffrey Dyson Award 2022; Invited Full Professor of Biomechanics at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Porto, since 2009; resident of the International Council Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming (icBMS); Head of the Biomechanics Laboratory of the University of Porto (LABIOMEP); Member of the Scientific Committee of the Doctoral Course in Sport Sciences of the University of Porto; Member of the Scientific Committee of the Doctoral Course in Physiotherapy of the University of Porto; Member of the Scientific Committee of the Doctoral Course in Occupational Health and Safety of the University of Porto; Member of the Direction Board of the Research Unit CIF2D / FCT; Participant and responsible for several financed research and co-promotion applied research projects; Promoter, co-promoter or advisor of more than 40 Ph.D. defended thesis in Portugal and abroad; Promoter of more than 95 M.Sc. dissertations; teaches Biomechanics and Swimming Science at graduation and post-graduation courses of Sport Sciences, Bioengineering, Physiotherapy and Podiatry in a number of universities in Portugal and abroad; Invited speaker at more than 220 scientific and professional meetings; Author of more than 760 presentations to scientific and professional meetings; Author of more than 420 scientific papers internationally published under peer review process, from which more than 290 indexed at SCOPUS (h-Index=32); Author and / or editor of 14 books with national or international circulation;

Editorial boards member of: Journal of Swimming Research; Springer Book Series: Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics (LNCVB); Journal for Computational Vision and Biomechanics; Revista Brasileira de Docência, Ensino e Pesquisa em Educação Física, Faculdade Central de Cristalina, Brazil; Motricidade; International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Review Editor of: Frontier in Bioengineering – Biomechanics.

Associated Editor of: Sports Biomechanics; Portuguese Journal of Sport Sciences; International Journal on Multidisciplinary Approaches to Innovation (IJMAI).

Peer Review boards of more than 30 international journals.

Chairman of the X International Symposium on Biomechanics and Medicine in Swimming, Porto 2006; Co-chairman of the XXIX International Conference on Biomechanics in Sports, ISBS’2011, Porto; Swimming coach for more than 20 years, having participated at European and World Championships; Six times proposed and three times elected “Coach of the Year” of the Portuguese Swimming Coaches Association ; Three times Swimming Teams Portuguese National Champion (Futebol Clube do Porto); Coached bronze medalists in Dunkerque and Malta European Junior Swimming Championships; Olympic Coach at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004; Member of the board of the Portuguese Swimming Federation between December 2004 and 2008; President of the General Assembly of the Portuguese Swimming Federation from 2008 to 2012; Member of the Board of the Olympic Committee of Portugal since 2012; Vice-President of the Olympic Committee of Portugal since 2021.”

The twelfth session of Creativity Talks will have as speaker the distinguished researcher from the University of Minho, Fátima Morais, about “The creative individual: from the confluence of requirements to the challenges of cognition”.

“Creativity is explained in the conception of a network of interacting variables, personal and social. However, the focus of this work will be on the individual, the initial actor in the gestation of a creative idea.  Rather than trying to answer what creativity is, it will reflect what a creative individual requires – the term ‘requirements’ potentially implies the operationalization of concepts, hence a proactive and concrete stance of promotion. In this context, after understanding the creative individual as a confluence of different dimensions, his or her cognition will be targeted in greater detail. The creative cognitive processes are the tools that typically mark, in quality and in greater frequency of use, the individuals who provoke innovation. This analysis will carry the responsibility that such tools are applied and promoted in everyone’s daily life – several examples of this educational challenge will be shared. It is hoped that such sharing will allow new ideas in the practices of those who listen to us”.

Maria de Fátima Morais has a degree in Psychology from the University of Porto and a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Minho. At the latter University, she is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education. She is a researcher at the Centre for Research in Education (CIEd) at the University of Minho. She is a member of the National Association for the Study of Intervention in Overgiftedness (ANEIS) and of the International Network for Research, Intervention and Evaluation in High Intellectual Abilities (REINEVA). She belongs to the Scientific and Editorial Board of some journals. She has been a consultant for associations that study and promote creativity (e.g. Torrance Center Portugal; ANEIS) and has published nationally and internationally on this subject.

The session will take place on June 22, at 18:00, in room B008 of FEUP, and will be moderated by Manuel Firmino Torres, Professor at DEI. It will also be broadcasted via Youtube.

The entrance is free but registration is required.

“Internet of Things and Security” will be presented on Wednesday, June 21, at 14:45, in room B006, moderated by Prof. António Pimenta Monteiro, from DEI.

By the Author:

“Internet of things (IoT) as a new discipline has emerged since more than two decades, it is a technology vision to widen the classic Internet by integrating new applications and connecting
physical devices (such as sensors, actuators …). Reinforced by AI, IoT has gained a broad presence over different economic sectors, namely industry, agriculture, transportation, logistics, health, management of cities and homes … According to some criteria of energy autonomy, distance and smartness level, several connection types and protocols are available. Similarly as for the OSI or TCP/IP models for computer networks, IoT could be also perceived as a succession of at least three layers (Edge layer, Fog layer, and Cloud layer). Some connection protocols, such as RFID, ZigBee, WIFI, NB-IoT, and LoraWAN, are used for the communication infrastructure, while other protocols such as MQTT, CoAP, and HTTP are considered at the application level. With the advent of Industry 4.0, the proliferation of IoT was intensified, leading to the emergence of smarthomes, smartcities, smartfactories, industrial IoT (IIoT), Medical IoT (MIoT) … IoT combined with AI and data engineering is transforming our daily lives and environments. Meanwhile, this wide use of IoT is facing real security threats that could disrupt the availability of the services or inject fake data streaming. Unfortunately, most of the used devices are not prepared to protect themselves, and do not assure the least level of security. In this talk, we will present some concepts, technologies, and applications of IoT; then, we will deal with the IoT security aspect and raise awareness on this topic.
Keywords: IoT/IIoT, Industry 4.0, Smart devices, AI, IoT layers, IoT protocols, Security.

Mostafa AZIZI received a State Engineer degree in Automation and Industrial Computing from the Engineering School EMI of Rabat, Morocco in 1993, then a Master degree in Automation and Industrial Computing from the Faculty of Sciences of Oujda, Morocco in 1995, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Montreal, Canada in 2001. He also earned tens of certifications in Programming, Networking, AI, Computer Security … He is currently a Professor at the department of computer engineering, ESTO, University Mohammed 1st of Oujda. His research interests include Security and Networking, AI, Software Engineering, IoT, and Embedded Systems. His research findings with his team are published in over 100 peer-reviewed communications and papers. He also served as PC member and reviewer in several international conferences and journals (See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qlTcK5MAAAAJ).”

Creativity is one of our most precious human resources. We owe to it our civilisation, our culture, and every benefit that arts, science or technology offer. Today, we live on the results produced by creative people over the ages. In this sense, creativity is inexhaustible. Creativity creates creativity. We can define creativity as the capacity to transform ideas and knowledge to obtain new knowledge. Creative thinking and action create new creative thinking and action. Creativity is contagious, and so infects the people around us. This is the idea which will be explored in Katja Tschimmel’s talk. In this approach, she will not focus only on the creative individual – the artist, the designer, the writer or the scientist – but she wants to understand the creative person as an integral part of a complex system. A living system which can be a group of people, a team, an organisation, a city or/and the whole society. This Creativity Talk aims to infect the audience with creativity by 1. offering knowledge about the creativity phenomenon and 2. inspiring the generation of new ideas and knowledge through information, images and short thinking exercises.

 “The Creativity Virus” will be presented by Katja Tschimmel on May 4, at 6 pm, room B021. The session will be moderated by Prof. João José Pinto Ferreira and will also be streamed via Youtube

Free entrance but registration required.

Short-Bio:

Katja Tschimmel, German by birth and Portuguese by choice, is a consultant and executive trainer, researcher and lecturer, coach, and conference speaker. Having a Ph.D. in Design and a Master in Applied Creativity, Katja researches and works in the fields of Creative Thinking, Design Thinking, Creative Processes and Innovation for more than 25 years. She is the author of several books and articles about Creativity and Innovation. Katja Tschimmel is the managing owner of MINDSHAKE, a Consultancy in Creative Thinking and Design (www.mindshake.pt). She is also a Guest Professor at the University of Porto (FEP/FEUP) and Porto Business School, giving Master Classes in several other educational higher institutions in Portugal and abroad. Since January 2023, she is the Portuguese Ambassador of the World Creativity and Innovation Week (https://wciw.org/)