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/)

“Network construction from data and network visualization” will be presented on Wednesday, April the 26th, at 14:30, room I-105, moderated by Prof. Rui Camacho from DEI.

By the author:

The lecture will show how to extract data from vector data in the form of a network – and how the analysis of the constructed network helps to improve the results of classical datamining, e.g. to reveal otherwise undetectable relationships.  The advantage of networks is that the data is extended with links between certain (similar) pairs of data objects.

If we focus on biomedical data, the network approach is one of the innovative multivariate approaches to analyze complex biomedical datasets.  Patient profile similarities are essential for observers to study and visually assess relationships between groups of similar patients, and to do this, patient data is converted into a patient similarity network.

Bio

Dr. Eliška Ochodková is an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, VŠB – Technical University Ostrava. She holds a Master’s degree in computer science from Palacký University in Olomouc and a PhD degree in computer science ( in cryptography) from VŠB – TU Ostrava.

Her research interests are social network analysis (network science) and bioinformatics, focusing on the analysis of biomedical data using network construction from biomedical data.  Currently she is also working on new methods for protein complex detection and information processing and retrieval from microarray data.

She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses related to data analysis and cryptography. She is a Deputy Head of the Department of Computer Science at home university.

“At the intersection of job quality and innovation” will be presented on Wednesday, April the 12^th, at 14:30, room B021, moderated by Prof. António Coelho from DEI.

By the author:

“The link between innovation and job quality is increasingly elaborated in empirical studies (Duhautois, et al. 2020; Laursen & Foss 2014; Mathieu & Boethius 2021, 2022; Muñoz de Bustillo, et al. 2022). Job quality has been found to be linked to both the generation of innovations as well as the implementation of externally generated innovations at the workplace level. This presentation examines the mechanisms and cumulative factors behind these processes drawing primarily from a Horizon 2020 project (quinne.eu) examining the generative relationship between job quality and innovation in nine industries, from computer games to healthcare, across the EU (Mathieu & Boethius 2021, 2022).”

Chris Mathieu is a sociologist of work and organization at the Department of Sociology, Lund University. From 2003-2014 he was at the Department of Organisation, Copenhagen Business School. His primary field of research is the organization and quality of working life. From 2015-2018 he was coordinator of the Horizon 2020 project QuInnE (quinne.eu) – Quality of Jobs and innovation Generated Employment Outcomes. In this project he was responsible for studies of innovation and work in the computer games industry and specialist healthcare. He was editor of the Oxford Handbook of Job Quality (OUP, 2022) with Chris Warhurst and Rachel Dwyer. In addition to innovation, job quality and employment issues, he has also published widely on specialist surgical training, gender in organisations, and cultural policy and production, especially inter-occupational collaboration and career in the film industry (see Mathieu & Visanich (2022) Accomplishing Cultural Policy in Europe: Financing, Governance and Responsiveness; Mathieu (2012) Careers in Creative Industries, Routledge).

“This talk is an exploratory tour through this brave new world, and its consequences to our field and to Computer Science (CS) education,” anticipates the speaker of a presentation on a topic that due to the advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in “Large Language Models (LLMs)”, mediately exposed by ChatGPT, promises to revolutionise software development.

“The End of Programming (as we know it)” will be presented by Prof. Cristina Videira Lopes, with moderation by Prof. João Paulo Fernandes, on March 23, 18:00, room B035, with online broadcasting via Youtube.

By the speaker: “For the past 80 years, “programming” meant translating a high-level, semi-formal specification of a desired effect from natural language into computer instructions, using an artificial programming language. Mastering these translations requires domain knowledge of algorithms and data structures, talent, and years of practice. Large Language Models (LLMs) are disrupting the very notion of “programming.” The disruption is profound, and at two levels: (1) LLMs are capable of doing those translations automatically, and (2) many of the desired effects can be obtained without the use of algorithms or data structures. This talk is an exploratory tour through this brave new world, and its consequences to our field and to CS education.”

Short-Bio:

Cristina (Crista) Lopes is a Professor in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at University of California, Irvine, with research interests in Programming Languages, Software Engineering, and Distributed Virtual Environments. She is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. She is the recipient of the 2016 Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest for her work in the OpenSimulator virtual world platform. Her book “Exercises in Programming Style” has gained rave reviews, including being chosen as “Notable Book” by the ACM Best of Computing reviews. https://www.ics.uci.edu/~lopes/

“Computational Inaesthetics: Expanding the Boundaries of Artistic Research and Computational Aesthetics” will be presented on Friday, march 24^th, at 14:30, room I-105, moderated by Prof. António Coelho from DEI.

By the author:

“The increasing use of digital technologies in artistic practice, coupled with the recent emergence of AI, has led to a growing intersection and mutual influence between two related fields: artistic research and computational aesthetics. Artistic research involves using artistic practices to generate new insights and understandings about the world and reflect critically on the process of creating art. In contrast, computational aesthetics involves the theory, practice, and implementation of aesthetics within the domain of computing, and in its most formal version relies on mathematical and computational methods to generate and evaluate art.

However, there has been criticism of computational aesthetics for failing to account for the subjective and non-algorithmic nature of aesthetic experience. Nonetheless, this presentation proposes a practical framework that seeks to resolve this critique by highlighting an expanded view of computational aesthetics, which the presenter terms Computational Inaesthetics.

Through the discussion of basic concepts and principles of artistic research and computational aesthetics, and through the analysis of a selection of artworks by the presenter, the presentation explores the ways in which these fields can inform and enhance each other. Furthermore, the presentation provides an overview of the artistic contents and theoretical underpinnings of the presenter’s artistic research PhD project.

Overall, this presentation showcases the exciting potential of bringing together artistic research and computational aesthetics to expand our understanding of aesthetics, art, creativity, and the role of technology and computation in society.”

Martinus Suijkerbuijk is an artist, designer and engineer that currently is working towards completing his artistic research PhD at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway. His artistic research is focused on the concept of Computational Aesthetics, which he explores through the use of AI empowered Artificial Aesthetic Agents (AAA) in virtual environments. His diverse background has enabled him to present his research and work at cultural institutions such as ZKM and MetaMorf, as well as technology conferences like CHI 2018 and Philips Trend Event.

“Driving Simulators for the Study of Road Users’ Behaviour” will be presented on tuesday, march 7^th, at 17:15, room B012.

“To be efficient and accepted, road safety counter-measures need to be defined thanks to scientific studies. The question is not only to imagine an optimal solution in the absolute, but to understand the real practices and, based on this knowledge, to design the measures (sensitivity campaigns, changes in Highway Code, changes in initial training curriculum or licence tests, infrastructure (re)design, vehicles homologations, etc.). In our talk we will describe the tools and methods we promote and refined for decades to improve road safety, and their use in research projects. Our approach is systemic and is based on three pillars: instrumentation of vehicles for in-depth naturalistic studies, traffic modelling and simulation using a multi-agents system, and design of driving simulators to study driving behaviors. We will illustrate our approach using research projects we have conducted over these last years.”

Stéphane ESPIÉ is a Research Director at the Gustave Eiffel University. He holds an Accreditation to Direct Research in Computer Science (HdR, Pierre et Marie Curie University, 2004). His main research areas are behavioral traffic simulation (MAS based), and the design of tools to study road user behaviors (driving/riding simulators and instrumented vehicles). He currently conducts his research in SATIE laboratory (Paris Saclay university) where he leads the MOSS (Methods and Tools for Signals and Systems) research group.

“Jan N. van Rijn holds a tenured position as assistant professor at Leiden University (ada.liacs.nl), where he works in the computer science department (LIACS) and Automated Design of Algorithms cluster (ADA).

His research interests include artificial intelligence, automated machine learning (AutoML) and meta-learning.

He obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2016 at Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Leiden University (the Netherlands).

During his PhD, he developed OpenML.org, an open science platform for machine learning, enabling sharing of machine learning results.

He made several funded research visits to the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and the University of Porto (Portugal).

After obtaining his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Machine Learning lab at the University of Freiburg (Germany), headed by Prof. Dr. Frank Hutter, after which he moved to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in the City of New York (USA). His research aim is to democratize access to machine learning and artificial intelligence across societal institutions, by developing knowledge and tools that support domain experts.

He is one of the authors of the book `Metalearning: Applications to Automated Machine Learning and Data Mining’ (published by Springer).”

”AutoML and Meta-learning for Neural Network Robustness Verification” will be presented january the 25th, at 14:45, room B006 – free entrance, all are welcome.

Abstract: Artificial intelligence is being increasingly integrated in modern society, with applications ranging from self-driving cars to medicine development. However, artificial intelligence models (in particular neural networks) have been notoriously known for being susceptible for various forms of attacks, including adversarial attacks. In a bid to make these models more trustworthy, the field of neural network robustness verification aims to determine to which degree a given network is susceptible to such an attack. This is a very time consuming task, that can greatly benefit from the various advances that the Automated Machine Learning and meta-learning community have made.

In this talk, it will be explained the basis of automated machine learning and meta-learning, and the speaker will talk about their research on applying this to robustness verification. He will also explain how the community can further engage in this endevour towards trustworthy artificial intelligence.