Program

Morning Host: Nélson Rodrigues, ProDEI Symposium Organization

• 09h00 - Welcome
  • Eliseu Pereira, ProDEI Symposium Organization
    
  • João Paiva Cardoso, DEI
    
• 09h30 - ProDEI Presentation
  • Carlos Soares, ProDEI Director
• 10h00 - Panel "PhD Paths"
  • Hajar Baghcheband, ProDEI Symposium Organization
  • João Pedro Dias, BUILT CoLAB
    
  • João Reis, DEUS.ai
    
  • Tiago Boldt, Kevel
    
• 10h50 - Mini-break
• 11h00 - FCT Funding Opportunities
  • Diana Silva, INOV FEUP
  • Eugénio Oliveira, DEI Emeritus Professor
• 12h15 - End Morning Session
  • Sérgio Nunes, ProDEI
• 12h30 - Lunch, at Coffee Lounge

Afternoon Host: Tiago Santos, ProDEI Symposium Organization

• 13h45 - Invited Keynote: "There are more tides than sailors: A reflection on the importance of doing top-quality scientific research!"
  • Luís Paulo Reis, LIACC & DEI
    
• 14h45 - ProDEI Students Presentations
  • Carlos Soares, ProDEI
    
  • Augusto Sousa, ProDEI
    
  • ProDEI Students
• 16h00 - Coffee Break, at Coffee Lounge
  

Invited Keynote: "There are more tides than sailors: A reflection on the importance of doing top-quality scientific research!"

The sentence “There are more tides than sailors!" can be used to highlight the scarcity of available top-quality and well-qualified researchers with the specific set of skills, knowledge, and expertise needed to define and develop the most promising and high-impact projects. Just as there are many tides but relatively few skilled sailors capable of navigating the most challenging and complicated ones.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) advanced approaches, with emphasis on Machine learning (ML), Intelligent Robotics (IR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are developed all around the world, Computer Scientists (CS) are starting to be replaced by their artificial counterparts. However, the most skilled CS/AI professionals have increasingly well-paid top positions! This talk will focus on recent developments in the fields of CS, AI, ML, IR and NLP and the importance of developing excellent science and advanced research in these areas in the context of a successful and impactful PhD to be able to get a top position on a top international technological company.

Luís Paulo Reis

Luís Paulo Reis has BSc (5 years - 1993), MSc (1995) and PhD (2003) degrees in Electrotechnical Engineering (with specializations in Computer Science, Industrial Informatics and Artificial Intelligence/Robotics). He is an Associate Professor at the University of Porto in Portugal and Director of LIACC – Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory. He is an IEEE Senior member, was President of the Portuguese Society for Robotics and is now President of APPIA - Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence. He is also Co-Director of LIACD - First Degree in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. During the last 30 years, he has lectured courses at the University, on Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Robotics, Machine Learning, Multi-Agent Systems, Simulation and Modelling, Games and Interaction, Educational/Serious Games and Computer Programming. He was the principal investigator of more than 25 research projects in those areas. He won more than 60 scientific awards, including winning more than 15 RoboCup international competitions and best papers at conferences such as ICEIS, Robotica, IEEE ICARSC and ICAART. He has supervised 22 PhD and 150 MSc theses to completion and is supervising 15 PhD theses. He evaluated more than 100 projects and proposals for FP6, FP7, H2020, FCT, and ANI. He was a plenary speaker at international conferences such as ICAART, ICINCO, LARS/SBR, WAF, IcSports, SYROCO, CLAWAR, WCQR and ECIAIR. He organized more than 60 international scientific events and belonged to the Program Committee of more than 250 scientific events. He is the author of more than 400 publications in international conferences and journals (indexed at SCOPUS/ISI WoK).

Panel "PhD Paths"

Doing a PhD is a complex and challenging path, but fruitful in the end. In this session, we will have testimonials from former ProDEI alumni, talking about their experiences during the PhD, the benefits and how their professional life evolve after the PhD. The invited speakers are João Pedro Dias, João Reis and Tiago Boldt, all of them provide different visions and currently working both in industry and academia.

João Pedro Dias

João Pedro Dias has a BSc+MSc in Informatics and Computing Engineering by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP). He has a Ph.D. in Informatics Engineering by the same university since 2022. He is an Invited Assistant Professor at FEUP since 2017, lecturing various courses ranging from Software Engineering to Operating Systems. He has co-supervised +5 MSc dissertations and participated as a Researcher in two projects at LIACC and INESC TEC (Porto, Portugal). He is now Software Engineering Specialist at BUILT CoLAB working in the area of Software Engineering, with a special interest in Design Patterns, Internet-of-Things, Security and Privacy with more than +30 published and indexed papers.

João Reis

João Reis is currently Data Science Lead at DEUS company, a role that he has been gladly taking for the past year and a half. Before that, he was mostly an academic with close to 10 years of research at University of Porto, specifically at DIGI2 Lab at SYSTEC. Within this period, he has participated in close to 20 National and European projects focusing on Smart Manufacturing, specifically applying machine learning and smart sensing solutions in industry. Additionally, he has been given the opportunity to lecture for 4 years in both Informatics and Electrical Engineering together with small contributions as an expert for the European Commission on the topic of smart manufacturing. Recently, he has been involved as Lecturer in a Barcelona based business school called Nuclio Digital School (NDS) on the topics of Machine Learning and MLOps.

Tiago Boldt

Tiago Boldt is an invited professor at the Faculty of Engineering University of Porto (FEUP), teaching software engineering, mainly focusing on web development and software processes and tools. He has also supervised several master theses and internships from our students. Since 2020, he has had a Ph.D. (Cum Laude) in Software Engineering from FEUP. You can learn more about his research by downloading his Ph.D. thesis or browsing his publications. In the industry, he leads product development at Kevel, a US company helping brands optimize their digital marketing initiatives in a data-conscious way. We began as ShiftForward in 2011, got acquired by Velocidi in 2018, and finally by Kevel in 2022. He has organized several editions of the EuroPLoP conference as a member of the non-profit Hillside Europe. He is also an invited researcher at INESC-TEC, where he has previously held several full-time research grants.

FCT Funding Opportunities

If you are interested in finding opportunities to finance your PhD you should attend this session. Here will be presented FCT funding opportunities by Diana Silva from INOV FEUP and Professor Engénio Oliveira, a DEI Emeritus Professor. Among the topics addressed are the details of the application process, funding possibilities and questions clarification.

On the following link, you can consult the presentation used during the session: Funding Opportunities Presentation

Eugénio Oliveira

Emeritus and Full Professor at the University of Porto. Co-founder of LIACC (Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory). He created PRODEI, the PhD Program on Informatics Engineering at the University of Porto. He got his PhD in Artificial Intelligence at New University of Lisbon in 1984. He was awarded with the Gulbenkian Prize for Science and Technology. "Guest Academic" at IBM/IEC in Belgium. He successfully supervised 23 PhD students and more than 60 Master students. 5751 citations and h índex 37 at Google Scholar. He was member of the Scientific Council for New Talents in AI at the Gulbenkian Foudation. He was involved in research projects, funded by national and international agencies concerning AI and mutiagent systems applications. Current topics of interest include AI and Ethics, Natural Language Programing, Software Agents and Trust.

Work-in-Progress ProDEI Students Presentation

After the keynote speaker, it will be the turn of the current ProDEI PhD students to present their thesis status. Each presentation will have 10 minutes duration, where the topics addressed include Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, and Information Systems, among others. Professor Carlos Soares and Professor Augusto Sousa will moderate the session.