Carla Silva, Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), Researcher

CARLA SILVA, INSTITUTO DE TELECOMUNICAÇÕES (IT), RESEARCHER

Years when you began working at INESC TEC and when you left: 2014-2015 | 2017-2018

Centre at INESC TEC where you worked: CRACS – Centre for Research in Advanced Computing Systems

Names of projects you were involved in: DATAIP | PhD student

Explain your experience since leaving INESC TEC

My time at INESC TEC allowed me to consolidate and to gain new scientific and technical competences that were put into practice both in the scientific and in business environments. In the scientific environment, at CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, located in the University of Porto, I participated in a project in which I had the opportunity to explain the complexity of multimorbidity (two or more simultaneous diseases) in patients with acute myocardial infarction through the temporal and dynamics Bayesian abstraction networks, considering the monitoring of the patient over time.

In the business environment, at the gaming industry FABAMAQ, I was part of the team responsible for establishing new rules for games and for carrying out analysis of large quantities of data, aiming at identifying possible optimisations to be applied in current and future games in a market that competes at an international level.

Currently, in the Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) located in the campus of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, the goal of my team is to contribute in the decision support area for the urban mobility. We try to combine Machine Learning (ML) algorithms and to develop data mining (DM) pipelines in order to model phenomena in dense urban areas. Climate has a visible impact on our daily lives and our goal is to explain, for example, complex traffic associations based on an empirical-theoretical framework in order to infer congestion in a certain space-time context. The condition of congestion, for example, in the cities’ traffics results in a decrease in the movement flow, thus reducing our quality of life.

At INESC TEC, I had the opportunity to develop several DM tasks, as well as other knowledge areas and to develop software, which made me want to explore several technologies, concepts and learnings that I currently use. The fact that I developed several algorithms in depth motivated me to want to learn more about specific scientific areas and to continue exploring other existing techniques and to carry on with this ongoing process of learning.

In your opinion how did your time at INESC TEC help you in your new role?

INESC TEC offered me a great environment for the development of research. Here I had the opportunity to interact with excellent professionals who helped me gain and enrich my scientific skills. It also gave me enriching experiences such as a visit to the Max Planck Institute, Erlangen, Germany, where I could interact at an international scientific level, presenting one of my research works. This expansion of the acquired knowledge gave me the opportunity to obtain a more global and crucial scientific vision in the scientific research context.

In your opinion, how  has INESC TEC changed since you left?

I have been following the scientific and technological advances of INESC TEC, in particular its recent association to quantum computing through the IBM Q Network that has several partners all over the world. The innovative way in which the research activity is carried out at INESC TEC is not new to me, since I have always considered it as a reference institute, with research lines based on the most recent technological advances.