Europe’s largest AI and machine learning event welcomed a regular guest: INESC TEC

Four INESC TEC researchers travelled to Naples for another edition of the ECML PKDD conference; from presentations to organising and running workshops, the Institute was once again part of the event. 

The conference that brings together leading international experts in mathematics, statistics, computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning featured INESC TEC contribution. 

Known as ECML PKDD – European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases – the conference took place in Naples after being hosted in Porto in 2025, under INESC TEC’s tutelage. In the Italian city, INESC TEC researchers João Gama and Rita Ribeiro co-organised a workshop focusing on the tangible impacts of data science for the common good. 

The session SoGood brought together around 40 researchers; throughout the day, several applications of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence aimed at addressing social and sustainability challenges were presented, covering topics like explainability and trust in AI, privacy, healthcare, anomaly detection, environmental monitoring, language model sustainability and personalised interventions for social well-being. 

But the Institute’s contributions did not end there. From 7 to 11 September, INESC TEC researcher Miriam Seoane Santos co-organised a workshop and tutorial focusing on exploratory strategies for detecting bias in the training data of machine learning classifiers. 

“The presentation was based on recently published software (scikit-fair), which was very well received. Several potential collaborations emerged, as did the possibility of using the software in the curricula of other courses, which we are currently assessing,” said Miriam Seoane Santos, who is also a lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto. 

There was also time to present five papers; the studies covered a range of topics, from privacy in digital services to AI sustainability and learning efficiency in data streams, as well as emissions monitoring and mobility prediction based on GPS trajectories, the latter two presented by researcher Thiago Andrade Silva. 

ECML PKDD 2026 brought together around 1,400 participants in Italy. The event has returned to Porto once every 10 years: in 2005, 2015 and 2025. According to João Gama, the plan is to bring the conference back to Porto in 2035.