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Human-Centered Computing and Information Science

About Centre

The Centre for Human-Centered Computing and Information Science (HumanISE) brings together engineers, scientists, and designers with expertise in Human-Centred Computing (HCC), Computer Science (CS), and Information Science (IS). Interdisciplinarity, one of the Centre’s defining features, fosters the development of software systems, methods, and tools designed to empower individuals and their communities. The excellence and impact of HumanISE’s research, innovation, and consultancy activities allow addressing increasingly complex, volatile, heterogeneous, ambiguous, and uncertain challenges, while ensuring compliance with legal, ethical, and organisational standards and frameworks. Value transfer is achieved through close collaboration with academia and industry partners. HumanISE’s core research areas include Human-Computer Interaction; Computer Graphics and Interactive Digital Media; Information Management and Information Systems; Software Engineering; and Large-Scale and Special-Purpose Computing Systems, Languages, and Tools; as well as Computing for Embedded and Cyber-Physical Systems. HumanISE also explores innovation domains like Earth, Ocean and Space Sciences; Personalised Health Research; Geospatial Information Systems Engineering; and Applied Information Systems and Computing.

Centre Areas

Interação Humano-Computador

Computer Human Interaction seeks to understand how people interact with technologies and how technology changes society, by designing new interaction techniques and interfaces. Major research topics concerning human factors for interactive systems include human-centred AI, cooperative systems and accessibility. Hybrid human-AI collaborations and exploring human factors in AI through cooperative and crowd-empowered systems are currently hot topics, focusing Humans teaming with AI to reach a Human-AI symbiosis. Also, citizen science has a rising interest in the Digital Twins, engaging stakeholders in digital ecosystems. Research trends in accessibility and assistive technologies aim to apply computing and information technologies to empower individuals with disabilities and older adults by eliminating the gap between the average user and those with special needs, promoting equal rights and opportunities. Active ageing research aims to enhance the relationship between seniors and technology, by personalising user experience, adapting interaction to the context and to user profiles and highlighting the benefits of using technology in daily life.

Computação Gráfica e Media Digital Interativa

Extended Reality solutions, including Multisensory VR and AR, Visualization, Digital Games, Interactive Multimedia applications, and in general, Computer Graphics & Interaction, are important areas driving innovation in the IT sector. Our challenge is to contribute with fundamental and applied research in these areas, with a multidisciplinary team, advancing the interconnection between technology and human perception. We are committed to participating in and organising scientific and public events in the area, as well as participating in the organs of important international scientific associations, as is the case of the EUROGRAPHICS, the Immersive Learning Research Network and the working group IEEE Digital Twin of the Earth group. Our knowledge and regular industry collaboration, constitute an excellent potential to increase our involvement with current and new partners and communities, fostering research-based learning by engaging Master's and PhD students. Our experience in Immersive Learning Environments, as well as in Serious Games, can promote applications in Training & Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, providing innovative learning experiences.

Gestão da Informação e Sistemas de Informação

The Information Management and Information Systems (IMIS) area conducts R&D activities focused on the design, implementation, and evaluation of advanced information systems. Core research fields include Information Retrieval, Human Information Interaction, Research Data Management, and Data Infrastructures. Our work addresses key scientific, technical, and social challenges in data representation, enhancing interoperability and fostering deeper understanding of complex data. Moreover, we enhance human information interaction through comprehensive user studies, interaction analysis, user-centered interface design, and advanced eye-tracking technologies, ensuring systems effectively meet user needs. IMIS actively promotes Open Data and Open Science principles, facilitating broad collaboration and transparent knowledge dissemination. Application sectors span Cultural Heritage, Health, Media, and the Public Sector, highlighting significant impact and opportunities for innovative partnerships.

Sistemas de Computação de Grande Escala e Propósito Específico, Linguagens e Ferramentas

LaSPeCS focuses on methods, algorithms, techniques, software tools, and compilers to map computations to new and emerging computing systems. We also focus on researching algorithms, data structures, and programming languages to cope with those systems' heterogeneous, parallel, and distributed hardware support. The research findings can enable computations in devices with strict restrictions (such as mobile and handheld devices) but also can contribute to more efficient embedded, cloud, and high-performance computing (e.g., in terms of energy consumption, scalability, and other performance requirements), empowering the competitiveness of companies and the innovation and research findings in many areas. This research track explores the opportunities to develop code analysis and transformation libraries and tools, targeting several languages including C/C++, Java, Fortran and Android bytecode, which are used, among other things, to map data-flow and streaming-oriented computations to multiple targets (e.g., custom RISC-V extensions, CGRA), and improve the safety of existing C code by applying analyses inspired by known and proved languages and standards (e.g., Rust, MISRA-C).

Computação para Sistemas Embebidos e Ciberfísicos

The development of embedded systems went from the small-scale development of isolated embedded monitoring and control devices to the development of complex, connected, system of systems, integrating hardware, software, control, and physical processes, in what is referred to as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Embedded and cyber-physical systems are omnipresent in our environment, with applications as diverse as automotive autonomous systems, air quality systems, and renewable generation control, being enablers of a smart society. The C4ECPS research area focuses on research and development in: 1) middleware for CPS, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and edge computing; 2) high-performance and predictable management of advanced computation in IoT/edge ecosystems; 3) methods, tools and languages for the development, deployment, and maintenance of safe and secure embedded and cyber-physical systems.

Investigação em Saúde Personalizada

This area seeks to empower health researchers to achieve evidence-driven science towards personalised treatments. It splits into two sub-areas: a) personalised Internet-based treatments; b) human data storage, harmonisation, and controlled sharing. Important trends and challenges include collaborative tools and methods for health research, leveraging FAIR principles, security, and privacy preservation. This area is in line with the goals of the research challenge computing systems to empower human capabilities, by fostering distributed ML techniques, AI reproducibility, and new visualisation paradigms. In addition, the challenges addressed under this innovation area overlap with research challenges such as methods and tools to boost the quality of future software systems, and trustworthy control of data confidentiality and provenance.

Engenharia de Sistemas de Informação Geoespacial

This area delivers R&I focused on applied research leading to products and services, better aligned with the industry's needs. One branch aims to provide specialised and advanced consultancy, technology transfer and innovation, and support adopting good practices and emerging standards by companies and public administration entities. Another branch aims to help induce a market pull drive into research and technological development and generate a convergence of knowledge, competencies, and synergies to help produce solutions for Agro-Food and Industry, involving companies and public entities. We are also pushing for the adoption of ICT solutions using geospatial information systems based on OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) standards and spatial data infrastructures.

Sistemas de Informação e Computação Aplicada

Information Systems and Applied Computing (ISAC) is a multidisciplinary area of computing that focuses on the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of computational systems used by individuals, organizations, and society. Its emphasis lies in real-world applications, bridging the gap between technical architectures and human, organizational, or social needs. Unlike purely theoretical computing, this field prioritizes the contextual use of technology to solve practical problems, improve decision-making, support collaboration, and enable innovation across sectors such as government, education, business, and health. It draws on multiple subfields, including systems engineering, human-computer interaction, data science, enterprise architecture, and emerging technologies like AI, IoT, and blockchain—always grounded in user-centric and organizational requirements. Key areas in ISAC are Information Systems, Decision Support and Knowledge Management, Enterprise and Socio-Technical Systems, Applied Computing, Human-Centered Computing, and Security and Privacy in Socio-Technical Systems.

Engenharia de Software

The Software Engineering area aims to develop novel methods, techniques, and tools that advance how software is designed, constructed, and assessed. It seeks to ensure that the research results have a lasting impact on software development practices and contribute to improving the industry’s competitiveness. The main research lines are: 1) software requirements, design, and construction: requirements management, software architecture and design, model-driven development, and cloud-native software engineering; 2) software testing: model-based testing, mobile testing, distributed systems testing, and IoT testing; 3) software process and tools: agile processes, process improvement, tools for collaboration and knowledge management; serious games in software engineering education. Within these research lines, we aim to continue to identify, get to the essence, and document what actually constitutes good solutions in modern-day software engineering, working closely with professionals; and continuing to advance the state of the art in techniques, practices, and tools that can, in different ways, improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and experience of software developers.

Flagship Projects

3DWikiU

Collaborative Virtual Reality system for urban environments

3Port

Georeferenced management system for port business processes, in four major areas: Asset Management, Monitoring and Maintenance of Maritime and Land based Infrastrutures, Navigation Safety Procedures, and Environmental Regulation Compliance.

Ports and Environmental Management Information System

See more projects

Team Members

Team Leaders

Artur Jorge da Silva Rocha

He is a senior researcher at INESC TEC since 1998. He is coordinator of HumanISE - Human-centered computing and Information Science

Current research interests include platforms and methods for collaborative research, privacy-preserving distributed computation, the semantic sensor Web (IoT) and Big Data processing.

From October 1996 to December 1997, he was an associate member of CERN - European Laboratory for High Energy Physics, IT Division/Web Office.

His research is applied in two major areas: Personalized Health Research (PHR) and Earth and Ocean Observation Science (EOOS).

The PHR area currently subdivides in: a) personalized Internet-based treatments; and b) human data storage, privacy-preserving processing and controlled FAIR data sharing. In this area, he participates in several European projects, such as ICT4Depression (FP7), E-COMPARED (FP7), STOP Depression (EEA Grant), iCare4Depression (FCT), RECAP Preterm (H2020), EUCAN-Connect (H2020) and iReceptor Plus (H2020). In these projects, he often undertakes the role of responsible for the system's architecture, platform implementation, or technical coordinator.

In the EOOS area he participates in the implementation of the RAIA Observatory (Interreg projects RAIA, RAIA.co, RAIA TEC, MarRisk and RADAR ON RAIA), SeaBioData(EEA Grant), MELOA (H2020) and C4G which is the Portuguese node of EPOS (H2020 EPOS-SP).

Hugo Alexandre Paredes Guedes da Silva

Hugo Paredes (M) received B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Minho (2000 and 2008), and the Habilitation title from the University of Tras-os-Montes e Alto Douro - UTAD (2016). He was software engineer at SiBS, S.A. and software consultant at Novabase Outsoursing, S.A. Since 2003, he has been at UTAD, where he is currently Full Professor. In 2017 he co-founded Robocode Generation, Lda, a start-up company, UTAD spin off, where he is scientific consultant. During 2017 he was a visiting faculty at Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He was Pro-Rector for Digital Transition and Administrative Transformation at UTAD from May 2021 to September 2023.

He is a Researcher Coordinator at the Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC), he is Coordinator of the Centre for Human-Centered Computing and Information Science (HumanISE). His main research interests are in the domain of Human-Computer Interaction, namely the topic of Human-AI applied to climate change, accessibility, health and active and healthy ageing. He is a member of the J.UCS board of editors, was guest editor of four Special Issues in journals indexed by the Journal Citation Reports and collaborates with the organization of several international conferences. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 refereed journal, book chapters and conference papers. He is one of the inventors of a granted patent and a patent pending request. He participated and lead several projects, including national and international projects, with public and private funding.