Human-Centered Computing and Information Science

About Domain

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.

Flagship Projects

ILIAD

Inno4Vac

Developing a new vaccine typically takes more than a decade. Under a single umbrella, Inno4Vac proposes an ambitious programme that will harness the latest advances in immunology, disease modelling, and in silico and mathematical modelling for tackling persistent scientific bottlenecks in vaccine development and for de-risking and accelerating this process. Inno4Vac is an interdisciplinary project funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2) that aims to harness advances in the fields of immunology, big data and artificial intelligence, 3D tissue models and human infection models, and incorporate them into the vaccine industry to accelerate the development of new vaccines. This five year and a half project (Sept 2021 – February 2027) brings together global leaders in the fields of clinical research, immunology, microbiology, systems biology, mathematical models, and regulatory matters. This diverse team will focus on four key areas or subtopics. INESC TEC’s focus is in Subtopic 1 – VAXPRED: Using big data analysis, computational modelling in combination with artificial intelligence is being used to build an open-access and cloud-based platform for in silico vaccine efficacy assessment and development.

A cloud-based systems-immunology platform for reliable predictions of vaccine efficacy

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Selected Publications

Assessing the perceptual equivalence of a firefighting training exercise across virtual and real environments

Narciso, D;Melo, M;Rodrigues, S;Dias, D;Cunha, J;Vasconcelos Raposo, J;Bessa, M;

2024

VIRTUAL REALITY

Foundations for a Rust-Like Borrow Checker for C

Silva, T;Bispo, J;Carvalho, T;

2024

PROCEEDINGS OF THE 25TH ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGES, COMPILERS, AND TOOLS FOR EMBEDDED SYSTEMS, LCTES 2024

Live software documentation of design pattern instances

Lemos, F;Correia, FF;Aguiar, A;Queiroz, PGG;

2024

PEERJ COMPUTER SCIENCE

WAVE: Sound and music in an immersive environment

Valbom, L;Marcos, A;

2005

COMPUTERS & GRAPHICS-UK

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Team Members

Team Leaders

Ademar Aguiar

Artur 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 Paredes

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.