Departamento de Informática

Título: Simulation in the medical area – the development of a haptic simulator for Spinal Anaesthesia.

Data: 23/maio/2013 (quinta-feira)

Horário: 11h

Local: 511 RDC

Abstract

The development of simulators for training medical staff demands a high degree collaboration between medical staff, designers and evaluators. The presentation will show the design process from a designers perspective of 3 coherent, but different projects: DBMT – Design-based Medical Training, Project TEL-Medicine and MedCap – Competence Assessment for Spinal Anaesthesia. Understanding the medical procedure, technological obstacles and assessment of the learning effect created the biggest difficulties.

Biography

Annette Aboulafia holds a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Copenhagen University. She also holds a Teacher certificat for primary and sedundary shools.

She has been Associate Professor at University of Roskilde (DK), and a visiting Professor at Copenhagen University for many years. During the years 2004-2010 she was a Senior Research Scholar at the Interaction Design Centre, University of Limerick, Ireland, and recently a consultant at the NDRC (National Digital Research Centre), Dublin. Currently, she is an active member of the Medical Educational Forum, School of Medicine, University of Cork, Ireland, and serves as an external examinar in a number of Universities in Denmark in the fields of cognitive, pedagogical, and developmental psychology.

Since 1990 she has been involved in 8 large EU projects in the area of work psychology, human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-mediated learning. Most recently she was involved in the EU KALEIDOSCOPE Network of Excellence in Technology-enhanced Learning, and in a number of project in the area of Medical simulation: the DBMT project, the MedCap project (Competence Assessment for Spinal Anaesthesia and the HAYSTACK project (A simulation tool for the training and assessment of competence in peripheral nerve blockade) (2009-2011).

Título: Challenges facing the Human-Computer Interaction field: Towards a more human-centred perspective?

Palestrante: Liam Bannon, Aarhus University and University of Limerick

Data: 22/maio/2013 (quarta-feira)

Horário: 15h

Local: 511 RDC

Abstract

The field of HCI has changed considerably since its origins in the 1980’s.  Developments have been madea in both theory and practice, but these developments can hardly be seen as cumulative. Technological changes have opened up new avenues for research, yet there are also significant ethical, philosophical and even  ‘political ‘issues that have come to the fore in recent years. In this talk I will try to chart a way through this,  at times, confused landscape, in the process outlining my own human-centred design approach. The talk will finish with a series of challenges  for HCI which will need to be addressed by researchers in the field.

Biography

Liam Bannon is  Honorary Professor in Human Computer Interaction at Aarhus University, Denmark, Visiting Professor in the School of Medicine, University College, Cork, and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at the University of Limerick. Last year he was awarded a prestigious Chair of Excellence at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain. He was also awarded a Visiting Professorship at La Sapienza – The University of Rome, Italy, in Fall 2012. His research interests range over the gamut of human-technology relations, including cognitive ergonomics, human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, computer-supported collaborative learning, new media and interaction design, and social dimensions of new technologies. He was a founding editor of CSCW: The Journal of Collaborative Computing and is serving, or has served,  on the editorial boards of several journals –   Journal of Cognition, Technology, and Work; Requirements Engineering Journal;  Universal Access in the Information Society Journal; International Journal of Cognitive Technology; International Journal of Web-Based Communities; CoDesign Journal; Behaviour and Information Technology Journal; and Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.. He has been a Visiting Professor in Siena, Paris, Troyes, Trento, Sassari, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Amsterdam and Madrid. In 2011 Liam was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology  (KTH), in Stockholm, Sweden for his contributions to the field of Human Computer Interaction. Liam is a Fellow of the Irish Ergonomics Society, a former Member of the Irish Computer Society, first Chair of the ACM SigCHI Irish Chapter, and Irish representative on IFIP TC13 (Human-Computer Interaction). The Interaction Design Centre at UL which he headed from 1996 until 2010 was a multidisciplinary group of over 25 researchers involved in research on a variety of national and EU projects in the general HCI, CSCW and Interaction Design areas.

Título: The Web: Wisdom of Crowds and a Long and Heavy Tail
Palestrante: Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Yahoo! Labs
Data e horário: 16/maio/2013 às 10:00
Local: 511 RDC

Summary:

The Web continues to grow and evolve very fast, changing our daily lives. This activity represents the collaborative work of the millions of institutions and people that contribute content to the Web as well as more than two billion people that use it. In this ocean of hyperlinked data there is explicit and implicit information and knowledge. But how is the Web? Web data mining is the main task to answer this question. Web data comes in three main flavors: content (text, images, etc.), structure (hyperlinks) and usage (navigation, queries, etc.), implying different techniques such as text, graph or log mining. Each case reflects the wisdom of some group of people that can be used to make the Web better. For example, user generated tags in Web 2.0 sites. One important phenomenon of this wisdom is the long tail of the special interests of people. In this talk we cover all these concepts and give specific examples.

Título: Desafios de acessibilidade

Palestrante: Luis Carriço, Professor Associado do Departamento de Informática da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Data: 15 de maio de 2013 (quarta-feira)

Horário: 15h

Local: 511 RDC

Resumo:

O desenvolvimento e utilização de tecnologias providencia oportunidades para que todos os indivíduos tenham acesso à informação, onde quer que estejam ou em que condições se encontrem. Esta visão alargada de acesso à informação, para consumo ou interacção, extravasa o seu público-alvo bem para além das pessoas classicamente consideradas com necessidades especiais. Encontra eco, por um lado, em comunidades crescentes, como a das pessoas idosas, com combinações diversificadas e abrangentes de requisitos específicos, ou por outro, em qualquer utilizador que se encontre em situações de uso debilitante, em que algumas das suas capacidades são completamente absorvidas nas actividades que desenvolvem. Por uma ou outra razão, algumas perspectivas de acessibilidade digital assumem-se horizontais a todos os grupos de utilização, e às mais diversas plataformas e tecnologias promovendo sinergias entre áreas de investigação e desenvolvimento.

Na base do acesso à informação está ela própria e, por conseguinte, nos dias de hoje, sem dúvida a Web. Encontrar maneiras de assegurar as boas práticas e recomendações de acessibilidade na Web é um desafio complexo mas indiscutivelmente basilar. Desde os trabalhos seminais de avaliação até aos mais recentes que acompanham as tendências de dinâmica e compreensão de conteúdos, a investigação nesta área procura igualmente acompanhar mecanismos de reparação sustentados por algoritmos sofisticados ou comunidades omnipresentes.

Sobre a camada de informação, de preferência anotada e bem estruturada, estão os meios de acesso e as aplicações, que nela baseada oferecem mecanismos de interacção adequados às características dos indivíduos e às limitações das situações de uso. Essa adequação encontra três tipos fundamentais de aproximação: 1) a que foca o desenvolvimento das aplicações nos problemas concretos de uso ou de utilizador, constituindo soluções à medida para requisitos particulares; 2) a que sustenta o desenvolvimento daquelas aplicações em bibliotecas e ambientes de desenho dirigidos a peritos no domínio, não-peritos em programação; 3) e finalmente a que suportada por modelos que adapta de forma automática ou semi-automática os conteúdos e os modos de interacção às necessidades dos usuários e da utilização.

As três aproximações sustentam-se a vários níveis na necessidade de um conhecimento profundo dos utilizadores envolvidos, seja ao nível primário (finais), seja a outros, e não menos importante dos ambientes de uso que, pela sua dinâmica, podem provocar tantas dificuldades de acesso como os primeiros. Sustentam-se ainda numa necessidade inerente de uso de multimodalidades que permitam circundar de forma justa as barreiras que inexoravelmente se interpõem no acesso à informação.

Currículo curto:

Luis Carriço é Professor Associado do Departamento de Informática da Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. Doutorou-se em Engenharia Electrotécnica pelo Instituto Superior Técnico em 2000. Os seus interesses de investigação e desenvolvimento centram-se na interacção pessoa máquina, desenho centrado nos utilizadores, interfaces para dispositivos móveis e ubíquos, acessibilidade e interacção em grupo. Publicou mais de 180 artigos em revistas e conferências sobretudo internacionais e é autor de livros e capítulos de livros. Foi membro do Comité Científico e de Programa de mais de 40 revistas e conferências e tem sido avaliador convidado da Comissão Europeia de Projectos e Propostas de Projectos Europeus em especial nas áreas de Usabilidade e Acessibilidade. É líder do grupo HCIM (Human Computer Interaction and Multimédia) do LaSIGE (lasige.di.fc.ul.pt).

Título: An Integrative and Practical Approach for Software Architectures

Palestrante: Manfred Nagl, Software Engineering, RWTH Aachen University

Data e horário: 16/abril/2013 às 13h

Local: 511 RDC

Resumo:

For modeling Software Architectures there exist many, nearly disjoint approaches in the literature: OO and UML, dataflow architectures in the embedded community, different architecture styles, architectures in data base systems / information management systems, and architectures in the modularity community.

The talk gives arguments and ideas for an integrative approach which tries to incorporate all above and different approaches.

Especially, an architecture modeling approach has to be applicable for practical problems as reverse engineering, reengineering, and maintenance in general, where the latter often means extension, distribution, and integration of existing systems.

The architecture approach unifies good ideas, all coming from programming languages: functional and data abstraction, object and type units, locality, layers within architectures, classification and similarities, subsystems, and genericity.

It, especially, points out that there is not only one but a series of architectures, from an abstract form to a concrete one, the latter describing the delivered system to a customer.

Bio:

O prof. Manfred Nagl é Dr.-Ing Computer Science pela University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (1974). Fez a sua “Habilitation in Computer Science” na University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (1979). Foi professor Titular na RWTH Aachen University de 1986 a 2009, atualmente é professor Emérito nesta mesma universidade. Entre seus interesses de pesquisa figuram: Theory, Practical Applications, and Implementation of Graph Rewriting; Nonstandard Database Systems for Tools; Programming Languages; Software Architectures; Software Development Environments; Standard Architectures of Interactive Systems. Publicou 5 livros, foi editor ou coeditor de 20 livros. Publicou mais de 70 artigos. Orientou cerca de 50 teses de doutorado e 300 dissertações de mestrado.

Título: Reflecting on the Usability of Research on Culture in Designing Interaction
Palestrante: José Abdelnour-Nocera, University of West London
Data: 20/03/2013
Horário: 14:00
Local: 511 RDC

Resumo
The concept of culture has been attractive to producers of interactive systems who are willing to design useful and relevant solutions to users increasingly located in culturally diverse contexts. Despite a substantial body of research on culture and technology, interaction designers have not always been able to apply these research outputs to effectively define requirements for culturally diverse users. I frame this issue as one of understanding of the different paradigms underpinning the cultural models being applied to interface development and research. Drawing on different social science theories, I will discuss top-down and bottom-up perspectives in the study of users’ cultural differences and discuss the extent to which each provides usable design knowledge.

Short Bio
José Abdelnour-Nocera is Reader in Sociotechnical Design and Head of The Sociotechnical Centre for Internationalisation and User Experience at the University of West London. His interests lie in the sociotechnical and cultural aspects of systems design, development and use. In pursuing these interests, he has been involved as researcher and consultant in several projects in the UK and overseas in the domains of e-learning in social development, e-commerce, e-governance, and enterprise resource planning systems. Dr. Abdelnour-Nocera gained an MSc in Social Psychology from Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, Venezuela, and a PhD in Computing from The Open University, UK. More info here https://soc.uwl.ac.uk/~jabdelno

Data: 21/03/2013
Horário: 15:00
Local: auditório do RDC

Future directions in computer science research
John Hopcroft, Cornell University

Over the last 40 years the computer science research was focused on making computers useful. Areas included programming languages, compilers, operating systems, data structures and algorithms. These are still important topics but with the merging of computing and communication, the emergence of social networks, and the large amount of information in digital form, focus is shifting to applications such as the structure of networks and extracting information from large data sets. This talk will give a brief vision of the future and then an introduction to the science base that needs to be formed to support these new directions.

Short bio

John E. Hopcroft is the IBM Professor of Engineering and Applied Mathematics in Computer Science at Cornell University. From January 1994 until June 2001, he was the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering. After receiving both his M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1964) in electrical engineering from Stanford University, he spent three years on the faculty of Princeton University. He joined the Cornell faculty in 1967, was named professor in 1972 and the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Computer Science in 1985. He served as chairman of the Department of Computer Science from 1987 to 1992 and was the associate dean for college affairs in 1993. An undergraduate alumnus of Seattle University, Hopcroft was honored with a Doctor of Humanities Degree, Honoris Causa, in 1990.

Hopcroft’s research centers on theoretical aspects of computing, especially analysis of algorithms, automata theory, and graph algorithms. He has coauthored four books on formal languages and algorithms with Jeffrey D. Ullman and Alfred V. Aho.His most recent work is on the study of information capture and access.

He was honored with the A. M. Turing Award in 1986. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE), and the Association of Computing Machinery(ACM). In 1992, he was appointed by President Bush to the National Science Board (NSB), which oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF), and served through May 1998. From 1995-98, Hopcroft served on the National Research Council’s Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications.

In addition to these appointments, Hopcroft serves as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the David and Lucile Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, the SIAM financial management committee, IIIT New Delhi advisory board, Microsoft‘s technical advisory board for research Asia, the Engineering Advisory Board, Seattle University, and the program committee for Chile Millennium Science Initiative.

Palestrante: Haim Levkowitz (University of Massachusetts Lowell)
Título: Cloud and Mobile Web-based Graphics and Visualization
Data: 13/12/2012
Horário: 10:00-11:00
Local: 510 RDC

Resumo:
Cloud computing will likely be the most prevailing computing platform in the next several years. The World-Wide Web has progressed from
essentially an electronic bulletin board (with hyperlinking capabilities) to a nearly complete application platform. Cloud+Mobile, the combination of mobile computing and cloud computing, is changing how developers produce, and how users consume computing resources. Visual computing has been, and is being impacted by this same revolution.

The recent introduction of HTML5 and related graphics technologies and their rapid penetration, have made high-quality browser-based interactive graphics a reality. Where lightning fast interactivity is required, client-side rendering technologies such as SVG, Canvas, and WebGL can be employed. Where graphical “heavy lifting” is required or if client devices are too slow, rendering can take place on the server side.

Regardless of implementation details, we envision that the Cloud+Mobile platform will become the most common platform for computer graphics and visualization in the near future. Furthermore, this platform will democratize the use of advanced graphics and visualization techniques, and it stands to revolutionize mainstream data analysis using interactive visualization.

We survey the underlying technologies that enable graphics on the Cloud+Mobile platform. We discuss future challenges, and describe our own research efforts along these directions.

Bio:
Haim Levkowitz, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Human-Information Interaction Research Group at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, a Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Brazil (2012), and a Visiting Professor at ICMC-USP-SP (2012-13).

He was a Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Professor Levkowitz is a world-renowned authority on color graphics, visualization, and information presentation. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Prof. Levkowitz has been a life-long entrepreneur, starting his first business at the age of 21, his second at 23, and his third one at 25. Professor Levkowitz was a co-founder of Anvil, Inc., which was founded through the UMass Commercial Ventures and Intellectual Property program in 2000. In addition, over his 40-year career in computer science and technology, he has been involved with numerous high-tech startups as Chief Technology Officer, Strategic and Technical Adviser, and as a Venture Investor.

Abstract. As an essential part of the W3C’s semantic web stack and linked data initiative, RDF data management systems (also known as triplestores) have drawn a lot of research attention. The majority of these systems use value-based indexes (e.g., B+-trees) for physical storage, and ignore many of the structural aspects present in RDF graphs. Structural indexes, on the other hand, have been successfully applied in XML and semi-structured data management to exploit structural graph information in query processing. In those settings, a structural index groups nodes in a graph based on some equivalence criterion, for example, indistinguishability with respect to some query workload (usually XPath). Motivated by this body of work, we have started the SAINT-DB project to study and develop a native RDF management system based on structural indexes. In this talk we present a principled framework for designing and using RDF structural indexes for practical fragments of SPARQL, based on recent formal structural characterizations of these fragments. We then explain how structural indexes can be incorporated in a typical query processing workow; and discuss the design, implementation, and initial empirical evaluation of our approach.

Prof. Jan Hidders, TU Delft
Data e horário: 22/08 das 13 às 15
Local: RDC510

Prof. Geert-Jan Houben,TU Delft, The Netherlands
In this talk, we discuss how micro-blogging activities on Twitter can be leveraged for user modeling and personalisation. We investigate this challenge and introduce a framework for user modeling on Twitter which enriches the semantics of Twitter messages (tweets) and identies topics and entities (e.g. persons, events, products) mentioned in tweets. We analyse how strategies for constructing hashtag-based, entity-based or topic-based user profiles benefit from semantic enrichment and explore the temporal dynamics of those profiles. We further measure and compare the performance of the user modeling strategies in context of a personalised news recommendation system. Our results reveal how the different user modeling strategies impact personalization and discover that the consideration of temporal
profile patterns can improve recommendation quality. We also take a look at some applications that follow from this work, e.g. in the areas of crises management and culture-based adaptation. In the area of cultural differences we report on a study in which we analyse and compare user behaviour on two different microblogging platforms: (1) Sina Weibo which is the most popular microblogging service in China and (2) Twitter. We analyse more than 40 million microblogging activities and investigate microblogging behaviour from different angles. Our results reveal significant differences in the microblogging behaviour on Sina Weibo and Twitter and deliver valuable insights for multilingual and culture-aware user modelling based on microblogging data.

Local: Sala RDC511,
Data: 16/08 das 14 às 16horas