Free Nonsense
"We at HASLab – “Cool and Intelligent Guys”
By Paulo Jesus*
Over the last years, several approaches have been proposed to solve this “Free Nonsense” problem, but none have been able to effectively solve it. In this article, I intend to do the same… MUAHAHAHAHA! In addition, it is not every day that we have the opportunity to “freely screw up”…
Bazinga! :)
I apologize but with all the formality that comes with writing articles I’m not used to dropping a line freely and relaxed. But I must confess that writing this first paragraph was quite funny as we are not allowed to use this kind of language in scientific articles.
I will take advantage of this opportunity to talk a little about HASLab and the group’s work environment. Many of you (or so I hope), or at least some, may have already heard or read about the type of activities we develop here at HASLab. So I won’t be bothering you will all the details. If you want to know more about us you can go to our website. By the way, we are developing a new website and from what I’ve seen I can say it’s going to be a lot cooler!
So today I’m going to reveal what goes on “backstage” at HASLab... Prepare yourselves! In fact, there are two words to describe HASLab: “Cool Guys”! OK, I’ll admit that two simple words aren’t enough to provide an accurate depiction. So let’s use three (OK, technically it’s four): “Cool and Intelligent Guys”! This is the hard and honest truth. With these words we can truly characterise what HASLab is.
Some might even think that we are only five or six people stuck in a small room in Braga, but in fact we are around 60 and we take an entire floor of the Computer Department at the University of Minho. Sometimes we’re even on the news, especially in the famous Bulletin INESC TEC (BIP) so you can look us up.
The achievements of our researchers and projects have already been broadly acknowledged with a few awards: best paper awards, the IBM award for scientific merit, the Google Research Award, etc... But we are not known only for our brains; we are also stars when it comes to sports, even though we’ve had a weak performances in INESC TEC Football Tournament. In sports, our “thing” is Beach Volleyball. This year was brilliant as the MAP-i, set up by PhD students from HASLab, finally got to the podium coming 3rd in the Beach Volleyball Tournament promoted by the University of Minho.
The truth of the matter is that HASLab is a bunch of good, committed and hard-working people who are always striving for excellence. It’s a group I am proud to belong to.
*Researcher at the High Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab)
