LIAAD/INESC TEC researcher wins Brazilian award

The book Inteligência Artificial: Uma abordagem de aprendizado de máquina (Artificial Intelligence: A machine learning approach), written in co-authorship by João Gama, researcher at INESC TEC’s Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD), has won the 2012 Jabuti Award, in the Technology and IT category.

The book was written in order to provide graduation and post-graduation students with an updated tool. Other than introducing the main machine learning concepts and algorithms, the book offers guidelines for the practical application of the knowledge acquired, namely in terms of helping diagnose illnesses, monitoring water quality, preventing forest fires or detecting  failures in power transmission lines.

“Writing a book is a long distance race. However, this marathon was easier due to the excellence and complementarity of the team”, João Gama states refering to the remaining authors and researchers – André Carvalho from the University of São Paulo (USP), Katti Faceli from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and Ana Carolina Lorena from the Federal University of ABC (UFABC) – who also participated in this book.

“Receiving the award was, to all of us, an unexpected honour. It acknowledged an intense quality work”, the LIAAD researcher adds.

The Jabuti Award is the most important literary award in Brazil, promoted by the Câmara Brasileira do Livro. It includes several categories, from novels to educational and technical books.

The Portuguese edition of the book, entitled Extração de Conhecimento de Dados (Extracting Knowledge from Data), was recently published in Portugal by the Sílabo publisher. Márcia Oliveira, also a researcher at LIAAD, contributed to this edition of the book.