Limelight

In a universe of more than 1200 collaborators, there are many months when there is more than one collaborator with a performance suitable for “Limelight”. An example of this is the fact that for several months we receive more than one nominee. This led to a change in the publication policy: BIP has started to highlight all nominees, without considering the merit (because all nominees have much merit!). Additionally, considering the criteria for news opportunity, an interview with one of the nominees is developed.

THIS MONTH WE SPOKE WITH Vitor Mangaravite (LIAAD) 

1. How did the idea of coming to INESC TEC emerged? 

After I defended my Master thesis in 2016, I received an email for the selection process of this scholarship related to Computer Science. Since I knew the names, both Alípio Jorge and Ricardo Campos, project leaders and authors of several articles that I read during my higher education, I didn’t hesitate to apply.

Besides, the project also stood out because in times of big data, it proposed the development of a keyword extraction method regardless the language, which is a traditional yet unanswered problem. At that time, I talked to some colleagues from the lab, who reinforced my desire to be part of the project and to join this arduous task of migrating, at least temporarily, from Brazil.

Also, an international experience in Portugal seemed a unique and enriching opportunity to my academic education and even to my personal life.

2. Your core training is in Computer Science. How has been the experience of applying that knowledge in INESC TEC, namely in LIAAD? 

It has been an extremely enriching experience and also challenging. My degree area is on the information retrieval (IR), but I was challenged to work on keyword extraction, an area that despite having a great intersection with IR, is based on other premises. We have achieved really relevant results in this union of areas. Both YAKE, the base project proposed in the scholarship application, which was awarded in an event in May (ECIR 2018), and the "Conta-me histórias", winner of the Arquivo.pt Prizes 2018, were projects that opened me new horizons and unique possibilities of learning.

3. On the one hand, the nomination is made under the FourEyes line of the Tec4Growth project. How has it been working on this project?

As much as I have not been deeply involved with the other FourEyes projects, it has played a key role in the way we conduct our project, since the approach of FourEyes goes beyond the development of advanced techniques and academic publications, also encouraging the development of solutions open to the general use. That was the line of reasoning that we followed in 2016, when we decided that YAKE would not be "yet another keyword extractor", but a solution that could be used without relying on a massive amount of data and computational resources for proper operation. Up to a certain level, this also encouraged us to develop the “Conta-me Histórias” as a final summarisation solution.

4. The other distinction is related to the “Conta-me Histórias” project, which won a prize this month. How did this idea emerged? 

The idea emerged from an invitation/challenge made by Ricardo Campos, my project supervisor, so that we could develop a solution for the Arquivo.pt 2018 competition. This competition aimed to foster the development of systems that used the content of the Arquivo.pt (which is a research infrastructure that enables the search and access to files from the web pages archived since 1996) in creative and innovative solutions.

So we developed the “Conta-me Histórias” project, adapting the knowledge gained with the development of YAKE, in a solution for the temporal summarisation of news problem, resulting in a technically effective system and, together with Arian Pasquali, visually elegant. Thus, “Conta-me histórias” allows an end user to search and receive a response constructed in the form of a narrative, summarising the main events that describe that topic (accessing contamehistorias.pt, which uses arquivo.pt), and it also allows other researchers to use such system in their own infrastructures/environments, since their incorporation can be done with a few lines of code.

5. We will end this interview by asking you to comment on your nomination by the LIAAD Coordination: 

"Vitor is a young researcher who came to LIAAD in 2016 willing to work on information retrieval and extraction on the FourEyes line of the Tec4Growth project. He has been supervised by Ricardo Campos and has worked in collaboration with me [Alípio Jorge] and Arian Pasquali. Vitor has been a tireless researcher, with an enormous capacity to help in the construction and implementation of algorithms and in their demanding evaluation. Vitor is a notable programmer and has proven valuable in finding those mistakes that are very difficult to find. He is a fan of scientific and methodological rigour that helps the team to purify all the work and to significantly improve the final result.

Being part of the team, Vitor helped to achieve important distinctions such as the Best short paper at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2018) entitled "The Text Feature Based Automatic Keyword Extraction Method for Single Documents". He also belongs to the team that won the first prize of the first competition of Arquivo.pt on July 3, in a ceremony in the Ciência 2018 event.” 

It was with great gratitude that I received the nomination from Alípio Jorge for this edition of Limelight. In these two years I have done my best to develop a serious work, always focused on the scientific and methodological rigour, and so I am very happy both for benefits reaped and for the recognition expressed by the constant kind words from Alipio. In fact, it was two years of hard work that were greatly rewarded with the awards, and this appointment ended with a flourish my stay here in Portugal.

It is important to remember that both awards were only possible due to the work of the whole team. All the solutions came from a lot of collective work, successes and mistakes, and I would like to thank the other members of this team that were fundamental to the results obtained during the project and to my intellectual development during the period I worked here. Thank you very much!

Limelight - JuNE

• Vitor Mangaravite, LIAAD

"Vitor is a young researcher who came to LIAAD in 2016 willing to work on information retrieval and extraction on the FourEyes line of the Tec4Growth project. He has been supervised by Ricardo Campos and has worked in collaboration with me [Alípio Jorge] and Arian Pasquali. Vitor has been a tireless researcher, with an enormous capacity to help in the construction and implementation of algorithms and in their demanding evaluation. Vitor is a notable programmer and has proven valuable in finding those mistakes that are very difficult to find. He is a fan of scientific and methodological rigour that helps the team to purify all the work and to significantly improve the final result.

Being part of the team, Vitor helped to achieve important distinctions such as the Best short paper at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2018) entitled "The Text Feature Based Automatic Keyword Extraction Method for Single Documents". He also belongs to the team that won the first prize of the first competition of Archivo.pt on July 3, in a ceremony in the Ciência 2018 event.”

• Carlos Leocádio, CTM

“The CTM Coordination nominates Carlos Leocádio for Limelight of June”. This nomination is based on the leadership role that Carlos has been assuming in the specification and development tasks in the P2020 Marecom Project. Marecom's main goal is the development of reliable broadband marine communications and has the Portuguese Navy as one of its final clients. The level of commitment and excellence in Carlos' work, has contributed decisively to INESC TEC's affirmation among its partners in the marine communications area, and will allow the strengthening and the creation of partnerships in this strategic domain for CTM and INESC TEC.", CTM coordination.

• The Sunny project team, CRAS

“The CRAS Coordination nominates the INESC TEC team that participated in the Sunny project for Limelight”. Hugo Silva, José Almeida, Rui Campos, Guilherme Amaral, João Pedro Ribeiro, Sara Costa Freitas and Hélder Fontes for the excellent work done during the lifetime of project SUNNY. This work has involved activities of extreme technical and scientific complexity as well as a considerable effort in the coordination of the technical and operational techniques of the project and the integration and testing of the different types of sensors in multiple unmanned aerial platforms. The demonstrated behaviour and the execution of this work were key for the successful demonstration of the project, which was recognised by all entities directly or indirectly involved in the project.", CRAS coordination