Research

Main Research Interests

I'm particularly interested in research themes related to natural language and spatial / spatio-temporal information.

The work builds on a variety of research areas in computer science, including:

  • Artificial Intelligence (e.g., Knowledge Representation, Automated Reasoning, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing);

  • Advanced Databases;

  • Conceptual Modelling;

The main thread of my research encompasses the following fields:

  • Natural Language Processing applied to different domains.

    • Text mining;

    • Text classification;

    • Dialog Representation.

  • Geospatial Research:

    • Linguistic aspects of space and space-time;

    • Spatial / Spatio-temporal Knowledge Representation & Reasoning;

    • Handling Spatial Vagueness and Uncertainty;

    • Geospatial Ontologies;

    • Commonsense representations of space; cognitive and philosophical aspects of space;

The work is applied to different (broader) fields of research, such as:

  • Volunteered Geographic Information - VGI;

  • Geographic Information Retrieval - GIR (toponym resolution, spatio-temporal indexing, relevance ranking, query formulation and visualisation);

  • Geographic Information Systems - GIS (spatial and spatio-temporal data modelling, user-aware/context-aware systems, user interaction and visualisation, satellite image processing);

  • Modelling Geospatial Semantics (including event/process modelling for dynamic GIS, reasoning over multi-granularities);

  • Intelligent Transportation Systems - ITS;

  • Smart Cities;

  • Robotics, Industrial Automation, Computer Vision (e.g., event detection in video);

Other Research Interests

Many of the fields investigated have characteristics that are independent from space and time. Thus I'm also generally interested in:

  • Everything that involves formal representations of knowledge;

  • Ontology development, semantic integration & interoperability, and semantic technologies in general;

  • Semantic Web in General;

  • Social Network Analysis, Social Media Mining, Text Mining;

  • Information Retrieval in General;

  • Natural Language Processing;

  • Data Modelling and Management;

  • Databases (Multimedia DBs, Distributed DBs, Datawarehouse, Data Mining);

  • Digital Image Processing (with focus on Satellite Image Classification);

Students

(I welcome enquiries from potential MSc and PhD students interested in topics related to my research)

  • PhD Students:

    • Alana Viana Borges da Silva Neo (2022-2026) - ongoing

      • Natural Language Processing (Applied to Education)

    • Lucas Raniére Juvino Santos (2021-2025) - ongoing

      • Natural Language Processing and Social Media Analysis

    • Salatiel Dantas Silva (2020-2024) - ongoing

      • Natural Language Processing (Applied to Spatial Domain)

    • Anderson Felinto Barbosa (2019 - did not complete)

      • Natural Language Processing (Applied to Education)

    • Erick John Fidelis Costa (2018-2022) - ongoing

      • Computational Thinking, Natural Language Processing, Education

    • Larissa Lucena Vasconcelos (2018-2022)

      • Natural Language Processing, Text Classification, Text Flows

      • Current position: professor at IFPB.

    • Caio Libânio de Melo Jerônimo (2017-2021)

      • Natural Language Processing, Text Classification

      • AI Analyst at NeoPTO, Researcher at UFCG

    • Maxwell Guimarães de Oliveira (2013-2017)

      • Volunteered Geographic Information, Geographic Information Retrieval, Social Network Mining;

      • Current position: Professor at UFCG.

    • Francisco Dantas Nobre Neto (2013-2017)

      • Intelligent Transportation Systems, Route and Destination Prediction;

      • Current position: Professor at IFPB.

  • MSc Students:

    • Bryan Khelven da Silva Barbosa (2022-2024) - ongoing

      • Natural Language Processing (Applied to Education)

    • Gabriel Joseph Ramos Rafael (2019-2021)

      • Geographic Information Retrieval, Spatial Search Algorithms, Big Spatial Data

      • Current Position: Data Scientist at INDT

    • Daniyel Negromonte Nascimento Rocha (2019-2022) - ongoing

      • Natural Language Processing (Applied to Education)

    • Tales Tenório de Souza Pimentel (2018 - did not complete)

      • Intelligent Transportation Systems, Trajectory Analysis

    • José Lucas Silva Freitas (2018-2021)

      • Natural Language Processing (applied to spatial domain)

      • Current position: Software Engineer at Amazon.

    • Júlio Henrique Rocha (2014 - 2016)

      • Geographic Information Retrieval, Social Network Analysis;

      • Current position: Software Engineer at UOL.

    • José Amilton Accioli Filho (2014-2016)

      • Spatial Big Data, Data Integration;

      • Current position: Software Engineer at Amazon.

    • Caio Libânio de Melo Jerônimo (2015-2017)

      • Spatial Analysis, Social Network Analysis, Urban GIS;

      • Current position: AI Analyst at NeoPTO, Researcher at UFCG.

    • Igor Gomes de Meneses Cruz (2015-2017)

      • Volunteered Geographic Information, Navigation

      • Current position: Professor at UEPB.