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.