Invited Speakers

Professor Pavel Bernard Brazdil

Pavel Bernard Brazdil comes from Czech Republic where he obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1968. In 1981 obtained his Ph.D. degree in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. In 1982 he moved to Portugal to lecture at the University of Porto (Fac. of Economics). In 1996 he obtained habilitation at the same Faculty and since 1998 holds the post of Full Professor. He has lectured subjects at both under-graduate and post-graduate level. He has supervised 10 Ph.D. students, all of whom have completed their studies and other two are in progress. Besides he has supervised 16 M.Sc. students. Between 2007-11 he was the Director / Scientific Coordinator of R&D Unit LIAAD-INESC Porto L.A. LIAAD and its researchers are well known both in Europe and world-wide for their activities and has a regular influx of visitors and post-graduate students from abroad. He has more than 20 years of experience in coordination, as he was one of the founder of another R&D Unit (LIACC) in 1988. Currently, his research activity is focused mainly in sub-areas of Artificial Intelligence, namely machine learning, data mining, meta-learning, text mining, information extraction, adaptive modeling among others. His Ph.D. work was carried is in the area of Machine Learning and when it was carried out, there was relatively little done in this area. The area underwent major expansion later over the last 30 years. Pavel Brazdil contributed to the development of the area Machine Learning also through his publications. He has published more than 100 articles. Besides, he has (co-)authored/edited 5 books by major publishing houses (Springer, Kluwer) and is the one of the authors of the book on Metalearning, published by Springer in 2009. Besides, he has (co-)edited 2 special issues of Machine Learning Journal (MLJ) and published various articles in this journal. A considerable number of publications are referred to on ISI (28) and several of them have dozens of citations. He is a member of editorial boards of several international journals, including the prestigious Machine Learning Journal. Pavel Brazdil contributed to the development of the area of Machine Learning also by his involvement in organizations of workshops and conferences in Europe and elsewhere. Overall he has organized more than 10 conferences or workshops in the areas related to Machine Learning and Data Mining. He has served also on program committees of many top conferences in the area. Pavel Brazdil has promoted the emergence of the sub-area of Meta-Learning and more recently, Planning to Learn. The first topic was covered in two European projects (StatLog, Metal). He is a member of Portuguese Association of Artificial Intelligence and has served as its President for two terms (2000-03). Since 2008 he has the honor to be one of the ECCAI Fellows.

PhD Gonçalo Quadros

Gonçalo Quadros is co-founder and CEO of Critical Software SA, an international software company headquartered in Coimbra, Portugal, with offices in Lisbon, San Jose (US) and London (UK). Gonçalo Quadros is 42 years old, graduated in 1987 in Electrical Engineer (Computer Science branch) and has worked in industry and R&D prior to obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Coimbra in 2002. His PhD work focused on Quality of Service over IP networks. In his academic life, Gonçalo Quadros taught at University of Aveiro and University of Coimbra (mathematics, computer and data communication subjects), has been author of more than 40 papers and has been reviewer for several conferences and magazines. Gonçalo Quadros has been co-founder of Critical Software in mid 1998. Won the best business plan award from the National Entrepreneurs Association (ANJE) in 1998. He was the responsible for launching and consolidate two Company Business Units – Telecommunications and Networking and Enterprise Solutions – assuming responsibilities of project and technical management of some of the most important projects there carried on, and also of business development and team management. As of the beginning of 2005 Gonçalo Quadros is the Chief Executive Officer of Critical Software maintaining is responsibilities in the business development field.