Alberto Abad was elevated to senior member of IEEE
According to IEEE – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, “Senior Membership is an honor bestowed only to those who have made significant contributions to the profession”.
“It’s an honor for me to receive such a recognition from IEEE. The area of human language technologies and speech processing, in which I have been involved for more than 15 years, presents very interesting challenges and applications. I hope this recognition can contribute to promote this area among students, among the local scientific community and also to promote the work we do in INESC-ID and Técnico. I’m very happy to be able to continue contributing every day”, mentioned Alberto Abad.
A recognition to the researcher of his peers for technical and professional excellence.
Alberto Abad is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (DEI) of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and researcher at INESC-ID. He is the coordinator of the Human Language Technologies laboratory at INESC-ID and the executive coordinator of the scientific area of Programming Methodology and Technology at DEI. He is also an ISCA member and he has been recently elevated to the grade of IEEE Senior member in recognition for his significant contributions.
Alberto Abad has developed his research career in the area of human language technologies for more than 15 years. His research interests include robust speech recognition, speaker and language characterization, applied machine learning, health-care applications, and privacy-preserving speech processing and machine learning.
During these years, Alberto Abad has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier conferences and scientific journals of the field. He has been Principal Investigator of FCT funded project VITHEA and INESC-ID representative in the DIRHA European project, Biovisualspeech CMU-Portugal project, and TAPAS ITN. He has also been team member in various Spanish and Portuguese national and international projects, and team leader in international technological evaluation challenges achieving excellent results. He has supervised and co-supervised more than 20 MSc thesis and 1 PhD thesis and lectured in courses at both Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and IST on a variety of topics, including signal processing, machine learning, programming principles, object oriented programming and compilers. Alberto Abad has been actively involved in research community activities, including conference organization, and closely collaborated with local industry and start-up companies.
Upcoming Events
NII International Internship Programme Presentation and Q&A by Emmanuel Planas
On April 30, Emmanuel Planas, the acting director of the Global Liaison Office (GLO) and responsible for the internationalisation program at the National Institute of Informatics (NII) in Tokyo, Japan, will give a presentation to introduce the NII and its internship program to INESC-ID students and IST’s Master’s in Computer Science students.
Date & Time: April 30, 14h00
Where: Sala Polivalente, Técnico – Taguspark
“The NII International Internship Program is an exchange activity with students from institutions with which NII has concluded a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement. This incentive program aims at giving interns the opportunity for professional and personal development by engaging in research activities under the guidance and supervision of NII researchers.
The NII Internship Program is open to Research Master’s and PhD students who are currently enrolled at one of the partner institutions that have signed an MOU agreement with NII.”
Educational Workshop on Responsible AI for Peace and Security (UNODA)
On June 6 and 7, The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) are offering a selected group of technical students the opportunity to join a 2-day educational workshop on Responsible AI for peace and security.
The third workshop in the series will be held in Porto Salvo, Portugal, in collaboration with GAIPS, INESC-ID, and Instituto Superior Técnico. The workshop is open to students affiliated with universities in Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, Oceania, and Asia.
Date & Time: June 6 a 7
Where: IST – Tagus Park, Porto Salvo
Registration deadline: April 8
Summary: “As with the impacts of Artificial intelligence (AI) on people’s day-to-day lives, the impacts for international peace and security include wide-ranging and significant opportunities and challenges. AI can help achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but its dual-use nature means that peaceful applications can also be misused for harmful purposes such as political disinformation, cyberattacks, terrorism, or military operations. Meanwhile, those researching and developing AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the risks that the misuse of civilian AI technology may pose to international peace and security and unsure about the role they can play in addressing them. Against this background, UNODA and SIPRI launched, in 2023, a three-year educational initiative on Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security. The initiative, which is supported by the Council of the European Union, aims to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the unintended consequences of civilian AI research and innovation for peace and security. As part of that initiative, SIPRI and UNODA are organising a series of capacity building workshops for STEM students (at PhD and Master levels). These workshops aim to provide the opportunity for up-and-coming AI practitioners to work together and with experts to learn about a) how peaceful AI research and innovation may generate risks for international peace and security; b) how they could help prevent or mitigate those risks through responsible research and innovation; c) how they could support the promotion of responsible AI for peace and security.”