Ana Paiva, University of Lisbon (P)
To celebrate the achievements of IPN in the past 25 years, IPN is organising a special, online series of colloquia in which world-renowned computer scientists give their view on the progress in, and future of the field of computer science. These colloquia will feature thought-provoking presentations that are of interest to a broad (academic) computer science audience. Although these colloquia are initially aimed at the Dutch computer science community, they are open to interested people around the world!
Abstract
Prof. Ana Paiva is a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon investigating the creation of intelligent interactive systems by designing social agents and robots that can learn and interact with humans in a natural and social manner. She is also a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She was the founder and leader of the INESC-ID group on AI for people and Society (GAIPS). Over the years she has addressed this problem by engineering social agents that exhibit specific capabilities, including social perception, social learning, affective responses, non-verbal behavior, and collaboration, among others. Her more recent research combines methods from machine learning and artificial intelligence with social modelling to study hybrid societies of humans and machines. She is investigating how to engineer agents and robots that are able to collaborate with humans in groups, leading to more transparent, prosocial and altruistic societies.
In 2024 she became the Secretary of State for Science of the Portuguese Government overseeing science and technology policies, having served for the duration of the XXIV Portuguese Government. She returned to academia in June 2025 and she is now pursuing her work on responsible AI, in different areas such as science and education.
She has published extensively with over 200 publications in high profile conferences such as IJCAI, AAAI, AAMAS and CHI. She received best paper awards in several conferences, notably, she won the Blue Sky Awards at the AAAI in 2018. She has further advanced the area of artificial intelligence and social agents worldwide, having served for the Global Agenda Council in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics of the World Economic Forum and as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Science Europe. She is a fellow of the AAAI, the EurAI, and ELLIS. She was listed as one of IROS’s 50 women in robotics to know about and by “Women in Robotics” as one of the 35 most influential women in robotics in 2022.
Date, Time, Location
The colloquium will take place on January 26, 2025, 16:00 – 17:00 (CEST).
The colloquium will be hosted as a Teams webinar. You can join the colloquium here.
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Afterwards you can find the recording and other recordings on the IPN colloquia overview page.