A bit more...

My name is Jonice Oliveira. My research areas are Data Science and Social Computing, focusing in Big Social Data (treatment, management and knowledge extraction).

Through social web, we can identify unprecedented levels of expertises, citizen engagement and participation. This data explosion has resulted in the emerging topic of “Big Social Data”. Big Social Data refers to large data volumes that relate to people interactions (with other people or things) or describe their behaviors, needs, and patterns. This data generates a cycle of knowledge creation, which can be useful to resolve problems in urban centers. From this social interaction, we can create more accurate knowledge about the city and its dynamics to support monitoring, surveillance and decision-making tasks of various kinds. The main part of my work is based on this premise.

I am an associate professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). UFRJ was the first university created in Brazil, having an important role in education and research in our country. It is my “alma mater” and I am proud of it. In Computer Science, the UFRJ has one of the most important graduate programs in Latin America (COPPE), thus obtaining the highest evaluation in Brazil. The undergraduate course in Computer Science is no different, also having the highest national evaluation and the tradition of more than 40 years.

As an undergraduated student, I studied Computer Science at UFRJ, advised by Prof. Maria Luiza Machado Campos. My undergraduate monograph focused on the creation of a methodology to compare knowledge management systems.

I did my Master's Degree at (COPPE/UFRJ). My master'sthesis focused on how to capture and reuse knowledge during decision processes.

In 2007, I completed my Ph.D. on Systems Engineering and Computer Science, with an emphasis in Database, at the Graduate School and Research in Engineering (COPPE) at UFRJ. During my Ph.D., I was honored with the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award. My thesis research was supervised by Prof. Jano Moreira de Souza and was based in the intersection between Knowledge Management and e-Science, providing mechanisms to efficiently identify, create, disseminate and reuse the scientific knowledge in personal, group and strategic perspectives. You can get the complete text here (in portuguese). This research was evaluated by an astonishingly qualified committee, composed by: Prof. Marta Mattoso (COPPE-UFRJ), Prof.Adelaide Maria de Souza Antunes (IQ-UFRJ), Prof. Marcos do Couto BezerraCavalcanti (EP-UFRJ) and Prof. Claudia Maria Bauzer Medeiros (UNICAMP).

The partnership with Prof. Jano was so productive that he also supervised my Post Doc, in 2008. ;-)

As I said before, although my education is in Computer Science, all my work is based on interdisciplinary studies and I have a special interest in human relationships. I am deeply committed to having a direct impact on solving real-world problems, with a special interest in crowd dynamics at large scale events, urban problems and determine how the analysis of social networks can help in promoting wellness in neglected populations.

For this reason, I founded the CORES Laboratory (Laboratory of Social Computing and Social Network Analysis), which conducts multidisciplinary research in understanding, simulation and support of social interactions.

In 2012, I participated of the creation of the Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining(BraSNAM), whose goal is to provide a valuable opportunity for multidisciplinary groups to meet and engage in discussions on social network analysis. Since then, BraSNAM has received a very expressive number of submitted papers and participants.

From 2012 to 2017, I had coordinated the undergraduate course of Decision Support Analysis. From 2017 to 2019, I was coordinator of the Post Graduate Program in Informatics (PPGI/UFRJ). I had awarded as Young Scientist of Our State, by FAPERJ (it is an award for prominent young researchers in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Highly Productivity in Research, by CNPq. I was also a member of board of directors of Reference Center on Big Data.

Personally, I love travel (and learn about other people and cultures), photography, music, dancing, reading, swimming, biking, scuba diving, cinema, …