Artificial Intelligence in Brazil Panel Series- Day 2

Flavio Calmon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Before joining Harvard, he was a social good post-doctoral fellow at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. His main research interests include information theory, signal processing, and machine learning.

Flavio Calmon's research group focuses on information theory, signal processing, and machine learning, with the goal of developing foundational theory to guide the design of trustworthy machine learning algorithms. Recently, their work has concentrated on three critical challenges in machine learning: fairness, privacy, and reliability. Their vision is that information theory is essential for the responsible design of machine learning systems and that a theory-guided approach can significantly outperform heuristic methods. More details about their research can be found in the selected publications below.

Calmon considers himself a scientist with an engineering mindset, enjoying fundamental research that drives practical applications. His approach follows an information-theoretic blueprint: rather than asking, "How can a given system be improved?", he inquires, "What is the absolute best a system can achieve?" By using information theory to characterize the fundamental performance limits of machine learning systems, he designs algorithms aimed at achieving these limits.

As a Brazilian-American engineer, Calmon is passionate about broadening the participation of students from diverse backgrounds, including those from Latin America, in information theory and machine learning. He is also enthusiastic about addressing data-driven challenges specific to the developing world. Those interested in these areas are encouraged to reach out.

His research group is supported by the NSF, as well as generous gifts and awards from Google, IBM, Amazon, and Oracle Research.

Caio Vieira Machado is a lawyer and social scientist focused on the intersection of law, technology, and policy. His interdisciplinary research addresses critical issues such as AI fairness, platform regulation, content moderation, and scientific disinformation. Currently, Caio is a fellow at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, collaborating with mathematicians on machine learning and fairness.

As a co-founder of Instituto Vero, Caio worked with Brazil's leading social media creators to combat disinformation and influence tech policy. He has presented his work at numerous international forums, including the UN OEWG, NATO StratCom, the Brazilian Supreme Court, the Mexican National Electoral Institute, and the AI Athens Roundtable. Caio holds degrees from the University of São Paulo, the University of Oxford, and the Sorbonne. He is now a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford, focusing on disinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Laura Schertel Mendes is a Senior Visiting Researcher at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main with the Capes/Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. She is a law professor at the University of Brasilia (UnB) and at the Brazilian Institute for Development, Education and Research (IDP) with a Ph.D at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She was the rappourter of the Jurists Commission responsible to advise the Brazilian Senate on the regulation of artificial intelligence in Brazil in the 2022. She is the director of the Centre for Internet, Law, and Society of IDP, a member of the National Data Protection and Privacy Council (CNPD) and a co-director of the Portuguese-German Association of Law Professors (DLJV-Berlin).

Samuel Brasil is a Postdoctoral Fellow working on using generative AI to facilitate communication and agreement between conflicting parties, fostering trust and deepening shared understanding. He is also exploring ways to harness algorithmic fairness and AI alignment with human-steered ethical principles, intended goals, planning, and preferences. Before joining the MIT Center of Constructive Communication, Sam was a Fellow and is now a Faculty Associate at Harvard Berkman Klein Center. He is a Faculty at the National Judicial School and Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, teaching behavioral and cognitive science, ethical AI, logics, and argumentation. He serves as Chief Justice of the Espírito Santo Court of Justice (viz. State Supreme Court). Sam received his PhD in Computer Science from the Federal University of Espírito Santo and his PhD in Law from the University of São Paulo. He is the recipient of two awards in innovation and technology.

Carolina Rossini is the Director of Public Interest Technology (PIT) Programs at the UMass PIT Initiative and a Professor of Practice. Besides teaching and conducting research, Carolina is leading the development of a graduate course on PIT.

Carolina Rossini is an internationally recognized expert in technology, policy, and law. With over 25 years of experience, having worked in the private, non-profit, and academic sectors, and advising various governments, philanthropic funders, and international multilateral organizations. She is a council member of the Think 20 advising the G20 (mandate 2024), of the World Economic Forum Global Council on the Future of Technology Policy (mandate 2023 to 2025), and was awarded a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader fellowship (2016 to 2022). She co-founded and directed two think tanks: the Datasphere Initiative and Portulans Institute. She was a law professor and founder and Director for the Law Clinical Program at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, in Rio de Janeiro (2004-2006). She is also a lecturer at Boston University Law School and a PIT Fellow at BU's Faculty of Computing & Data Science, supporting public interest technology projects.

She is a lawyer and seasoned public speaker, who is a JD from University of São Paulo, Brazil (2000), with the following Master’s degrees: MBA from IE University in Spain (2004) with a Telefonica awarded full scholarship, MA in International Economic Relations from Santiago Dantas – UNICAMP/UNESP, Brazil (2005), and a LL.M. in Intellectual Property, with a scholarship awarded by Boston University, USA (2008). She has various certificate courses, including Leadership from the Oxford Saïd Business School, UK, and Leadership for Racial Equity from Virginia University.

She has worked for companies such as Telefónica and Facebook, as well as various non-profits such as Public Knowledge (VP for International Policy), Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Wikimedia Foundation. She worked for Prof. Yochai Benkler as a 3-year fellow and Project Coordinator at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. As a consultant, she served clients including Co-Develop Fund, Open Society Foundations, DT Institute, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression at the Organization of American States, the US State Department, Open Society Foundations, DUCO Experts, UNHCR, UNDP, Alliance for Affordable Internet, Freedom House, Ford Foundation, IDRC, and more.

She is a board member of InternetLab (Brazil), Derechos Digitales (Chile), #IamtheCode (Global), and Instituto EducaDigital (Brazil). She was a founding advisor to Global Partners Digital (UK), and the Open Knowledge Foundation (Global and Brazil). She is based in Arlington, Massachusetts, and has lived in Brazil (her country of origin), Spain, and the USA.

Virgilio Almeida is a professor emeritus of computer science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Vanderbilt University, a master’s degree in computer science from PUC-Rio, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UFMG.He has held visiting positions at several universities and research labs, including Harvard University, New York University, Boston University, the Santa Fe Institute, and HP Research Labs. His research interests include digital governance, algorithmic systems, AI governance, and the social and political impacts of digital technologies. From 2011 to 2015, Virgilio served as National Secretary for Information Technology Policies in the Brazilian government. He was also chair of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) from 2011 to 2016 and chaired NETMUNDIAL, the Global Multi-Stakeholder Conference on the Future of Internet Governance, held in São Paulo in 2014.Virgilio  is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He is also co-author of the book Algorithmic Institutionalism – The Changing Rules of Social and Political Life, recently published by Oxford University Press.

Flavio Calmon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Before joining Harvard, he was a social good post-doctoral fellow at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. His main research interests include information theory, signal processing, and machine learning.

Flavio Calmon's research group focuses on information theory, signal processing, and machine learning, with the goal of developing foundational theory to guide the design of trustworthy machine learning algorithms. Recently, their work has concentrated on three critical challenges in machine learning: fairness, privacy, and reliability. Their vision is that information theory is essential for the responsible design of machine learning systems and that a theory-guided approach can significantly outperform heuristic methods. More details about their research can be found in the selected publications below.

Calmon considers himself a scientist with an engineering mindset, enjoying fundamental research that drives practical applications. His approach follows an information-theoretic blueprint: rather than asking, "How can a given system be improved?", he inquires, "What is the absolute best a system can achieve?" By using information theory to characterize the fundamental performance limits of machine learning systems, he designs algorithms aimed at achieving these limits.

As a Brazilian-American engineer, Calmon is passionate about broadening the participation of students from diverse backgrounds, including those from Latin America, in information theory and machine learning. He is also enthusiastic about addressing data-driven challenges specific to the developing world. Those interested in these areas are encouraged to reach out.

His research group is supported by the NSF, as well as generous gifts and awards from Google, IBM, Amazon, and Oracle Research.

Rodrigo Nogueira is the founder and CEO of Maritaca AI, a company that develops general-purpose AIs for Brasil. He holds a bachelor's and master's degree from UNICAMP and a Ph.D. in computer science from New York University. He was a pioneer in the use of Deep Learning in Information Retrieval and is a co-inventor of BERTimbau, a popular Portuguese language model that has more than 50 million downloads. He is one of the computer scientists with the highest citation rate in Brazil.

Matheus Farias is a 26-year-old Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student at Harvard University, advised by Prof. H. T. Kung. He is from Recife, Brazil, and has a keen interest in developing innovative solutions for real-life problems using interdisciplinary engineering approaches, particularly through the combination of machine learning, the Internet of Things, and hardware design.

Matheus graduated as valedictorian with a BSc in Electronics Engineering from the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). During his time at UFPE, he worked in four different labs under five distinct faculty members. This diverse experience provided him with a unique perspective on multidisciplinary research and collaborative efforts, allowing him to effectively contribute to various research lines and environments. He is fortunate to have received five international awards, along with several national accolades, including the title of MIT Innovator Under 35 for outstanding science and technology innovators under the age of 35.

In addition to his academic work, Matheus is a member of the rock band Matucana, where he plays the keyboards. The band's first album was released in 2023. He also nearly became a professional badminton player, earning over 10 medals in state tournaments and University Games.

Sandra Avila is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (UNICAMP). She holds a double degree Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and Sorbonne Université (UPMC Sorbonne, Paris 6, France) in 2013. Her research focuses on Artificial Intelligence for Social Good, with an emphasis on healthcare and sensitive media analysis. She has received several prestigious awards, including the Google Latin America Research Awards (2018–2021), Google Awards for Inclusion Research (2022), and the UNICAMP-Instituto Vladimir Herzog Academic Recognition Award in Human Rights (2022, 2023). In 2020, she was selected by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences to represent Brazil at the BRICS Young Scientists Forum in the field of Artificial Intelligence. In 2022 and 2023, she was recognized among the top 2% of the most influential scientists worldwide, according to Stanford/PlosOne/Elsevier rankings.

Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of São Paulo (USP), with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Computer Science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence. Over 14 years of distinguished experience in the Information Technology industry, including leadership roles in data strategy and management for major corporations. Completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Data Science at the School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, where his work bridged advanced analytics with public health challenges. Recognized with prestigious innovation awards for pioneering data-driven solutions. Currently serves as Chief Technology Officer at Insper, leading transformative initiatives in education and technology.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Marcus Fontoura was the CTO at Stone, a leading provider of financial technology and software solutions.

Previously, during his first tenure at Microsoft, he was the chief architect for Azure Compute, led the Azure efficiency team, and worked on several projects including container allocator, power management, and Resource Central, a machine-learning infrastructure for resource management. In previous roles at Microsoft, Marcus worked on the production infrastructure for Bing and several Bing Ads projects, including ad infrastructure and relevance.

Before Microsoft, he was a Staff Research Scientist at Google, working in the Search Infrastructure team, focusing on the serving systems powering Google.com search. Before joining Google, he was a Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo Research working on several projects in computational advertising. He's also worked as the architect for a large-scale software platform for indexing and content serving, which is used in several of Yahoo's display and textual advertising systems.

Before Yahoo, he worked as a Research Staff Member at the IBM Almaden Research Center, where he co-developed a query processor for XPath queries over XML streams. This was one of the critical components for implementing the XML data type in the IBM DB2 Relational Database System. In another project at IBM, he was one of the key researchers developing an Enterprise Search Engine. This project resulted in a new software product for IBM - the IBM OmniFind Enterprise Search. For this work, he was awarded an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, with the notation for developing a new generation of IBM search technology and its deployment on w3.ibm.com.

Marcus holds a Ph.D. from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, a joint program with the Computer Systems Group, University of Waterloo, Canada. His Ph.D. work was in object-oriented design and software architecture. The main contributions from his Ph.D. thesis have been condensed in the book The UML Profile for Framework Architectures, published by Addison-Wesley in 2001. He was also a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science Department at Princeton University.

Paulo Carvão is a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He researches the complexities of AI regulation in the United States to propose a framework that supports rapid technological innovation minimizing societal impact.

Paulo is an accomplished Global Technology Executive with a proven track record of leading large businesses at IBM, where he was a senior leadership team member until 2022. During his three-decade tenure at IBM, he led organizations that assisted clients with information technology infrastructure and digital transformation initiatives, leveraging a portfolio of hardware, software, and services offerings. Central to these efforts were the transition to cloud infrastructure and the integration of artificial intelligence into business processes.

Since retiring from IBM, he has served as a strategic advisor for technology and go-to-market issues, as well as a venture capital investor and board advisor. He serves on the advisory boards of technology startups, including Orby.co (neurotechnology and AI for rehabilitation and pain management) and Skills.tech (a hyper-personalized generative AI enterprise education platform). During his 2023 social impact fellowship at the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, Paulo focused on the intersection of technology and democracy, and entrepreneurship as a vehicle for social mobility. He was also a Fellow at the Harvard Safra Center for Ethics and an advisor to the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, concentrating on Artificial Intelligence.

Passionate about mentoring current and future leaders, he currently mentors at the Harvard Innovation Labs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PKG Center. Additionally, he is the inaugural Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics’ GovLab.

Flavio Calmon is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Before joining Harvard, he was a social good post-doctoral fellow at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. His main research interests include information theory, signal processing, and machine learning.

Flavio Calmon's research group focuses on information theory, signal processing, and machine learning, with the goal of developing foundational theory to guide the design of trustworthy machine learning algorithms. Recently, their work has concentrated on three critical challenges in machine learning: fairness, privacy, and reliability. Their vision is that information theory is essential for the responsible design of machine learning systems and that a theory-guided approach can significantly outperform heuristic methods. More details about their research can be found in the selected publications below.

Calmon considers himself a scientist with an engineering mindset, enjoying fundamental research that drives practical applications. His approach follows an information-theoretic blueprint: rather than asking, "How can a given system be improved?", he inquires, "What is the absolute best a system can achieve?" By using information theory to characterize the fundamental performance limits of machine learning systems, he designs algorithms aimed at achieving these limits.

As a Brazilian-American engineer, Calmon is passionate about broadening the participation of students from diverse backgrounds, including those from Latin America, in information theory and machine learning. He is also enthusiastic about addressing data-driven challenges specific to the developing world. Those interested in these areas are encouraged to reach out.

His research group is supported by the NSF, as well as generous gifts and awards from Google, IBM, Amazon, and Oracle Research.