Teresa Cristina de Freitas Gonçalves is an Associate Professor at the Department of Informatics, School of Sciences and Technology, University of Évora, where she has been employed since 1999. She serves as an integrated researcher at the ALGORITMI research centre and is the Director of the VISTA Lab (Video, Image, Speech and text Analysis Lab), the unit of the ALGORITMI research centre at University of Évora. Her leadership roles include Director of the Master programme in Informatics Engineering and deputy Director of both the Master programme in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and the Doctoral program in Computer Science. She earned her PhD in Computer Science from University of Évora and a MSc degree in Informatics Engineering from New University of Lisbon. Her academic journey at University of Évora has included significant leadership positions including Head of the Computer Science Department (2011-2015), Director of the Bachelor programme in Informatics Engineering (2016-2021), and Deputy Director roles for various undergraduate and graduate programs. Dr. Gonçalves' research focuses on intelligent systems, particularly Machine Learning approaches, with substantial contributions in evolutionary algorithms, information extraction and retrieval, and supervised learning across multiple data modalities including tabular data, text (in both Portuguese and English), and images (medical and satellite). Her work bridges theoretical advances with practical applications in healthcare, remote sensing, and natural language processing. She has successfully supervised 6 doctoral theses, 19 master theses, and 3 postdocs, and currently mentors 5 doctoral and 6 master students from diverse international backgrounds including Bangladesh, Cabo Verde, Nepal, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, China, Mongolia, and Portugal. Her publication record includes over 100 scientific articles indexed by Scopus with 640 citations and an h-index of 12, demonstrating significant international impact with 56% of her work involving international collaboration. Her recent research shows a strong trend toward applying advanced machine learning techniques to healthcare applications, information retrieval systems, and remote sensing analysis, with particular emphasis on transformer networks, learning-to-rank methodologies, and multimodal data analysis. Dr. Gonçalves has made substantial contributions to the academic community through her service as a reviewer for over 50 articles in prestigious international journals and conferences, and as chair for major international conferences including IDEAL 2023, PROPOR 2020, SKIMA 2017 and 2018, and CLEF 2016. She serves on the board of APRP (Associação Portuguesa de reconhecimento de Padrões) and as a jury member for APRP prizes for best MSc and PhD theses. Her current research portfolio includes coordination of the Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchange HarmonicAI project and local coordination of WP6 in the NewSpace Portugal mobilising agenda. She is also actively involved in numerous other international research initiatives including Interreg VI-B Sudoe SenforFire, PRR CANTE, La Caixa INCOME, Erasmus+ KA220-HED REDINEST, Interreg POCTEP TID4AGRO, and ATTRACT DIH projects. Previously, she led the FCT AI in the Public Administration SNS24.Scout.IA project and coordinated the FEDER R&D NIIAA project. As Director of the VISTA Lab, Dr. Gonçalves leads a dynamic research team focused on video, image, speech, and text analysis. The lab serves as the Évora hub of the ALGORITMI research centre and has established strong international collaborations. Under her leadership, the VISTA Lab has developed innovative approaches in medical image analysis, natural language processing for Portuguese, and satellite image classification, with applications spanning healthcare, environmental monitoring, and public administration.
