Ana Paiva
Ana Maria Severino de Almeida e Paiva is Secretary of State for Science in Portugal since April 5, 2024. The Portuguese-born secretary is a computer scientist that researches and explores the creation of intelligent interactive robots. Using her knowledge in robotics and artificial intelligence, she designs AI robots to learn and interact with humans the same way other humans do. Along with her organization in GAIPS and students at University of Lisbon, she has written multiple scientific articles about her findings and research, winning notable awards such as Blue Sky Awards at the AAAI in 2022.
Education and career
In 1987, Paiva graduated in electrical and computer engineering from the Instituto Superior Tecnico of the University of Lisbon. Four years later, she obtained her master's degree in electrical and computer engineering at the same university. After graduating, Paiva moved to the United Kingdom to study at Lancaster University, earning her PhD in artificial intelligence in 1996. Paiva’s research paper titled, “Dynamic User and Learning Modeling” would be her Ph.D. thesis she published and allowed her to recevive her doctorate.Since 1997, she has been working at IST as a professor and coordinates the master’s and PhD programs in computer science and computer engineering. Paiva would take a total of 25 Ph.D. students under her program and help her students with research and formatting their thesis that they would later research in. In 2011, she took her at IST, an exam that publicly evaluates a person’s academic, professional, and research excellence. In 2020, Paiva would earn a fellowship at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, located at Harvard University. In 2024, Paiva would be appointed as Secretary of State for Science on April 5, 2024 and is still in office to this date.
Organizations
In 2000, Paiva founded the . The organization is affiliated with the and IST. This research group dedicates its research on Artificial Intelligence, specifically in machine learning and human-robot interaction. Their main goal is to develop empathetic agents and understand their behavior. Additionally, they research ways to improve user-machine interaction. Their purpose behind their research is to innovate AI and human interactions. Since the creation of GAIPS, the organization has had over 70 PhD students in their program and helped further their knowledge and education in artificial intelligence. GAIPS have created over 25 projects ranging from games to robot and human interactions.Selected publications
Over the twenty years, Paiva has helped and published over 120 journals and articles in AI interactions. Paiva has been awarded six awards from distinct organizations such as the International Conference on Social Robotics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and International Conference on Advances of Computer Entertainment. Journals articles include:- Dias, João; Paiva, Ana, Bento, Carlos; Cardoso, Amílcar; Dias, Gaël, "Feeling and Reasoning: A Computational Model for Emotional Characters", Progress in Artificial Intelligence, vol. 3808, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 127–140,,, retrieved 2022-01-02
- Poklukar, Petra; Vasco, Miguel; Yin, Hang; Melo, Francisco S.; Paiva, Ana; Kragic, Danica. "". Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR: 17782–17800.
- Alves-Oliveira, Patrícia; Arriaga, Patrícia; Xavier, Carla; Hoffman, Guy; Paiva, Ana. "". The Journal of Creative Behavior. 56 : 16–40..
- Alves-Oliveira, Patrícia; Arriaga, Patrícia; Paiva, Ana; Hoffman, Guy. "". Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. HRI '21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery: 399–408..
- Elgarf, Maha; Calvo-Barajas, Natalia; Alves-Oliveira, Patricia; Perugia, Giulia; Castellano, Ginevra; Peters, Chirstopher; Paiva, Ana. """. 2022 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction : 71–79.