Portuguese Researcher Honored with 2025 Cor Baayen Award
Dr. Miriam Santos, an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto (FCUP) and a distinguished researcher at INESC TEC, has been awarded the prestigious ERCIM Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award 2025. This marks a historic moment as Dr. Santos becomes the first Portuguese national to receive this esteemed international recognition. The award celebrates her pioneering research focused on enhancing data quality for the development of responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems.
About the ERCIM Cor Baayen Award
The Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award is an annual accolade presented by the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Established in 1995, the award honors Cor Baayen, ERCIM's first president, and aims to recognize promising young researchers in the fields of computer science and applied mathematics. It includes a prize of €5,000 and a certificate, acknowledging scientific quality, originality, rigor, and significant scientific or societal impact. Nominees are typically required to have completed their PhD within three years prior to the nomination deadline, a criterion met by Dr. Santos, who concluded her PhD in Informatics Engineering in 2022. ERCIM itself is a consortium founded in 1988, dedicated to fostering collaboration within Europe's research community and strengthening ties with industry across its member institutes in various European countries.
Dr. Santos's Groundbreaking Research in Responsible AI
Dr. Santos's award-winning research delves into the critical area of data quality for responsible AI systems. Her work specifically addresses how characteristics of data, such as a lack of representativeness, missing information, or intrinsic complexity, can profoundly influence AI models. Her investigations span several topics within data complexity, data difficulty factors, and data intrinsic characteristics, with direct implications for AI Ethics and Responsible AI. By understanding and mitigating these data-related challenges, Dr. Santos contributes to the creation of more robust, reliable, and fair AI applications, particularly in sensitive domains like healthcare and justice.
Academic Background and Community Contributions
Beyond her research at FCUP and INESC TEC (specifically within the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support, LIAAD), Dr. Miriam Santos holds a PhD in Informatics Engineering, for which she also received the Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis in Artificial Intelligence 2022 from the Portuguese Association in Artificial Intelligence (APPIA). Demonstrating a strong commitment to community and diversity, Dr. Santos founded 'As Raparigas do Código' in 2020. This non-profit organization in Portugal is dedicated to providing free access to technology and programming education for girls and women, actively working to address the gender imbalance prevalent in the Information Technology sector.
5 Comments
Michelangelo
Her research on data quality is exactly what AI needs right now.
Leonardo
Fantastic news for Portugal and a huge step for responsible AI!
Raphael
Awards are nice, but the real-world impact of AI bias is still massive.
Donatello
It's wonderful to celebrate a Portuguese researcher excelling in AI ethics, which is crucial for the field. However, the article doesn't touch on the enormous practical challenges companies face in fully adopting these responsible AI principles in complex systems.
Michelangelo
So inspiring to see women leading in tech and making AI ethical.