Alberto Laender

Residency period: August 1, 2016 to July 31, 2017

IEAT resident, Professor Alberto Henrique Frade Laender holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (1974), a Master’s in Computer Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (1979) and a PhD in Computing from the University of East Anglia, England ( 1984). In 1997 he was a visiting researcher at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California. He is currently Full Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, where he coordinates the LBD – Database Laboratory. At UFMG, he was coordinator of the Graduate Program in Computer Science (1987-1989, 1993-1996), member of the Board of Teaching, Research and Extension (2002-2005, 2010-2013) and head of the Department of Science of Computing (2005-2006). He was a member of the CNPq Computer Science Advisory Committee on three occasions (1989-1990, 2003-2006, 2009-2012), having exercised its coordination from September 2010 to November 2012. He was also a member of the Advisory Board of Exact and Earth Sciences of FAPEMIG (1998-2000) and the Triennial Evaluation Commission of the Computer Science Area of CAPES in 2007, 2010 and 2013. Since 2008, he has been acting as an advisor to the Coordination of the Computer Science Area of CAPES . He was one of the creators of the Journal of Information and Data Management, the official publication of the Special Committee on Databases of the Brazilian Computing Society, and its first Editor-in-Chief. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Computing Science and Engineering edited by the Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers and the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Informatics edited by the Institute of Informatics of UFRGS. He has also served as a member of the program committee of important international conferences in the areas of databases, digital libraries and the Web, and is currently a member of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER), of the ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) and the Alberto Mendelzon International Workshop on Foundations of Data Management (AMW). He also served as a member of the ACM SIGMOD Advisory Board (2005-2010) and the ACM SIGMOD Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award Committee (2008-2011). He is a founding partner of the Brazilian Computing Society and a Full Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (elected in 2010) and of the National Academy of Engineering (elected in 2014). In 2010 he was awarded the National Order of Scientific Merit in the Commander class. He is a founding partner and member of the Technology Council of Zunnit Technologies, a company based in the Parque Tecnológico de Belo Horizonte and specialized in recommendation systems. He was also one of the founders of Akwan Information Technologies, a search technology company acquired by Google Inc. in July 2005 to become the company’s first development center in Latin America. His main areas of expertise are databases, web data management, digital libraries and information systems for the web.

PROJECT: ACADEMIC FAMILY TREES: A STUDY ON THE FORMATION, EVOLUTION AND DISSEMINATION OF RESEARCH GROUPS

The proposed research project, entitled “Academic Family Trees: A Study on the Formation, Evolution and Dissemination of Research Groups”, aims to carry out a broad study on the formation, evolution and dissemination of research groups in the most diverse areas of the knowledge from the construction, purification and analysis of academic genealogical trees of its researchers. The data initially collected for this project are sourced from the Networked Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD), which is the largest and most expressive digital library of theses and dissertations in existence and currently contains more than 4 million records. However, despite adopting an international metadata standard, the NDLTD has its content filled out in a completely decentralized way, which presents a series of difficulties for the consistent extraction of data. Among the main problems found are the non-adoption of international formats for filling in certain fields or the simple deletion of fields, which means that a substantial volume of records does not consistently include the necessary data for the construction of academic family trees. . Despite these problems, the current version of the trees generated is based on 638,812 records of theses and dissertations from institutions around the world, representing the greatest effort so far undertaken to study academic genealogy. In view of the above, the main objectives and expected results of this project are: a) to validate the current version of the trees generated from a comparative study involving data from similar initiatives; b) expand the current volume of generated trees by reconstructing discarded NDLT records.