FMUL | New researcher comes to lead Era Chair iSTARS project

João Carlos Guimarães, a newly arrived researcher at FMUL, was chosen to lead a research team under the ERA Chair iSTARS project! The purpose is to combine artificial intelligence and medicine to create databases with the capacity to store a large amount and a diversity of health-related information, as well as to develop machine learning models to identify patterns in these data. iSTARS research will seek answers in the fight and prevention of diseases, but also in the creation of new medical treatments.

João Carlos Guimarães is still getting to know his way around FMUL. He is in the Egas Moniz building, at the Institute of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, IMPSP. For the next 3 years he will lead a research team that aims to develop a knowledge base with data from clinical offices and research laboratories. “For example, clinical offices will provide/collect patient samples, while laboratories will characterize these samples in detail”, he explains.

With a degree in Systems Engineering and Computer Science, a PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the Minho University and the University of California at Berkeley, USA, and a post-doctorate in Switzerland, João and his team will use statistics and artificial intelligence, creating machine learning models, for massive data decoding and pattern recognition. Their goal is to simplify and streamline everyday life in healthcare services and biomedical research.

The creation of this centre of excellence in data science is an ambitious goal from FMUL, because it brings the added value of artificial intelligence to a practical, very concrete scenario that is medicine. João Carlos reinforces: “it will allow working and interpreting the current data of the population it serves” highlighting the “broad implications of this project for healthcare and society” that goes by the name of ERA Chair iSTARS and that aims to bring data science to FMUL.

Read the full interview in the next newsletter.