Prof Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Júnior, deputy director of the Sao Carlos Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo
At Research Brazil Ireland’s collaboration event in Dublin Castle, we spoke with Prof Osvaldo Novais de Oliveira Júnior about science and modern advancements.
Oliveira is the deputy director of the Sao Carlos Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and one of the physics co-ordinators at FAPESP, the research funding organisation in Sao Paulo.
Pointing to Ireland’s highly developed technology environment, Oliveira says that the innovation culture on the island, with strong ties to industry stakeholders, is a key area of interest to him.
One of the speakers at this week’s event, Oliveira has led the life of two researchers over the years.
On one hand, he has worked heavily in nanosciences – more specifically with the study of nanostructured organic films – while on the other he has looked at language processing and how it integrates with modern AI.
“Nanoscience is a really a big area. Much of today’s advancements are down to nanosciences,” he explains, before claiming research as the key way for youngsters nowadays to “learn how to learn”.
Language processing is clearly a booming niche in the current technology and information revolution, with more and more devices created to deal specifically with the likes of voice recognition and human machine interaction.
“But also because you can use text analytics with big data concepts to extract knowledge from a lot of information that’s available electronically today,” says Oliveira. “Now machines are acquiring knowledge in ways that they can replace humans in intellectual tasks. That’s scary.”
