The Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) invites highly-motivated students to apply to be Research Assistants during the 2022 Summer.
A call is open for 20 (twenty) Research Studentship (BIC) at the Interactive Technologies Institute (ITI) of ARDITI – Agência Regional para o Desenvolvimento da Investigação, Tecnologia e Inovação, under the R&D project “Projeto Estratégico UIDP/50009/2020” with the funding support from FCT/ MCTES through national funding.
The Summer internship program is open to all undergraduate or master’s students. It offers a research opportunity for students to engage in scholarly research with accomplished scholars and peers and an ample opportunity for interaction among students and faculty
Students are advised to read the projects carefully and in case of doubts contact the responsible supervisor and ask for more information about the work, responsibilities, methods, or any other questions. Afterward, you should send your application (updated CV + motivation letter + certificate of enrollment in Bsc or Master studies) by email to bolsas.projetos@arditi.pt with the reference ARDITI-LARSYS-2022-001 + title of the internship.
Note: You can apply for any number of calls without any restriction.
Contact:
martaferreira.studio@gmail.com
This internship involves the creation and in-person implementation of user tests for real-world deployments of an interactive installation. The objective is to test the communication efficacy, and engagement with, the touch screen public display and surrounding tangible experiences. The display is being developed to test communication and interaction approaches related to climate change data visualizations to engage audiences with this topic in a more positive, personalized, and action-focused manner. The student will be working with an existing prototype in its first iteration of design development. The user tests will inform the next versions of the prototype in an iterative, research-through-design approach. The student will be responsible for developing the protocol for the user tests (including the creation of bespoke questionnaires), assisting in deploying the prototype across multiple locations in the greater Lisbon area while engaging with diverse publics, as well as evaluating and reporting on the activities, leading to suggestions for future improvements.
The student should be familiar with public engagement evaluation methodologies, be comfortable in busy engagement settings, and fluent in written and spoken English and Portuguese. The student should be interested in public engagement activities, live science communication/outreach and interacting directly with diverse publics.
Contact:
bongkeum@gmail.com
P-AIUX is a project that aims to develop Wizard of Oz (WOz) prototyping for AI experiences that could be performed on a platform. This study designs and investigates novel forms of human-AI interactions and experiences that enhance and extend capabilities for elderly citizens to live an independent life. We plan on first using some example case studies that could be performed on a platform such as this; an Interaction style, visuals, active balances.
Intern must be comfortable with design developments, UX and have experience with design, 3D printing, solid state electronics, electronic circuits, control engineering.
Contact:
bongkeum@gmail.com
MementoKey is a password generation project that uses diceware style word lists combined with visualization and word association memorization techniques to produce passwords that are easy to remember, can be securely hinted at, but remain cryptographically strong.
This project requires a full analysis of the cryptographic strength of the passwords generated by this system, and how that strength varies in relation to various parameters (such as word list size, anticipated user vocabulary, number of word-pairs, known attack techniques and other factors). The goal is to provide a mathematical proof of the strength of the system, in comparison with traditional passwords.
The student must have a good knowledge of cryptographic analisys of password strength, mathematics, and the visual presentation of data. The ability to communicate cryptographic concepts clearly to non-mathematicians, as well as providing enough depth and details to satisfy those who have a strong understanding of the field would be helpful.
Supervisor: Dr. Bongkeum Jeong
Contacts:
bongkeum@gmail.com
PARPS is to design and develop augmented reality play space; though it requires knowledge from HCI and CS, the main focus will be the design of PARPS. The goal of the project is not just the technical implementation of the prototype but to explore the interaction design for physical interaction with a projected augmented reality environment. The design process will cover research into tactile and physical interaction modalities in child’s play and the intersection of these with the digital and virtual environment projected through augmented reality.
Intern must be comfortable with design developments, AR and have experience with 3D printing. Background or interest in CS, CE
Supervisor: Prof. Elvio Gouveia and Prof. Pedro Campos
Contact: erubiog@staff.uma.pt
Soccer players throughout their careers are affected by injuries of various types. The rapid recovery of these injuries is one of the main objectives of the various agents involved in a player’s career. All of the rehabilitation plans evolve using the affected body parts and perform exercises, some of these repeated multiple times. The traditional rehabilitation process is characterized by the use of devices that are almost always the same, and always in the same environment for long periods that may cause unmotivated. Therefore, researchers have pursued new approaches to improve rehabilitation. The introduction of Virtual Reality (VR) allows presenting a virtual scenario that is appealing to the patient performing rehabilitation. However, there is currently limited scientific evidence of rehabilitation for injured athletes in professional sport using VR systems and the scenarios applied to it. The VERSoccer will use technologies such as the VIVE solutions to provide realistic and immersive VR scenarios to soccer players, as well as to monitor the behavioral assessment using biofeedback techniques in real-time.This solution will offer the opportunity to sport science professionals and physiotherapists to manipulate spatial and temporal constraints of all the VR features allowing users to interact with the systems while having high ecological validity and experimental control. In this internship, students will be involved in creating new scenarios in close collaboration with experts, physiotherapists, and soccer players in a user-centered process. We aim to cover the fundamental requirements for a virtual reality system that will allow soccer’s professionals to perform rehabilitation and training plans more freely and with higher levels of motivation.
Student Profile:
Supervisor: Prof. Elvio Gouveia, Prof. Pedro Campos
Contact: erubiog@staff.uma.pt
Improving players’ game performance is the main purpose of the physical educators that teach sport-related games. The combination of tactical awareness and skill execution is the principal focus of the training process. ITI-LARSyS, through the Marítimo Training Lab project (M1420-01-0247-FEDER-000033) runs different studies about the impact of small-sided games (SSGs) on players’ performance in different types of invasion games. In the teaching and training context, the SSG has been considered a high-intensity intermittent training exercise and is one of the most common drills used by physical educators. In this internship, students will have to deal with different training methodologies based on SSGs, testing specific game constraints, and assessing individual and collective skills in real conditions using and processing different technologies. The research developed by ITI-LARSyS also incorporates the monitorization of the training load, internal (i.e., physiological and psychological adaptations imposed on the player according to the prescribed external load) and external (i.e., the volume of work performed by the player, regardless of his internal characteristics) using different types of sensors coupled in wearable devices. Currently, the use of these technology resources that provide big data about the player’s performance allows us to better understand the effects of the imposed training programs, analyse the players’ real-time status, and infer his readiness for the competition. At the end of this internship, students will have some expertise in handling various wearable sensors and devices for the performance assessment and monitorization in real-time, as well as the treatment and understanding of the results obtained.
Supervisor: Prof. Filipe Quintal
Contact: filp3q@gmail.com
This project involves developing and testing user interfaces to represent data streams of electricity and water consumption and their interactions. To this end, the intern will rely on an existing cloud-based platform and develop a concept of reusable and plug-and-play widgets. The main tasks involved are the following:
Students should be familiar with programming both for backend and frontend, particularly JavaScript since the existing platform is implemented in NodeJS. The intern should be also familiar with the concept of NoSQL databases, e.g., MongoBD.
Supervisor: Dr. Lucas Pereira
Contact:
lucas.pereira@iti.larsys.pt
The candidates must be familiar with machine-learning and the Python programming language and its different data science and machine learning libraries, e.g., Pandas, SciKit-Learn.
Supervisor: Prof. Augusto Esteves
Contact:
augustoeae@gmail.com
O objetivo principal deste trabalho é propor um ambiente virtual imersivo de tratamento para a zoofobia com adaptação ao progresso do doente usando biofeedback e estratégias de gamificação. A zoofobia é um tipo de fobia relacionada com o medo de animais, afetando cerca de 6% dos 400 milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo que sofrem de fobia. Neste estágio o candidato será responsável pelo levantamento do estado da arte neste domínio, e pelo desenvolvimento de um protótipo de medição de ritmo cardíaco.
O candidato deve ter competências em Unity e Python, e com cadeiras realizadas nas áreas da Realidade Virtual e Conceção Centrada no Utilizador.
Supervisor: Dr. Fábio Mendonça
Contact:
fabiorubenn@gmail.com
The acquisition and analysis of physiological signals pose several different challenges related to the requirements of physiological data acquisition, leading to the need for a specific build platform for these types of applications. The student will be working on developing a platform in a low-cost single-board computer to make biosignals examination available to anyone interested in exploring the field and provide a framework for fast prototype development for the global research and engineering community. The student will be responsible for developing and testing the platform. Such a platform will have characteristics that are particularly relevant for the home health monitoring market as the focus of health care is changing from specialty and primary care to wellness and prevention.
Students should be familiar with programming Raspberry Pi with Python and be fluent with Azure communications. Likewise, students should be interested in IoT technologies applied to healthcare
Supervisor: Dr. Filipa Correia
Contact:
filipa.correia@iti.larsys.pt
In this project, we already collected data of children with mixed-visual abilities engaged in a group conversation to solve several decision-making tasks. During the task, the robot used one of two strategies to mediate the conversation between children. These strategies involved showing attention and acknowledgment towards the current speaker or trying to encourage the participation of child that spoke the less. The students will be responsible for the data analysis regarding either (A) the qualitative analysis, (B) the quantitative analysis, or (C) the development of new real-time measures of belongingness. Students will be assigned for each task according to their background and/or interests.
For task A, students can have any background but should be interested in learning about human-robot interactions. For task B and C, students should have good programming skills and may use their favourite programming language to process the logs of the collected data.
Supervisor: Dr. Hildegardo Noronha
Contact:
hildegardo.noronha@iti.larsys.pt
This project tries to improve the quality of life of informal caretakers by transporting them from their daily life to a remote virtual location where they can improve their physical and mental health. The student will build a Virtual Reality game where the caretakers can spend some time playing a set of mini-games based on both active and passive physical exercises.
The project will be developed using Unity3D and C#. The student should have experience in both technologies and good programming skills. Some experience in game development and Virtual Reality is also appreciated but not required.
Supervisor: Prof. Mara Dionisio
Contact:
mara.dionisio@iti.larsys.pt
Building on the iconic value of whales and the economic impact of whale watching as a form of ecotourism, this work proposes to optimize a previously developed digital tool (AQUA) that enhances whale watching, by providing a wider audience with a way to augment their experience with cetaceans and their connection with nature. One of the underlying motivations that inspired this work is a change in the paradigm of whale watching. We want to help forge a new type of whale watcher, one that knows the species that will be encountered and has realistic expectations about what they are likely to see; A whale watcher that knows how to make an informed decision about environmental awareness and render them more willing to play an active role in conservation efforts. The goal of this internship is two-fold: 1) Optimize a previously developed a mobile application that enhances the whale watching and biodiversity awareness (AQUA – Developed by Mafalda Mendes under the scope of Intertaguas INTERREG Project and Master Thesis); 2) Investigate further mechanisms to increase the adoption of citizen science practices.
The student should have experience in Flutter.
Contact:
mara.dionisio@iti.larsys.pt
Cetacean tagging (1) (2) and Information collected opportunistically on-board of whale watching boats (using a citizien science approach) are emerging as base tools for better resources management and biodiversity monitoring.
However, these two types of data, are typically spread and not connected under the same tool. But efforts should be done in order to make this data more accessible to biologists and other experts in a unified dashboard to help them study the animals’ behaviour and make informed decisions regarding ecosystem conservation.
Furthermore, the dashboard could also be available for local citizens and tourists to help promote awareness towards best practices to preserve species;
The goal of this internship is to push the implementation a dashboard that unifies information from tagging of cetaceans and information from citizen science platforms and to study different data visualizations that help biologists analyze data and shifts it into animals’ behavior or migratory patterns.
The student should have programing Experience in Javascript and prototyping tools, furthermore and interest in Data Visualization is recommended.
Contact:
mara.dionisio@iti.larsys.pt
Cetacean tagging (1) is currently emerging as base tools for better resources management and biodiversity monitoring. While this data is valuable and currently being used by experts to help them study the animals’ behavior and make informed decisions regarding ecosystem conservation this data is usually in a format that is not appealing to the general audience.
As cetaceans are the balance keepers of the ocean, it is critical that the general audience understand their life history to help promote awareness towards best practices to preserve these species. The overall goal of this internship is to push the implementation an interactive tool that allows the general audience to explore and engage the migrations of cetaceans and other marine animals that have been tagged, specially having in to account the local context of the Macaronesia Islands. The tool should allow the audience to engage with basic research on Cetacean life history and migration, explore data gathered from each animal and track their favorite cetacean.
The student should have programing Experience in Javascript and prototyping tools, furthermore and interest in Data Visualization is recommended.
Supervisor: Dr. Teresa Almeida
Contact:
teresa.almeida@iti.larsys.pt
This project is within Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design Research, and Digital Media. It is part of an ongoing project that focuses on intimate body literacy in older adults and enquires ‘the clothesline’ (o estendal) as a public display and interactive artefact of intimate knowledge. It involves the student working alongside the advisors to deliver a focused study that engages with tradition as material for design and vehicle to start conservations about intimate and sexual health in older adults. The student will explore and apply creative research methods including a visual ethnography in and around Lisbon neighborhoods (for example, photography or video) and other methods for community engagement (tbd). The student will be responsible for developing the concept and development of an exploratory prototype platform (for example, an interactive digital storytelling platform).
Students should be familiar with UX, co-design and interaction design methods and curiosity about using creative qualitative research methods. Ideally, you will also have a keen interest in digital women’s health, social justice, and experience of or interest in working with vulnerable populations and sensitive topics.
Supervisor: Dr. Sheikh Mostafa
Contact:
sheikh.mostafa@iti.larsys.pt
Machine learning has practical applications in health, business, and almost all sectors. More and more complex models are being built, requiring computation power and massive data. Nowadays, most of the machine learning is driven by a large amount of data. However, the current concern about data privacy among the user and the European union’s laws about data, such as ‘GDPR’, created more challenges in the machine learning field. To solve this problem, distributed and federated learning can be used. In this project, the student will be responsible for developing a clustering platform where the methods could be tested.
Students should be familiar with programming Raspberry Pi with Python docker and Kubernetes. Machine learning knowledge is a plus, not necessary.
Supervisor: Prof. Mónica Mendes
Contact:
monicamendes@campus.ul.pt
The convergence of computing, connectivity, global positioning and portability made possible by technology has opened many opportunities for developing personalized rich media applications that enhance the exploration of Nature. These applications, however, offer mostly the same experiences everywhere and create data silos that preclude communities from leveraging local knowledge to create custom applications for exploring their natural surroundings.
This exploratory project aims to develop and test the design of a mobile web app that leverages local collaborative user created content and open data to enhance the experience of exploring an unknown natural landscape.
The research student will be working with our research team on this prototype web application, to research and define the requirements and overall user experience of the application, and to prototype and validate the user interface. The work will be conducted mostly remotely, with opportunities for field research and testing at the ARTiVIS Living Lab in Maçal do Chão, Celorico da Beira.
The research student should have a Design background and be familiar with the concepts and practices of interaction design research (domain research, Personas, user journeys, wireframing, UI prototyping and user testing). The student should also be fluent with web standards (HTML,CSS and Javascript), common user interface frameworks (e.g. Vue or React), and familiar with the web technologies necessary for the creation of offline-first mobile applications (e.g. Service Workers). An interest in local knowledge, data commons and the exploration of Nature is a plus.
Supervisor: Prof. Nuno Nunes
Contact:
nunojnunes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
One important trend in the blockchain context is the growing interest of cities and local governments to use DLTs to experiment with citizen engagement and the distributed management of community spaces. Existing projects vary in the level of radicalness (e.g. https://culdesac.com, https://cityoftelosa.com, https://www.citydao.io, https://terra0.org, https://www.citycoins.co/). These examples span from coins, non-fungible tokens, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). This project will implement a local solution for Lisbon (e.g. cycling lanes or any other topics of student’s interest) using the CityCoins framework. The project will involve the development and testing of this framework in a specific real-world context.
The student should have a Computer Science /Informatics background.
Supervisor: Prof. Nuno Nunes
Contact:
nunojnunes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
Financial literacy is the ability to understand and effectively use various financial skills, including personal financial management, budgeting, and investing. Financial literacy is the foundation of your relationship with money which is changing with new generations and technologies such as mobile banking, cryptocurrencies, gamification of financial assets and other topics. This new generation of digital natives is embracing a new wave of digital assets which could change how our societies perceive currencies and even the notion of money which has been quite stable in the last millennia. This project will be conducted using qualitative research methods (from auto-ethnography to interviews with representative subjects) and will provide insights and patterns of how we can improve financial literacy.
The student should have a Computer Science /Informatics or Economics background.
Supervisor: Prof. Nuno Nunes
Contact:
nunojnunes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt
Blockchain technologies support decentralised methods for sharing, storing and securing transactions and other data securely without intermediaries across a distributed network such as the Internet. They bring about the ability of replacing processes for conducting transactions that are complex, based on several intermediary actors, and technically implemented through centralized databases, whose owners need to be fully trusted to maintain the integrity of the data. There are many examples of societal activities that could benefit from this technology. For instance, production and access to energy can be made more democratic and transparent, based on a set of rules defined in smart contracts (self-executing agreements directly between parties) at a fine granularity, and enabling costs to reflect more directly the variations in supply and demand, and ultimately leading to a more efficient and environment-friendly use of different energy sources. This project will lead to an implementation of a blockchain solution for social good in an area of choice of the student, corresponding to an ongoing research work.
The student should have a Computer Science /Informatics or Economics background.
