I’m an Associate Professor and Research Scientist in the Institute of Computing at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. I’m also a faculty member of the recod.ai (Artificial Intelligence Lab) and H.IAAC (Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Architectures Hub).
Associate Professor, 2025 — present
University of Campinas, Institute of Computing
Assistant Professor, 2017 — 2025
University of Campinas, Institute of Computing
Postdoctoral Researcher, 2013 — 2017
University of Campinas, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2013
Sorbonne Université (UPMC Paris 6, France) & Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil)
M.Sc. in Computer Science, 2008
Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Brazil)
B.Sc. in Computer Science, 2006
Federal University of Sergipe (UFS, Brazil)
Carlos Caetano (IC/UNICAMP), “Natural language processing & cognitive architectures”, Fellowship: H.IAAC
Helena Maia (IC/UNICAMP), “Natural language processing & cognitive architectures”, Fellowship: H.IAAC
Gabriel Oliveira dos Santos (IC/UNICAMP), “Brazil in focus: A multimodal large language model aware of the Brazilian context for text generation”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Esther Colombini, Scholarship: H.IAAC, FAPESP, FAPESP/BEPE
Jhéssica Silva (IC/UNICAMP), “Avaliação de Ferramentas de Ética em Modelos de Linguagem”, Supervisors: Hélio Pedrini, Sandra Avila, Scholarship: H.IAAC, FAPESP
João Gondim (IC/UNICAMP), Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Hélio Pedrini, Scholarship: H.IAAC
João Macedo (DCC/UFMG), Supervisors: Jefersson A. dos Santos, Sandra Avila
Levy Chaves (IC/UNICAMP), “Transferability estimation scorers for efficient transfer learning”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Eduardo Valle, Scholarship: CAPES, Google LARA 2021, Santander, FAPESP
Andreza Aparecida dos Santos (IC/UNICAMP), “Exploring domain generalization for CSAM classification”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Jefersson A. dos Santos, Leo Sampaio Ferraz Ribeiro
Alef Ferreira (Inf/UFG), “Harmony through alignment: Unifying multimodal representations of sound and text across languages”, Supervisors: Nádia Silva, Sandra Avila
Beatriz Precebes (IC/UNICAMP), “Causal machine learning for cervical cancer classification”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Leo Sampaio Ferraz Ribeiro, Scholarship: DeepMind
Bruna Osti (IC/UNICAMP), “Causal disentanglement for skin lesion classification”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Alceu Bissoto
Eduarda Gavião (IC/UNICAMP), “Self-supervised learning for classifying black skin lesions”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Alceu Bissoto, Scholarship: DeepMind
Gil Carvalho (IC/UNICAMP), “Evaluating model compression techniques in CSAI”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Carlos Caetano
Marcela Medicina (IC/UNICAMP), “Multi-Level privacy for skin lesion classification: A federated learning approach”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Luiz Bittencourt
Nina da Hora (IC/UNICAMP), “Beyond the face: Unraveling the impact of facial geometric variation on recognition algorithms across different ethnicities”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Marisol Marini, Scholarship: DeepMind, CNPq
Artur Barros (IC/UNICAMP), “Scene graph generation as proxy task for CSAI”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Carlos Caetano, Scholarship: FAPESP
Caio Petrucci (IC/UNICAMP), “Zero-shot age estimation for CSAI”, Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Leo Sampaio Ferraz Ribeiro, Scholarship: FAPESP
Giovana Marchetti (IC/UNICAMP), Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Carlos Caetano, Scholarship: H.IAAC
Gustavo Bonil (IEL/UNICAMP), Supervisors: Simone Hashiguti, Sandra Avila, Scholarship: H.IAAC
Marina Bitencourt (IEL/UNICAMP), Supervisors: Simone Hashiguti, Sandra Avila, Hélio Pedrini, Scholarship: H.IAAC
Victor Mazzotti (IMECC/UNICAMP), Supervisors: Sandra Avila, Carlos Caetano, Scholarship: H.IAAC
M0810 (Grad): Feminismo de Dados 2s2025
MC001 (Undergrad): Tecnologias da Informação 2s2024, 2s2025
MC102 (Undergrad): Algoritmos e Programação de Computadores 1s2024, 1s2023, 1s2022, 1s2021, 1s2020, 1s2019, 1s2018
MC886 (Undergrad)/MO444 (Grad): Aprendizado de Máquina 2s2024, 2s2023, 2s2022, 2s2021, 2s2020, 2s2019, 2s2018, 2s2017
M0434 (Grad): Deep Learning 2s2020, 2s2019
2025: Inclusive Dermatology Award, “Dermatologia + Inclusiva”, Grupo L’Oréal Brasil, “Peles Negras Importam: Modelos de Inteligência Artificial para Análise de Lesões de Pele Negra”
2025: Best Poster Award, KHIPU 2025: Latin American Meeting In Artificial Intelligence, “Back to the Basics on Predicting Transfer Performance”, PhD.: Levy Gurgel.
2024: Human Rights Academic Recognition Award, UNICAMP-Vladimir Herzog Institute, “Transformers-based Few-shot Learning for Scene Classification in Child Sexual Abuse Imagery” (Master thesis), M.Sc.: Thamiris Coelho
2023: Top 2% of most-cited researchers in the world, according to the Stanford University, Elsevier list
2023: Human Rights Academic Recognition Award, UNICAMP-Vladimir Herzog Institute, “Leveraging Self-supervised Learning for Scene Recognition in Child Sexual Abuse Imagery” (Master thesis), M.Sc.: Pedro Valois
2022: Google Awards for Inclusion Research, Google AIR 2022: Google Awards for Inclusion Research, “Dark Skin Matters: Fair and Unbiased Skin Lesion Models”