Claudia Medeiros

Claudia Bauzer Medeiros is a full professor of Computer Science at the Institute of Computing, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil, where she has been a faculty member since 1985.

She holds a degree in electrical engineering (PUC-Rio, Brazil, 1976), an MSc in Computer Science (PUC-Rio, Brazil, 1979) and a PhD in Computer Science (University of Waterloo, Canada, 1985). She was a post-doctoral fellow at INRIA, Rocquencourt, France, throughout 1990. Her research is centered on the management and analysis of scientific data, to face the challenges posed by large, real world applications – ranging from chemistry and biology to urban planning and social sciences. This involves handling distributed and very heterogeneous data sources, at varying scales in space and time, ranging from satellite data to animal sound recordings and earthbound sensor networks. For the past 20 years, she has coordinated large multi-institutional, multidisciplinary projects in biodiversity and in agricultural and environmental planning, involving universities in Brazil, Germany, and France. In 1994, she created the Laboratory of Information Systems at Unicamp, one of first research laboratories in Brazil dedicated to solving multidisciplinary problems involving scientific data. Since 1992, she has regularly cooperated as a visiting professor at the University Paris-Dauphine, France, and has also held short visiting positions at the University of Munster, Germany.

She was the Chair of the Department of Computer Science (1991-1993), and of the Department of Information Systems (1996-1999) at Unicamp. From 2003 to 2007 she was the President of the Brazilian Computer Society.

She has served or serves in many permanent scientific evaluation panels in Brazil and Argentina. In particular, she was chair of the Brazilian National Research Council evaluation Committee for CS research in Brazil (CA-CC CNPq 2001-2002), and member of the same panel (2013-2016). She is a former vice-chair in the Ministry of Education committee for evaluation of Brazil’s CS graduate programs (CAPES 1998-2000), serving subsequently as a member of the same panel (2008-2010). At FAPESP, she was a member of the area panel of Computer Science and Engineering (2005-2014), and since 2014 is one of the Head Coordinators of special programs, for the eScience program.

For her work in fostering the participation of women in computing she has received the Anita Borg Agent of Change Award (USA, 2006) and a Google Brazil award (2008). She has received Brazilian and international awards for excellence in research and in teaching. Among her prizes, the following stand out: Newton Faller prize (Brazilian Computer Society, 2000), the Zeferino Vaz award for excellence in research (Unicamp, 1997, 2001 and 2009), and the Unicamp prize for excellence in teaching (lifetime achievement award, 2013). She is a Commander of the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit (2008), a Distinguished Speaker of the Association for Computing Machinery (USA, 2012-2015). She holds a Doctor Honoris Causa from Universidad Antenor Orrego, Peru (2007), and another from Universite Paris-Dauphine, France (2015).