Samuel da Silva Guimarães

LOCUS - Social Computing Laboratory, Room 3313 – DCC - ICEx (Federal University of Minas Gerais) · samuelsg@ufmg.br

I am a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the Computer Science Department (DCC) of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). My line of research is Social Computing, and I am actively working on projects related to misinformation, electoral advertising, political bias, natural language processing and applied machine learning. I am part of the Social Computing Laboratory (LOCUS), where I am advised by professor Fabrício Benevenuto.

Education

Federal University of Minas Gerais

Doctor of Science in Computer Science
Advisor: Fabrício Benevenuto - Field: Social Computing
May 2021 – May 2025 (Expected Graduation)

Federal University of Minas Gerais

Master of Science in Computer Science
Advisor: Fabrício Benevenuto - Field: Social Computing
Master Thesis: Characterizing Reactions and Comments associated with news on Facebook

GPA: 9.56/10.0

July 2018 – December 2020

Federal University of Viçosa

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Department of Informatics
Advisor: Sabrina de A. Silveira - Field: Bioinformatics

GPA: 8.96/10.0

February 2014 – July 2018

Federal Institute of Espírito Santo

Associate’s degree in Informatics

GPA: 8.56/10.0

February 2010 – April 2014

Experience

Ph.D. Research Assistant - Analytical Capabilities Program

Federal University of Minas Gerais

Partnership with the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais. Specialized technical consultancy for research and development of tools for big data analysis and applied artificial intelligence about public policies, public expenditures, social indicators and complex investigations, in the civil, electoral and criminal spheres. 1st place in the Information Technology category of the 2020 CNMP Award, held by the National Council of the Public Ministry (CNMP).

February 2020 – April 2022

Research Assistant

Federal University of Minas Gerais

Project Identifying and Analyzing Hate in News Comments in Facebook selected for the Content Policy Research on Social Media Platforms Facebook grant, focused on hate content creation, its propagation and reactions to it on Facebook pages of news outlets and alternative media.

July 2018 – December 2020

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Federal University of Viçosa

Two main projects: In silico prediction of ligands through virtual screening and Discovery of Patterns in protein-ligand interaction networks. Both focused on the discovery of patterns in protein interactions, especially on complex networks of protein inhibition on Anticarsia gemmatalis’ diet for improved pest control, using machine learning and data visualization techniques.

March 2016 – February 2018

Senior Advisor

No Bugs – Informatics Junior Enterprise

Directors and advisers are elected for a year in the management of the business, with directors for each sector, and advisers evaluating results and helping in the creation of strategies. The president was the head of the directors and had aides to help the board of directors organization. After November 2016, became the senior advisor directly under the president.

November 2015 – November 2017

Projects Director

No Bugs – Informatics Junior Enterprise

Director responsible for managing all projects of the company, which was focused on desktop applications and web systems, specially web sites. One major responsibility was planning and implementing the renovation of a cloud computing-based web platform for managing events and selling tickets, which was hired by clients.

November 2014 – November 2015

Full Stack Developer

No Bugs – Informatics Junior Enterprise

Programmer for web, mobile and desktop applications, manly in PHP, C++, Javascript or Java, as well as the design of websites using HTML, CSS and Javascript Frameworks.

June 2013 – November 2015

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
  • C,
  • C++,
  • Java,
  • Javascript,
  • PHP,
  • Python,
  • R
Frameworks & Others
  • Frameworks:
    • CodeIgniter,
    • D3.js,
    • scikit-learn Scikit-Learn,
    • Keras Keras,
    • TensorFlow,
    • Apache Spark Apache Spark
  • Others:
    • HTML5,
    • CSS,
    • LaTeX,
    • MySQL

Peer Reviewed Conference and Journal Publications

  • Guimarães, S., Silva, M., Caetano, J., Araújo, M., Santos, J., Reis, J. C., ... & Almeida, J. M. (2022, July). Analysis of Early Electoral Advertisements on Twitter. In Proceedings of the XI Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining (pp. 85-96). SBC.
  • MR Araújo, M., Guimarães, S., Silva, M., Caetano, J., Santos, J., CS Reis, J., ... & M. Almeida, J. (2022, June). EarlyAd: A System for Real-Time Surveillance of Brazilian Early Electoral Ads on Twitter. In Proceedings of the 33rd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (pp. 225-227).
  • Guimarães, S. S., Reis, J., Vasconcelos, M., & Benevenuto, F. (2021). Characterizing political bias and comments associated with news on Brazilian Facebook. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 11(1), 1-24.
  • Silva, M., Guimarães, S., Caetano, J., Araújo, M., Santos, J., Reis, J. C., ... & Almeida, J. (2021, July). Early Electoral Propaganda: A First Look at Pre-election Posts on Social Media. In Proceedings of the X Brazilian Workshop on Social Network Analysis and Mining (pp. 199-204). SBC.
  • Guimarães, S., & Benevenuto, F. (2021, June). Characterizing Reactions and Comments Associated with News on Facebook. In Companion Proceedings of the 17th Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems (pp. 157-171). SBC.
  • Guimarães, S. S., Reis, J. C., Lima, L., Ribeiro, F. N., Vasconcelos, M., An, J., ... & Benevenuto, F. (2020, December). Identifying and characterizing alternative news media on facebook. In 2020 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM) (pp. 448-452). IEEE.
  • Vasconcelos, M., Pereira, E., Guimarães, S., Ribeiro, M. H., Melo, P., & Benevenuto, F. (2020, November). nalyzing YouTube Videos Shared on Whatsapp in the Early COVID-19 Crisis. In Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web (pp. 25-28).
  • Guimarães, S. S., Reis, J. C., Ribeiro, F. N., & Benevenuto, F. (2020, November). Characterizing toxicity on Facebook comments in Brazil. In Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web (pp. 253-260).
  • Fassio, A. V., Martins, P. M., Guimarães, S. D. S., Junior, S. S., Ribeiro, V. S., de Melo-Minardi, R. C., & Silveira, S. D. A. (2017). Vermont: a multi-perspective visual interactive platform for mutational analysis. BMC bioinformatics, 18(10), 51-63.

Awards

  • 1st Place on Master Thesis category of the III Thesis and Dissertations on Information Systems Contest (CTDSI)
    Brazilian Society of Computing (SBC)

    Contest for the three best doctoral dissertations and the three best master's thesis in the Information Systems area defended and approved in the year 2020, chosen by the Special Commission for Information Systems (CESI) of the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC).

  • President Arthur Bernardes Silver Medal
    Federal University of Viçosa

    Medal given to the student with the highest academic achievement of his course, with a performance equal to or greater than 85 of 100.

  • Featured Student Award
    Brazilian Society of Computing (SBC)

    Award for students who stand out for their academic performance and research.