Novello and Ganacim highlight advances in AI in lectures

Advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics were the focus of the special lectures given last Friday (22), in the IMPA auditorium. Recently hired by the institute, the researcher from Visgraf (IMPA’s Vision and Computer Graphics Laboratory) Tiago Novello and the project scientist from Centro Pi (IMPA’s Center for Projects and Innovation) Francisco Ganacim presented their research.

Novello outlined an overview of implicit neural representations (INRs), a theme in evidence in Visgraf. INRs have stood out as a promising approach for encoding low-dimensional continuous signals directly into neural network parameters. The researcher addressed its main architectures, loss functions, sampling strategies and challenges for efficient training, highlighting applications in image reconstruction and modeling of three-dimensional scenes.

“I am very happy to join IMPA, one of the most recognized mathematics research centers in the world. At the Visgraf lab, I have the opportunity to develop cutting-edge research at the intersection of computer vision, computer graphics, and machine learning — all of this here in Brazil. It is a great satisfaction to be able to conduct research in such an inspiring environment”, highlighted the researcher.

Tiago Novello

Ganacim gave a lecture on the impact of artificial intelligence and the transformative role of deep learning in recent decades. He introduced the fundamental concepts behind the technique and discussed its multiple applications, ranging from computer vision to natural language processing.

Ganacim also spoke about the challenges that still drive AI research, such as the interpretability of models, computational efficiency, and generalization to new domains. The scientist also highlighted projects developed at the Pi Center aimed at solving concrete problems in society.

Francisco Ganacim

“What attracted me to IMPA and the Pi Center was the possibility of combining academic knowledge with real applications. Here, we have the freedom to do cutting-edge research and, at the same time, work on projects of great impact,” he said.

Novello and Ganacim lectures attracted researchers, students, and alumni. Rodolfo Schultz de Lima, a graduate of IMPA’s master’s degree, returned to the institute ten years after his qualification accompanied by his father, electronic engineer José Bezerra, who is a mathematics enthusiast.

“Returning to IMPA brought the longing to study here, everyone working with the same issues, the exchange has always been very important. All this brought me a lot of nostalgia. And how IMPA has advanced in the last ten years, it is impressive, it has completely changed everything. It’s even better,” said Schulz.

Bezerra agrees. “In the last ten years, what has been developed here has been absurd, it is an institute that puts Brazil at the forefront in scientific fields.”

In addition to the nostalgia for the reunion, Schulz celebrated the opportunity to revisit concepts, including deep learning, that are still part of his day as a software engineer. “It was a good passage through these concepts that are in my daily life, an opportunity to remember these structures. It was very good!”