News
A seminar and a workshop on AI Tools Applied to Scientific Research, led by Professor Xabier Martínez-Rólan, from the University of Vigo, was held online on the 18th April.
This event took place in two moments. The seminar was an initiative of the Media Innovation Circle, that gave participants the opportunity to delve deeper into AI’s impact on our reality. Then, 14 participants attended a workshop, organized by the DigitalOBS team, that enhanced their understanding of how AI tools can be effectively used in scientific research, thereby elevating their potential for groundbreaking opportunities in this field.
The DigiMedia and DigitalOBS members agree that this event was a success and say they “ hope that all participants leave all the works feeling invigorated, inspired, and equipped with fresh knowledge that will serve as a solid foundation for constructing even more profound and meaningful connections in the future”. The team also mentions that “as a collective, we are dedicated to building a path toward scientific knowledge that is not only characterized by excellence but also defends principles of ethics and equity”.
The DigiMedia PhD Student Dalila Martins has recently been integrated as an embassador into the Women in Games organization.
Dalila says that being part of this community is an honour and states that “the inclusion of women in gaming is not just a matter of representation, but also of equity and justice”. The DigiMedia researcher also adds that “providing access to information, supporting communities, creating empowering environments for women so that they are not afraid of the challenges of such a competitive industry” are some of the goals that she intends to ensure are achieved.
Follow these links to learn more about this organization:
The DSAI conference dates have been changed to 13-15 November 2024 (dsai.ws/2024).
The Paper submission deadline is 15th May, 2024
To submit your original work to this special track, use the following link:
https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/DSAI2024/Track/19/Submission/Create
All accepted papers of the DSAI 2024 conference will be submitted for publishing to ACM and indexed by the Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI, Web of Science™).
UPDATED IMPORTANT DATES:
• May 15, 2024 – Paper Submission
• July 15, 2024 – Notification of Paper Acceptance
• July 30, 2024 – Registration and Camera-Ready Papers
More information on submissions can be found at: https://dsai.ws/2024/submissions
Special Track 1 – Accessible and Inclusive Smart Environments
Description:
Technology is strongly present all around us, not only in the devices we carry but also increasingly embedded in the environments where we work and live. These smart environments have the great potential of improving people’s lives, by enabling a more comfortable, secure, healthy, independent, and active living. However, challenges remain in ensuring that smart environments are truly usable, acceptable, accessible, and inclusive.
These challenges include providing accessible and adaptable interaction that considers the potentially diverse set of users (with different capabilities, needs, preferences, and emotions) and contexts of smart environments. There are also still challenges related to unobtrusive monitoring and support that allow certain groups of users (e.g., younger, older, people with a given impairment) to live in a more active, independent, or safe way.
In this context, the aim of this special track is to provide new perspectives in this field, by exchanging and discussing ideas and research in different topics relevant to DSAI that can bring valuable insights to address the accessibility and inclusiveness of smart environments.
These topics include, but are not limited to:
• Active, healthy, assisted living
• Human-centred computing
• Multimodal and adaptive interaction
• User and context awareness
• Intelligent user interfaces
• Extended reality
• Affective computing
• Assistive technologies
Intended Audience:
This special track is directed at researchers and practitioners who are interested in participating in the exchange and discussion of ideas, as well as contributing to the design, implementation, and assessment of novel innovative solutions for the next generations of smart environments.
The first video of the EPIBOOST Project, coordinated by the University of Aveiro, is already available.
The project multidisciplinary team has a DigiMedia researcher, David Oliveira, and researchers from CIDTFF, Cecília Guerra and Maria José Loureiro.
As specialists in Didactics and Educational Technology, DigiMedia and CIDTFF researchers are responsible for producing scientific videos related to epigenetics, to be disseminated on online platforms such as Educast (Portugal) andYouTube (for worldwide accessibility), having the society in general as their target audience.
The first video, which explains “What is Epigenetics?” and how our choices affect our genes, is now available on the project page and on YouTube. The video was written by Cecília Guerra, Maria José Loureiro and David Oliveira, with scientific review by Joana Pereira and Guilherme Jeremias.
You can watch this video here: 1st Video EPIBOOST (youtube.com)
You can know more about the EPIBOOST Project here: https://epiboost.web.ua.pt/
The doctoral student Mónica da Silva e Silva and her supervisory team will present the paper “Community-based info-communication for rural territories: participatory collaboration tools for Fontoura” at the INVTUR Conference 2024, in May, at the University of Aveiro.
DigiMedia researchers conducted a workshop, on 21st February 2024, in collaboration with the Cres(Ser) project from the Águeda Health Center. The workshop’s goal was to co-create an application to promote health in early childhood. It was attended by 12 health professionals and 4 representatives from early childhood education institutions.
The Cres(Ser) app, currently under development as part of the dissertation of Joana Tavares, coordinated by Rita Santos and Oksana Tymoshchuk, aims to guide parents in the social, emotional, and cognitive cultural development of babies and children. It seeks to clarify doubts through feedback from health professionals and help parents better understand their children’s characteristics and needs starting from prenatal life, especially during the first three years of life.
Article developed as part of Students@DigiMedia and Digital Observatory published following the 12nd World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, in Lodz.
An article developed as part of the second edition of the Students@DigiMedia initiative, together with DigiMedia’s Digital Observatory will be published following the 12nd World Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST’24) in Lodz, Poland, taking place from 26th to 28th March.
The article “Digital Media Doctorates: Trends, Methodologies and Contributions” was developed by researchers Francisca Rocha Lourenço, Fábio Ferreira, Lídia Oliveira, Lorena Sousa, Mónica Silva, Nelson Zagalo and Oksana Tymoshchuk, and consists of an analysis of the doctoral theses carried out at DigiMedia in order to draw up an overview of the doctoral theses carried out in the area of Digital Media over the last six years. The results of the analysis were recorded and uploaded to Power BI for presentation of the results and interactive visualization of the data on the DigiMedia Digital Observatory website, which is still under development.
A public session entitled “Musical Meanings in Audiovisual Contexts”, led by Professor Ulrika Varankaité, from the Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania, who is on Eramus+ mobility in DeCA/DigiMedia, will take place next week, on 20th March, at 2pm, in the CCCI auditorium.
_________________
Bio:
Dr. Ulrika Varankaitė is a lecturer at Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania. She teaches Film Music and Sound Effects, her research focuses on extramusical associations evoked by listening to music from the perspective of music psychology and semiotics. Ulrika obtained her PhD degree in Art Research (Musicology) in 2020, she has had scientific internships at Cognitive Brain Research Unit (University of Helsinki, Finland, 2015), Center for Music in the Brain (Aarhus University, Denmark, 2018), and most recently she participated in Film Scoring Summer Program (Film Scoring Academy of Europe, Bulgaria, 2023).
Ana Patrícia Oliveira is the new Doctorate Researcher of DigiMedia, hired for the Blockchain project, until December 2025.
Patrícia is now responsible for the project management and research development on NFT in a games’ environment using Blockchain.
Patrícia will also support DigiMedia during the preparation of the Research Unit Evaluation as well as a set of activities about Gender Equality that DigiMedia aims to develop in 2024.
The DigiMedia Researcher, Renata Frade, interviewed Rodrigo Terra, in a conversation which addresses topics such as games, immersive storytelling and transmedia. The interview under the title “Immersive Ways of Live Storytelling Through Challenging Transmedia Universes: Rodrigo Terra Interviewed by Renata Frade and Bruno Valente Pimentel”, is published in the website of Prof. Henry Jenkins (USC/USA), Where Renata e author and editor.
The interview can be read here: https://henryjenkins.org/blog/2024/2/19/immersive-ways-of-live-storytelling-through-challenging-transmedia-universes-rodrigo-terra-and-bruno-valente-pimentel-interviewed-by-renata-frade 
More information about Rodrigo Terra:
Rodrigo Terra is an old-school transmedia evangelist who still maintains the systemic logic of developing storytelling projects with advanced immersion technologies for interactive content. His career is a great model of a hybrid researcher, with parallel academic and professional trajectories over more than 15 years of work in Brazil and abroad, especially related to virtual reality. Co-founder and Chief Technology Evangelist of ARVORE Immersive Experiences, Rodrigo Terra has won several international awards, including the first Primetime Emmy®️ in Brazil. He was awarded a Graduate in Administration degree from Fundação Getúlio Vargas (Brazil), trained as a radio broadcaster, and serves as a professor of Post-Graduation at ESPM-SP (Brazil). His mission today is to bring extended realities (XR) to the world and to raise Brazilian creative talents in XR globally. Today he is also a member of the EraTransmidia Association, Executive Director of the XRBR Association, and an active member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (USA). In my conversation with Terra and mobile apps developer and VFX editor Bruno Valente Pimentel, we discussed experiences developing transmedia and storytelling strategies as well as how those strategies can be applied to engaging audiences in entertainment, education, audiovisual media, and business.
In February, the NEDD – Núcleo de Estudantes de Doutoramento do DigiMedia – held its third Peer2peer event, as well as an information session for those who are interested in applying for the FCT doctoral scholarships.
The 3rd Peer2peer, which occured on February 8th, had the collaboration of doctoral student Jennifer Rocha, who demonstrated the advantages of the Zotero tool.
On February 15th, Prof. Nelson Zagalo and Prof. Maria João Antunes conducted the information session from the perspective of FCT evaluators, in which the public had the opportunity to learn tips, clarify doubts and find out what has the most impact on an application.
The sessions can be watched in NEDD’s Teams channel: http://tinyurl.com/NEDDTeams
