Nelson Aloysio Reis
de Almeida Passos

About

I'm a third-year PhD student in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pisa (Unipi) and member of the High Performance Computing laboratory (HPC lab), part of the Institute of Information Science & Technologies (ISTI) of Italy's National Research Council (CNR).

My research experience falls mostly into Machine Learning and Network Science. My current project, under the supervision of Dr. Emanuele Carlini and Dr. Salvatore Trani, lies in their intersection and focuses on the node-level clustering of temporal graphs with neural networks.

Prior to the PhD, I completed a B.S. in Communication (UFES, 2018), a postgraduate in Data Science (IFES, 2021), and an M.S. in Social Science (UFES, 2022), with a thesis on classification and analysis of communities in temporal graphs applied to the study of online social networks.

Research interests

• Machine Learning: graph representation learning; neural networks; self-organizing maps.
• Network Science: community detection; dynamic graphs; hypergraphs; social networks.

Research activities

Ongoing project

• A Temporal Graph Neural Network for Dynamic Community Detection.
  PhD started in November, 2022. Estimated completion: November, 2025.

Recent publications

1. GNNet'24

   Deep Community Detection in Attributed Temporal Graphs: Experimental Evaluation of Current Approaches. Passos, N.A.R.A.; Carlini, E.; Trani, S.. ACM International Conference on emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies: Graph Neural Networking Workshop, 2024.

   PDF Code BibTeX DOI

Other research activities

Conferences and workshops

• Graph Neural Networking Workshop (GNNet'24). Workshop paper: “Deep Community Detection in Attributed Temporal Graphs: Experimental Evaluation of Current Approaches”. Co-located with ACM CoNEXT 2024. Dec. 9, 2024.
• International School and Conference on Network Science (NetSciX'24). Poster presentation: “Deep Community Detection on Attributed Dynamic Graphs with a Spatio-Temporal Graph Neural Network”. Jan. 22-25, 2024.

Software releases

• NetworkX-Temporal: Building, manipulating, and analyzing dynamic graph structures (PyPI/GitHub). Sep. 26, 2024. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13956070 (all versions).

Dataset releases

• PubMed-Temporal: A dynamic graph dataset with node-level features (PyPI/GitHub). Oct. 14, 2024. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13932075 (all versions).

Participation in events

• ACM Europe Summer School on HPC Computer Architectures for AI and Dedicated Applications. Student participation. Sep. 2-7, 2024.
• International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC'24). Assistant co-organizer. Jun. 3-7, 2024.
• Lipari School on Computational Complex and Social Systems - Spreading and Accessing Information. Student participation. Jul. 16-22, 2023.
• Artificial Intelligence & Society Summer School. Student participation. Jun. 4-9, 2023.

Past research experience

The list below summarizes my early research studies, conducted during my undergraduate and master's degrees in Brazil, mostly focused on social network analysis and digital humanities.

Dissertations and theses

• Classifying communities in temporal networks by text: mapping the 2013-2018 Brazilian protests on Twitter [Classificação de comunidades em redes temporais por texto: mapeamento dos protestos brasileiros de 2013-2018 no Twitter] (2022). Master's thesis. Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Supervisor: Prof. Cristiana Losekann. Funding: CAPES Foundation, Ministry of Education.
• Cluster analysis using Markov Cluster Algorithm and the Louvain method: a case study of Wikipedia entries [Análise de agrupamentos utilizando Markov Cluster Algorithm e o Método de Louvain: um estudo de caso de verbetes da Wikipédia] (2021). Monograph. Federal Institute of Science and Technology of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Supervisor: Prof. Jefferson Andrade.
• A tool for data journalism, social network analysis and cyberspace mapping [Uma ferramenta para o jornalismo de dados, a análise de redes sociais e o mapeamento do ciberespaço] (2018). Bachelor's thesis. Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Supervisor: Prof. Fabio Malini.

Conference papers

• Impacts of new information and communication technologies in post-2013 Brazil [Impactos das novas tecnologias de comunicação e informação no Brasil pós-2013] (2019). IV Proceedings of the Social Sciences Seminar PGCS-Ufes, Vitória/ES, Brazil.
• The hashtag #ThereWillBeNoCoup in light of the perspectivist social network analysis method [A hashtag #NãoVaiTerGolpe à luz do método perspectivista de ARS] (2016). XXXIX Congress of Communication Sciences, São Paulo/SP, Brazil.
• Black Block and the role of social media in brazilian demonstrations of September 7, 2013 [O Black Bloc e o papel das mídias sociais nas manifestações brasileiras de 7 de setembro de 2013] (2014). XIX Congress of Communication Sciences - Southeast, Vila Velha/ES, Brazil.

Co-author

• Introduction to sentiment analysis in social networks: the lexicon built in two moments of the impeachment process [Introdução à análise de sentimentos em redes sociais: o léxico construído em dois momentos do processo de impeachment] (2016). IX ABCiber National Symposium, São Paulo/SP, Brazil.
• Mapping the 'Ninja Media': an analysis of the emerging territorial collectivities on Facebook [Mapeamento do Mídia Ninja: uma análise sobre as coletividades emergentes territorializantes no Facebook] (2014). VIII ABCiber National Symposium, São Paulo/SP, Brazil.
• Perspectives on Twitter: a quanti-qualitative technique for Social Network studies [A Forma Perspectiva no Twitter: uma técnica quanti-qualitativa para estudos de Redes Sociais] (2014). XXXVII Congress of Communication Sciences, Foz do Iguaçu/PN, Brazil.

Teaching experience

• [Lecture] Introduction to Computational Social Science (Jun. 2022). UFES.
• [Crash course] Introduction to programming with Python (Dec. 2017). UFES.
• [Workshop] Analyzing social life with Gephi (Dec. 2013). FGV/UFES.

Other research activities

Scientific reports

• Global education and social networks (2017). The Education Commission (NDA).
• Zika Virus: digital data from Brazil and the world (2016). UNICEF (NDA).

Participation in events

• [Interview] Online talk on algorithms, art, and internet activism (Feb. 2021). UFJF/UFOP.
• [Seminar talk] Transformations of contemporary activism (Sep. 2019). UFES.

Academic handouts

• Gephi: An open-source software to handle and visualize graphs (Dec. 2013). UFES.