Five professors appointed at Information and Computing Sciences

Utrecht University has appointed five professors at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences. Each of the professorships involves an internal candidate. The appointments are part of a growth programme with extra attention to diversity. The same programme included the recent  appointment of Massimo Poesio as Professor of Natural Language Understanding. The professorships will start on May 1, 2023. The position of Professor of Data-Driven Interaction has been assigned to Egon L. van den Broek. Within this chair, data is collected and analyzed from various devices, such as smartphones, smartwatches and cars. The goal is to derive patterns that can help with medical issues. For example, data from sports watches can help research heart rhythm disorders and their prediction. Possible loneliness can be recognized with, among others, smartphone data on the number of contacts a person has. And a combination of data from video, speech, and other sources can teach artificial intelligence to recognize and respond to feelings. In doing so, it learns to act empathically, which in turn has all sorts of applications, including artificial intelligence as a therapist. Ethical issues, including data management and privacy are central to this research. Evolving software development. Fabiano Dalpiaz will hold the position of Professor of Software Production. Theories for software development are outdated, and important innovations are more often originating from companies and organizations than from academic research. Within this chair, in close cooperation with industry, these theories are investigated and evolved. How are large-scale software products developed?