Joana Gonçalves de Sá

Joana Gonçalves de Sá is the leader of the Social Physics and Complexity (SPAC) research group at LIP. Before that, she was an Associate Professor at Nova SBE and a Principal Investigator at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). At the IGC she also coordinated the “Iniciativa Ciência e Sociedade”, a science communication and outreach team, and was the founder and Director of the Graduate Program Science for Development (PGCD), aiming at improving science in Africa.

A sua investigação foca-se em envisamentos (humanos e algoritmicos), utilizando análise de dados e a aprendizagem automática para estudar problemas complexos na interface entre a Biomedicina, a Computação, a Política, as Ciências Sociais e a Matemática. Estes incluem epidemiologia, pensamento crítico, dinâmica de redes, discurso político e as suas aplicações ao comportamento humano, com uma grande ênfase ética e social.

Joana has a degree in Physics Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico – University of Lisbon, and a PhD in Systems Biology from NOVA – ITQB, having developed her thesis at Harvard University, USA.
In 2019, she was the recipient of an ERC Starting grant to study human behaviour using the online spread of “fake news” as a model system and, in 2022, she was awarded an ERC proof of Concept grant to study algorithmic bias.