June 21, 2023
Throughout its 50-year history, the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems (DINS) has produced many successful alumni. As a department heavily focused on the diverse studies of information sciences, data science, and networks, alumni of the department have gone on to make innovative contributions to the field of academia.
One example of the strength of alumni who graduate from DINS is Denis Parra Santander. Parra (SCI '13) is an associate professor in the computer science department of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC Chile). In addition to his professorship, Parra is also a principal researcher at the Millenium Institute on Intelligent Healthcare Engineering and the National Center for Artificial Intelligence Research.
Parra began his studies at the University of Pittsburgh in 2008, where he earned a PhD in information science.
“My education from DINS prepared me very well for my academic career,” said Parra. “Overall, the whole environment from professors, classmates, and people from my own lab, as well as other labs, gave me a very strong foundation to pursue my academic career.”
While a student at the School of Computing and Information (SCI), Parra received awards for his research: “I earned one of the best student paper awards at the UMAP [User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization] conference in 2011 for my research on implicit feedback for recommendation systems,” said Parra about his award.
Since graduating, Parra has continued to receive accolades for his research, and in 2013, he began his role as an assistant professor at PUC Chile.
“In 2018, our research on intelligent interfaces for evidence-based medicine was a candidate for the best paper award at the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces Conference,” said Parra. “In the 2019 version of the same conference, our research on explainability for image-based recommendation systems was given an outstanding research award.”
Parra attributes his preparation for his research efforts to his time at SCI: “All [the program’s] activities, along with the advisor supervision and the courses gave me a strong foundation to start my research career back in my country, Chile. Overall, the whole environment from professors (including my supervisor Professor Peter Brusilovsky), classmates, and people from my own lab (the PAWS Lab), as well as other labs, gave me a very strong foundation to pursue my academic career."
In addition to his research, Parra created the Human-Centered AI and Visualization Lab at PUC Chile. His contributions continued in January 2023, when Parra helped co-organize (along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) the first Latin American summer school on Human-Centered AI in Visualisation in Santiago, Chile.
In 2024, Parra will serve as the co-program chair of the ACM IUI conference; Parra previously served as co-chair of the same conference in 2021.
To learn more about DINS, visit the DINS website.
--Emma Bender, SCI writing intern