I am a computer scientist and a political scientist working at the intersection of information visualization, human-computer interaction, politics, and data journalism.
I hold a PhD, an MSc, and a BSc in computer science from UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil), with a focus on information visualization and human-computer interaction, and a BSc in politics and international relations from the University of London/LSE. I have worked as a researcher and university lecturer, a software engineer, and a journalist/political scientist.
My research has always been in information visualization and human-computer interaction, focusing on topics such as graph (i.e., network) visualization for data exploration, analysis, and communication; data journalism; and the application of visualization and data science in political science. I have worked as a postdoctoral at Inria’s Aviz team (where I also spent time during my PhD as a visiting student), in a joint project with INRA, in Paris, France, and at UFRGS's computer graphics, image processing, and interaction group, with which I still collaborate.
As a lecturer, I taught courses on computer graphics and virtual reality at UCS (University of Caxias do Sul, Brazil) and on programming and algorithms at UFRGS. I have also given talks on information visualization and its use for communication.
In the industry, I co-founded and co-ran Visualitica, a software company that developed projects related to visualization and computer graphics. After my time with Visualitica, I undertook freelance work as a software engineer, taking on general projects. As a freelancer, I found myself often collaborating with journalists in data-driven stories, working on data retrieval, processing, and analysis as well as the crafting of interactive visualizations.
As a journalist/political scientist, I collaborated with Estado da Arte, the online politics and culture magazine of Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, writing long-form articles on Brazilian and international politics, combining current affairs with the academic and mainstream literature in political science and theory.
Besides politics, computer science, and journalism, I am also interested in topics such as economics, finance (I was even a stockbroker for a while), philosophy, mythology, history, and filmmaking (screenwriting, in particular). I also speak eight languages, love to travel, have a peculiar and wide-ranging taste in music, and enjoy cooking (but suck at making soufflés).