Vitorino Ramos main research interests are in the fields of Artificial Life and Intelligence, Bio-Inspired Computation, Collective Intelligence and Complex Systems, playing special attention to the role of Evolution, Self-Organization and emergent Cognitive Learning on computational intelligence aspects.

Areas of application include Pattern Recognition, Image Analysis and Processing, Data Mining, Dynamic and Combinatorial Optimization and Control, Classification, Information retrieval, Neural and Evolutionary Computation, Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarms as other related Metaheuristics, Forecasting, Learning and Adaptive systems, Generative Art, Co-evolution and Decision.

[...] Interactions among many sporuliferous and ubiquitous abstractions may lead to increasing reality [...] V. Ramos, 2001.

Biography:
On these areas, he has published over than 70 papers in International Conferences and Journals, participated in 10 National and European research projects (being the main researcher in 2 of them), co-organized several special sessions in International Conferences, and co-edited 2 books at Springer-Verlag (Studies in Computational Intelligence). He also created and chairs since 2004 the Swarm Intelligence and Patterns (SIP) series of Workshops held since then at different International events. He has been invited to the program committee of several known Int. Conferences on his research areas such as CEC (Congress of Evolutionary Computation), PPSN (Parallel Problem Solving from Nature), aLIFE (Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems), NiSIS (Nature Inspired Smart Information Systems), ECAL (European Conf. on Artificial Life), IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium, MA4CS (Multi-Agents for Modeling Complex Systems), AISB (Adaptation in Artificial and Biological Systems), Complex Systems Conf., ICANNGA (Adaptive and Natural Computing Algorithms), SAC (ACM Symposium on Applied Computing), CIARP (Ibero-American Congress on Pattern Recognition), ACVIS (Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems) and many others. He has also been a reviewer on these events as well as for several dedicated Journals, Book Chapters and worldwide PhD thesis.
 
Some of his invited lectures include Universidad del País Vasco (Bilbao, Spain), Univ. of São Paulo (Brazil), Complexity in Social Sciences Summer School (COSI European Research Network, Andaluzia, Spain), Univ. of Lyon (France) and Univ. of Birmingham (UK), among many others.

In 2002, he was invited by the European Commission (among 30 scientists), to discuss the nature of the new ADVENTURE EU projects, within the NEST - New and Emerging Science and Technology program (FP6), related to projects of high innovation, high risk, in high degree multidisciplinary research areas.

Labs & Projects:
Under these research areas he was a visiting research scientist for several International Laboratories, for brief periods. As an example: Imperial College - London, GeNeura - Granada Univ., DICMA/ELCOS, European Laboratory for Characterisation of Ornamental Stones - Bologna Univ., and RFV/INSA, Institut National des Sciences Appliqueés - Lyon. Co-founder of APGC "Portuguese Association on Knowledge Management (2004)", as well as aAAL "Artificial Life Art Architecture Lab.", Lisbon (2001), he is a member of ISGEC (Int. Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation), EU/ME (EUropean Chapter on MEtaheuristics EURO Working Group), ACFAS (Association Canadienne-Française pour l'Avancement des Sciences), EXISTENCE (Complex Systems European Network of Excellence), EVONET (The European Network of Excellence in Evolutionary Computing), ARTIST (Artificial Immune Systems Network), APRP (Pattern Recognition Portuguese Association), and APPIA (Artificial Intelligence Portuguese Association).

Last year (March 2007), Aveiro Univ. Association of Physics (fisUA) have turned him one of his honorary members. He also belongs to the CBC Research Network (Computational Biology Collaboratorium) FLAD - IGC Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal.

Press Media Articles, Interviews & Citations:
References to his scientific work include, Der Spiegel (Germany, Nov. 2000), Dr. DOBBS Journal (USA, June 2001), Hoy and Extremadura newspapers (Spain, Feb. 2002), INNOVATIONS-REPORT.COM (Germany, Sept. 2002), Janela na Web (Nov. 2002), ARCH’IT Magazine (Italy, March 2003), Technology Research News Magazine (Boston, USA, May 2004). Three interviews for the public Portuguese TV channel RTP (Portugal, July 2001, Oct. 2002, May 2004). Press articles on the Portuguese Expresso, Público, Idéias & Negócios, Lusa, Exame Informática, SEM Mais, Visão, Diário de Noticias (DNA) (2002-06).

His most recent papers (2000-2006) were cited in International Books, Journals, PhD and MSc Thesis, and in Int. Peer Reviewed Conferences, over 545 times. Five of them with 93, 92, 72, 52 and 26 citations each. According to SCOPUS + Google Scholar, his Hirsch* h-number is 13, and Egghe** g-number is 23 with mc=93 (*J. E. Hirsch, PNAS, Vol. 102, no. 46, 2005; **L. Egghe, Scientometrics, Vol. 69, no. 1, 2006 / PDF / Free online software). Finally, some of his online results are available at DBLP.

His Erdös number = 4 achieved in 2003 (Erdös, Paul : Gupta, Hansraj : Nath, Baikunth : Abraham, Ajith). The complete path is:

# Paul Erdös, Hansraj Gupta, Khare, S.P., "On the Number of Distinct Prime Divisors of {n,k}", in Utilitas Math. 10, 51-60, 1976. # Hansraj Gupta, Baikunth Nath, "Enumeration of Stochastic Cubes", in Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Nathematics Vol. 5, Nos. 5 & 6, 1973. # Ajith Abraham, Baikunth Nath, "A Neuro-Fuzzy Approach for Forecasting Electricity Demand In Victoria", in Applied Soft Computing Journal, Elsevier Science, Volume 1&2, pp. 127-138, 2001. # Vitorino Ramos, Ajith Abraham, "Swarms on Continuous Data", in CEC´03 - Congress on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Press, ISBN 078-0378-04-0, pp.1370-1375, Canberra, Australia, 8-12 Dec. 2003.
 
Lectures (more):



º Collective Exaptive Cognition, invited talk at Arrábida meetings 2009 - The notions of Emergence in Physical and Social Sciences, ICC (Inst. for Complexity Science) Coordination, Arrábida Monastery, Setúbal, Portugal 7-9 July 2009.
º From Swarm Chemotaxis + Hobo Signs up to Co-Evolved Cognition in Neural Ensembles, invited talk at FIIP 08,  Brain, Life and Culture, Int. Forum for Portuguese Researchers, Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, 18-20 Dec. 2008.
º Perceptive Swarms, Data and Computable Habitats, invited talk at the 3rd Symposium on Nature-inspired Smart Information Systems (NiSIS), Supported by the European Commission, St. Julians, 26-28 Nov. 2007, Isle of Malta.
º Collective Intelligence: from Chemotaxis to Cognition, invited lecture at the Complex Sciences MsC Seminary, ISCTE, 18-20 h, June 20 2007, Lisbon.
º Co-Cognition, Neural ensembles and Self-Organization, Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR), IST, 5 pm, May 31 2007, Lisbona.
º Second-order Swarm Intelligence, Granada University, May 24 2007, Granada, Spain (invited lecture by MODO Lab. - Models of Decision and Optimization).


Recent Books & Works (more):

	70. Ramos, V., Fernandes, C., Rosa, A.C., Abraham, A., Computational Chemotaxis in Ants and Bacteria over Dynamic Environments, in CEC´07 - Congress on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Press, USA, ISBN 1-4244-1340-0, pp. 1009-1017, Sep. 2007.
	69. Fernandes, C., Rosa, A.C., Ramos V., Binary Ant Algorithm, in Dirk Thierens et al. (Eds.), GECCO´07 - Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Vol. 1, pp. 41-48, ACM Press, London, UK, 7-11 July, 2007.
	62. Abraham, Ajith; Grosan, Crina; Ramos, Vitorino (Eds.), Swarm Intelligence in Data Mining, Studies in Computational Intelligence (series), Vol. 34, Springer-Verlag, ISBN: 3-540-34955-3, 267 p., Hardcover, 2006. [at Amazon] [at Barnes & Noble]
	60. Abraham, Ajith; Grosan, Crina; Vitorino Ramos (Eds.), Stigmergic Optimization, Studies in Computational Intelligence (series), Vol. 31, Springer-Verlag, ISBN: 3-540-34689-9 , 295 p., Hardcover, 2006. [at Amazon] [at Barnes & Noble]
	61. Vitorino Ramos, Carlos Fernandes, Agostinho C. Rosa, On Self-Regulated Swarms, Societal Memory, Speed and Dynamics, in Artificial Life X - Proc. of the Tenth Int. Conf. on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, L.M. Rocha, L.S. Yaeger, M.A. Bedau, D. Floreano, R.L. Goldstone and A. Vespignani (Eds.), MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-68162-5, pp. 393-399, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, June 3-7, 2006.

Fun Stuff (more):



Video - Thousands of starlings birds gathering in flocks, flying in formations while emerging complex patterns on S.W. Scotland (more photos & video by/at Fresh Pics, 2007). Here for an artificial version with different purposes. They are not birds, instead an entirely different new animal.