Dr Miriam Santos, Assistant Professor at the University of Porto, has been awarded the 2025 Cor Baayen Award for her outstanding research in data quality and ethical AI.
At the Department of Computer Science of the University of Porto, Dr Santos is also a member of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD, INESC TEC). She obtained her PhD in 2022 from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, with a thesis titled “Research Problems in Data Quality: Addressing Imbalanced and Missing Data,” supervised by Prof. Dr Pedro Henriques da Cunha Abreu. Her doctoral work received the prestigious Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis in Artificial Intelligence 2022, promoted by the Portuguese Association for Artificial Intelligence (APPIA).
Within the area of Machine Learning, Dr Santos investigates issues related to imbalanced data, missing data, and intrinsic data characteristics, focussing on how to identify, characterise, quantify, and mitigate these challenges in real-world domains. This research is central to Ethical AI, establishing the link between data properties and their effects on learning classifiers.
Her current work explores how bias affects data complexity and develops specialised methods to identify sources of unfairness without prior or explicit information. This line of research has potentially high impact across different application domains, as it reveals unfairness embedded in metadata itself. Her contributions are pivotal in establishing robust frameworks to operationalise Ethical AI from a technical perspective.
Her research has been published in leading journals and conferences and has attracted significant attention within the scientific community. She has collaborated with research groups in the USA, Spain, and Brazil, contributing to international tutorials, workshops, special issues, and joint projects.
Beyond academia, Dr Santos shows an exceptional commitment to society. She is the founder of As Raparigas do Código, a non-profit organisation that promotes programming education for girls and women, addressing gender imbalance in the Information Technology sector in Portugal. This initiative received the “Best Digital Inclusion Project Started by a Woman” award in 2021 and the “Cities and Territories of the Future” award (categories Equity and Inclusion and Upskilling) in 2023. She is also a strong advocate for digital inclusion and AI literacy, and actively participates in outreach activities aimed at the general public.
Dr Santos is an outstanding early-career researcher who strives for scientific excellence, engages deeply with the research community, and is strongly committed to promoting responsible and inclusive technology.
Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award 2025
Winner:
Miriam Santos, nominated by Alípio Jorge, INESC
Finalists:
• Daniel Castro, nominated by INESC
• Luca Ciampi, nominated by CNR
• Evangelia Gogoulou, nominated by RISE
• Othmane Marfoq, nominated by Inria
• Grzegorz Pierczyński, nominated by Univ. of Warsaw
• Maja Szlenk, nominated by Univ. of Warsaw
• Chang Sun, nominated by CWI
• Serena Tardelli, nominated by CNR
• Emilie Yu, nominated by Inria
Selection Committee:
The Selection Committee was composed of Gabriel David (INESC-TEC), Monica Divitini (NTNU – chair of the ERCIM Human Capital Task Group), Georgia Kapitsaki (University of Cyprus), Bruno Levy (Inria), Kostas Magoutis (FORTH), and Fabrizio Sebastiani (CNR-ISTI). The decision was unanimous.
About the ERCIM Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award
The Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award is a prestigious annual prize that recognises outstanding early-career researchers in computer science and applied mathematics. Established in 1995 and named after ERCIM’s first president, the award honours both scientific excellence and potential through a rigorous selection process. With a prize of €5,000, it stands among Europe’s most respected distinctions for emerging research talent.
As an early-career prize, the Cor Baayen Award recognises a wide range of academic contributions and adheres to responsible research evaluation principles. Nominees must have conducted their research for at least one year at an institution located in one of the ERCIM member countries.
More information:
https://www.ercim.eu/empowering-people/cor-baayen-award
