Victor Silva

Edmonton, Alberta · (780) 977-7106 · vsilva[at]ualberta[dot]ca

Research Interests

Data Science, Unsupervised Learning, Temporal Data Analysis, Textual Data, Ethics

Education

PhD, Computing Science

University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Supervisor: Joerg Sander and Eleni Stroulia
September 2019 to Present

M.Sc., Computing Science

University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Supervisor: Joerg Sander
September 2016 to August 2019

M.Sc, Computer Science

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, BH, MG, Brazil
Supervisor: Luiz Chaimowicz
February 2013 to June 2016

Degree, Game Development

Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Minas Gerais, BH, MG, Brazil
February 2010 to July 2012

Experience

Teaching and Research Assistant

University of Alberta

Computers and Games (approximately 50 students)

Supervisor:  Vadim Bulitko

  • Taught Labs, Proposed/Graded Assignments, was head TA
  • Redesigned the course, migrated to a new game engine

Intelligent Systems/Reinforcement Learning (approximately 300 students)

Supervisors: Adam White and Richard Sutton

  • Taught Labs, Graded Assignments, Hosted office hours

Introduction to the Foundations of Computation (approximately 400 students)

Supervisor:  Osmar Zaiane

  • Taught Labs, Designed and Graded Assignments, Hosted office hours
  • Led teams of up to 20 Teaching Assistants to grade assignments

September 2016 to May 2024

Graduate Teaching Assistant

UFMG

  • Graded and Proposed Assignments, held office hours, taught lectures

February 2015 to July 2015

Lecturer

UNA and UNIBH

Main instructor for Emerging Technologies, Programming Logic, OOP, Emerging Technologies and,Artificial Intelligence courses

August 2014 to November 2015

Awards

  • Best Paper
    The Ethics of Data Science Conference - 2019 - $1000
  • Best Paper
    National Research Council (NRC) of Canada - 2019 - $1700
  • NVIDIA GTC LXAI + Black in AI Conference Grant
    NVIDIA, LXAI, Black AI - 2019 - $4000
  • Google Travel Scholarship
    Google - 2019 - $500
  • FGSR Travel Grant
    Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research - 2019 - $700
  • GSA Travel Grant
    Graduate Students Association - 2019 - $500
  • Graduate Student Scholarship
    FAPEMIG, Brazil - 2015 - $5000
  • Best Paper
    Brazilian Symposium on Games and Entertainment - 2015

Publications

  • Thesis

    V. N. Silva "A Flexible Framework to Monitor the Evolution of Clusters", University ofAlberta - 2019

    V. N. Silva "Desenvolvimento de Agentes Inteligentes para Jogos MOBA", Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais - 2016

  • Book

    V. N. Silva "Puzzle com Estrategia", Serie Game Design, Instituto Infnet, Rio de Janeiro - 2015 ISBN: 978-85-67105-57-4

  • Refereed Conference Papers

    V. N. Silva et al. "Analyzing and visualizing the Canadian Research Landscape", CASCON x EVOKE - 2019

    V. N. Silva and R. H. A. Silva "Are Algorithms Affecting the Democracy in Brazil?", The Ethics of Data Science Conference - 2019

    V. N. Silva "On the Development of Intelligent Agents for MOBA Games", Brazilian Symposium on Games and Entertainment (SBGames) - 2015

    M.P. Silva, V. N. Silva and L. Chaimowicz "Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment Through an Adaptive AI", Brazilian Symposium on Games and Entertainment (SBGames) - 2015

    M. S. Nery, V. N. Silva, R. A. S. Teixeira, A. A. Veloso "Setting Players’ Behaviors in World of Warcraft through Semi-Supervised Learning", Brazilian Symposium on Games and Entertainment (SBGames) - 2013

  • Posters & Short Papers

    V. N. Silva and C.S. Constantinescu "Algorithms and Social Media, a Challenge to Democracy", Symposium on Ethics in Artificial Intelligence - 2019

    V. N. Silva and L. Chaimowicz "A Tutor Agent for MOBA Games", Brazilian Symposium on Games and Entertainment (SBGames) - 2015

Volunteer

Chair of Recruitment

Black in AI Workshop at NeurIPS 2019, Vancouver - CA
June 2020 to December 2019
  • Established relationship with attendees and stakeholders
  • Negotiated contracts up to $200 thousand dollars
  • Managed risk and responded to emergencies during the event

Volunteer Staff

Black in AI Workshop at NeurIPS 2018, Montreal - CA
October 2018 to December 2018
  • Developed automated systems for document generation 
  • General assistance to attendees during workshop

Area Chair, Data Mining

Workshop on Practical ML for Developing Countries Workshop at ICLR 2020
February 2016 to February 2020
  • Managed reviews
  • Acted as meta-reviewer
  • Made final recommendations on acceptance

Reviewer

DiGra and FDG 2016
February 2016 to February 2016

Skills

Knowledge

Data Science Intelligent Agents

Technologies

Data Science Tableau Adobe Android GitHub

Programming

Python C++ Javascript HTML5 Latex

Languages

English Portuguese Spanish
© Victor Silva 2020