Prof Alex Freitas

About

Prof Alex Freitas is a Professor of Computational Intelligence at the School of Computing, University of Kent. He has an interdisciplinary academic background, with a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex, UK (1997), in the area of machine learning (or data mining), and a research-oriented master’s degree (an MPhil) in Biological Sciences from the University of Liverpool, UK (2011), in the area of the biology of ageing with machine learning and bioinformatics methods. He also worked as a Lecturer in Brazil for about 4 years (1998-2002) and has several research collaborators in Brazil. His main research interests are the development of new classification (supervised learning) methods for machine learning, data mining and knowledge discovery, as well as the application of such methods to the life sciences, particularly the biology of ageing, but also pharmaceutical sciences and biomedicine in general.

Regarding the research areas of Kent’s Global Challenges Doctoral Centre (GCDC), his ageing-related research is related to the challenge area of ‘sustainable health and well-being’, and to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ‘good health and well-being’. Ageing research is particularly relevant for this area because many countries are experiencing an ageing population, where an increasingly larger proportion of the population consist of elderly people, and old age is the greatest risk factor for many diseases. Hence, he is particularly interested in supervising research students in the area of machine learning for ageing-related research.

View Alex’s full academic profile here and his list of publications here.