With over two decades of experience, Professor Bação has made significant strides in machine learning and geospatial information. His early contributions in applying machine learning to geospatial problems set the stage for a new direction in research. More recently, his work has focused on the use of synthetic data in learning tasks, an area that offers promising solutions to challenges like data scarcity and privacy concerns.

Among his notable innovations are KMeansSMOTE and Geometric SMOTE, two open-source tools that address the complexities of working with imbalanced datasets. His research also extends to active learning, where he has explored data augmentation techniques, and he is the creator of MapIntel, a visual analytics platform for text mining.

This award highlights Professor Bação’s ongoing contributions to data science, both within NOVA IMS and in the broader academic and professional communities.