About

Hi! My name is Gonçalo. I'm a father, husband, and AI professional currently based in Zurich, Switzerland. With a Bachelor's and Master's degree specializing in Artificial Intelligence, I have been dedicating my time to designing and training intelligent systems - though admittedly, none quite as clever as a toddler (they set a high bar!).

I earned my Bachelor's degree with a thesis and internship at the ML cardiology department of the UMCG in the Netherlands. Following this, I completed my Master's degree in Deep Learning at the PolliceLab of Artificial Organic Chemistry within the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry at the University of Groningen.

Currently, I am a team leader at IIIM, an NPO that aims at building a bridge between academia and industry to help accelerate the safe application of AI solutions to real-world problems.

I am particularly interested in recent advancements in Deep Learning, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Agentic AI, and multimodal models. These innovations promise to significantly enhance research connectivity within research organizations, potentially bringing us closer to solving many rich and complex problems - can't wait to see where we'll be in the next few years!

What excites you?

Current Roles

AI Research Scientist – Icelandic Institute for Intelligent Machines (IIIM), Reykjavík (2022–Present)

  • Team Management & Supervision: Supervise and support a team of 5 members.
  • AI Research & Development: Implementing RAG, multimodal models, ViT, tabular ML, LLMs, etc.
  • Client Engagement & Strategic Planning: Engage with clients to define AI solutions, draft project proposals, and write grant applications.
  • Technical Documentation & Implementation: Contribute to technical reports and AI methodologies for real-world applications.

Previous Roles

Data Scientist – DASH, UMCG, Groningen, Netherlands (2022–2024)

  • Lead ML projects in healthcare, collaborating with medical researchers to analyze and interpret complex datasets.
  • Serve on the board of the Machine Learning Community at UMCG, fostering discussions on ML applications in medicine.
  • Teach at the DASH Summer and Winter Schools, mentoring researchers in ML techniques.

AI Consultant & Engineer – Itemis, Germany (2022–2023)

  • Provide AI expertise for consulting projects, focusing on ML engineering and AI-driven solutions, namely Multimodal models.

Teaching Assistant

  • Amsterdam UMC in Biology and Machine Learning, Netherlands (2020–2021)
  • Think Tank VSNU Kennistafel, Netherlands (2019–2020)
  • Assisted in courses such as Autonomous Systems, Cognitive Psychology, Multi-Agent Systems, and Computer Vision (2019–2023)
  • DASH Data Science Summer School (2022–2024)
  • DASH Data Science Winter School (2022–2024)

Additional Contributions

  • Co-organized a symposium on Accountability, Responsibility, and Transparency in AI (~300 attendees).
  • Hosted COVERTalks, inviting AI experts such as Joscha Bach and Stephen Wolfram.
  • Founded DataDump, a student initiative to teach data analytics.
  • Co-created GAPC, the largest programming competition in Groningen.
  • Former editor and head of content for COVER magazine, writing on AI topics.
  • Board member of the Machine Learning Lab at UMCG, fostering research discussions in AI (2023–2024).
  • Board member of the student association COVER for CS and AI at RUG (2020–2021).