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).