Rural do Semi-Árido

International students can apply for PPGCC under the Exchange Program for Graduate Students (PEC-PG), supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE), and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

Students from developing countries with which Brazil maintains educational, cultural or scientific-technological agreement can apply for a scholarship under the call for applications announced every year in the program’s webpage. For information on dates and deadlines, scholarships and the list of eligible countries access http://www.capes.gov.br/cooperacao-internacional/multinacional/pec-pg (in Portuguese).

Researches in the PPGCC are conducted in the following focus areas:

Technologies applied to Education and Health

This area covers studies aimed at studying and developing information and communication technologies applied to education and health, especially the improvement of products, services and processes for a better life quality of people. It covers topics such as software engineering, database design and implementation, computational intelligence, decision support systems, and system security.

Computational Optimization and Intelligence

This area covers studies aimed at finding the best allocation of resources for a set of activities, so that pre-established objectives or goals are minimized (costs) or maximized (profits) based on combinatorial problems where the viable solution set is discrete.

Studies are aimed at understanding and developing general heuristic algorithms such as metaheuristics, hybrid metaheuristics, hyperheuristics, and other methods known as intelligent heuristics. Also, the study of machine learning techniques (supervised, semi-supervised, and unsupervised) and elastic computing (fuzzy systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms) is conducted in this area.

Exact methods using operational research concepts and approximation methods are used to find near-optimal and computationally efficient solutions in case of NP-hard problems. The area covers topics such as: automated systems for transportation and telecommunication; facility location problems, task scheduling, electricity distribution systems, vehicle routing and scheduling, allocation of worker or machine to tasks, container packaging, material cutting, DNA and gene sequencing, pattern recognition, and others.

System and Circuit Design

• Angélica Félix de Castro (angelica@ufersa.edu.br)
• Araken de Medeiros Santos (araken@ufersa.edu.br)
• Carla Katarina de Monteiro Marques (carla.katarina@gmail.com)
• Carlos Heitor Pereira Liberalino (heitorliberalino@gmail.com)
• Cicília Raquel Maia Leite (ciciliamaia@gmail.com)
• Dario José Aloise (aloisedj@gmail.com)
• Francisco Chagas de Lima Júnior (limajunior@uern.br)
• Francisco Dantas de Medeiros Neto (fdmneto@gmail.com)
• Francisco Milton Mendes Neto (miltonmendes@ufersa.edu.br)
• Leiva Casemiro Oliveira (leiva.casemiro@ufersa.edu.br)
• Lenardo Chaves e Silva (lenardo@ufersa.edu.br)
• Marcelino Pereira dos Santos Silva (prof.marcelino@gmail.com)
• Patrício de Alencar Silva (patricio.alencar@ufersa.edu.br)
• Paulo Gabriel Gadelha Queiroz (paulpggq@gmail.com)
• Sílvio Roberto Fernandes de Araújo (silvio@ufersa.edu.br)