Clarisse de Souza

Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza is an Emeritus Professor at PUC-Rio. She retired in January 2020 as a Full Professor in the Department of Informatics, where she worked for over 30 years in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Processing, Automatic Text Generation, and Explanation Systems) and, mainly, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Her academic background was entirely completed in the Department of Letters at PUC-Rio, where she earned the titles of: Bachelor - Translator and Interpreter (1979); Master in Portuguese Language (1982); and Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics (1988). Additionally, she completed two postdoctoral fellowships, one at Stanford University with Terry Winograd, and another at the University of Maryland with Jenny Preece, as well as numerous other visiting research positions at foreign universities (e.g., University of Waterloo (CAN) and Indiana University (USA)) and industrial research centers (e.g., Philips Research Labs in Sussex (UK) and IBM Research in Almaden (USA) and Rio de Janeiro (BR)).

Her main research contributions are in the field of HCI, particularly in the interdisciplinary area of Computational Semiotics. In 1993, she proposed the concept of "semiotic engineering" associated with the design of user interface languages. In 1996, she founded SERG, the Semiotic Engineering Research Group, in the Department of Informatics at PUC-Rio. Within about a decade, SERG became a center of excellence in Computational Semiotics, internationally recognized as the origin of the first semiotic theory of human-computer interaction. Clarisse is the author or co-author of four books on Semiotic Engineering: *The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction* (The MIT Press, 2005); *Semiotic Engineering Methods for Scientific Research in HCI* (Morgan Claypool, 2009); *A Journey through Cultures* (Springer, 2013); and *Software Developers as Users* (Springer, 2016).

Through these works and numerous articles published in book chapters, journals, or conference proceedings, Clarisse has become a reference among her national and international peers. Throughout her career, she has received several awards, including the ACM SIGCHI CHI Academy Award (2013), the IFIP HCI Pioneer Award (2014), and the SBC - Brazilian Computer Society's Scientific Merit Award (2016). In 2014, Clarisse was chosen to represent women in computing in the deck of 54 "Notable Women in Computing," selected by Duke University with the endorsement of CRA-W / Anita Borg Institute.

Throughout her career, her projects were supported by CNPq, FAPERJ, CAPES, and the AMD Foundation. She was twice named "Scientist of Our State," a grant-award given by FAPERJ in Rio de Janeiro, and upon retirement, she held a Research Productivity Grant from CNPq at level 1B.

Among her major contributions to the Brazilian scientific community are her role as one of the founders of the HCI field in Brazil, participation in Advisory Committees of CAPES and CNPq, and her involvement in numerous program committees for national scientific events. In 2017, she received the Career Achievement Award from the SBC's Special Committee on Human-Computer Interaction.

As an Emeritus Professor since 2020, Clarisse has been involved in an interdisciplinary project with colleagues from the Departments of Philosophy and History at PUC-Rio, focusing on ethics and the algorithmic mediation of social processes. In 2024, she directed her research towards the use of digital technology in academic knowledge production processes.


 

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