A work of the School of Engineering of UMinho, presented by Dalila Durães, professor of the Department of Informatics and researcher at the ALGORITMI Centre of the School of Engineering of the University of Minho, “A Conversational Agent for Smart Schooling: A case study on k-12 dropout risk assessment” was awarded the Best Paper prize at SSCt2023 – International Conference on Sustainable Smart Cities and Territories, which took place at the University of Caldas in Manizales, Colombia.

This important event brought together around 150 international experts who discussed topics related to the themes of Smart Cities and Territories and their interconnection with Artificial Intelligence.

The award is the result of work carried out within the project “Hello: intelligent platforms to combat school failure” (NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-047004) led by Professor Paulo Novais at UMinho, which aims to develop an Intelligent platform that aims to develop an integrated and innovative educational approach, and permanently based on the relationships: Student, School, Family and Community. It also has the function of monitoring the student in an integrated way, signalling risky behaviours, while allowing the introduction of personalised recommendations to the student’s situation, both at the level of performance and behaviour, thus enabling the promotion of academic success. This is a project of co-promotion between the University of Minho, the Portuguese Catholic University and the company Codevision, S.A. coordinator of the project.

+Info: www.eng.uminho.pt, www.di.uminho.pt, algoritmi.uminho.pt, ssctic.net