The planned schedule for the invited seminars is as follows:


  • Friday 11th November, 17h30 - Prof. Alysson Bessani (FCUL) - Operating/Distributed Systems and Security (room C10)
  • Friday 18th November, 17h30 - Prof. Luís Correia (FCUL) - Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life (room C10)
  • Wednesday 30th November, 17h30 - Prof. Alfredo Ferreira (IST) - Computer Graphics, Multimedia, and Human-Computer Interaction (room FA1)
  • Wednesday 14th December, 17h30 - Prof. Rito Silva (IST) - Software Engineering and Programming Languages (room FA1)
  • Friday 16th December, 17h30 - Prof. Paulo Carreira (IST) - Information Systems, Data Management and Cyber-Physical Systems (room C10)

Questions regarding each of the the invited seminars:


Grades for the answers provided to the short quiz questions are now published online.

Prof. Alysson Bessani - Operating/Distributed Systems and Security ( slides-part-1 , slides-part-2 )

  1. Consider a given cloud service that offers 3 nines of availability (i.e., availability can be expressed by the number of nines or "class of nines" in the digits). In this case, how may hours per year is the cloud service unavailable (i.e., down) for operation?
  2. What is a secret sharing algorithm and how it is used in DepSky to ensure data confidentiality?

Prof. Luís Correia - Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life ( slides )

  1. Explain why the design of programs that can play "go" a is harder challenge for AI than the design of programs that can play "chess".
  2. The presentation discussed a series of challenging open-problems for AI researchers. Choose one of the problems that was discussed, and detail the challenges that are involved.

Prof. Alfredo Ferreira - Human-Computer Interaction ( slides )

  1. What are WIMP and post-WIMP interfaces? Explain their main characteristics.
  2. Does the "Moore's law" general trend also apply to advances in human-computer interfaces? Justify and explain your rationale.

Prof. António Rito Silva - Research on Software Engineering ( slides )

  1. Explain what is the CAP theorem?
  2. Explain what are the advantages of a micro services architecture over a monolithic architecture. Explain also in what situations should one consider a micro services architecture.

Prof. Paulo Carreira - Information Systems, Data Management, and Cyber-Physical Systems ( slides )

  1. In terms of query processing, what is the main difference between a database management system and a data stream management system?
  2. Explain what are (i) building automation systems and (ii) energy management systems, outlining some of the challenges that were highlighted in the presentation.