‘Social return is important’, says IMPA scientist Ganacim

07/09/2024

IMPA’s Center for Projects and Innovation, the Pi Center, hosted a round table on Saturday (7) at the National Mathematics Festival. Mediated by IMPA project scientist Francisco Ganacim, three initiatives from the Pi Center were presented with solutions for health, prevention and environmental preservation.

In addition to Ganacim, IMPA doctoral students and Pi Center participants Leonardo Voltarelli, Rodrigo Schuller and Melvin Poveda took part in the conversation.

“It’s important to have this social feedback from our projects. Of course, we like anything that poses a research challenge and we want to be able to apply mathematics to these situations,” said Ganacim.

Leonardo Voltarelli presented the artificial intelligence rain forecasting project that is being developed in partnership with Rio de Janeiro City Hall. The idea is to help solve a problem that is “very impactful for the city of Rio” by making forecasting, based on probability, increasingly assertive. “The idea is to understand how to use artificial intelligence models that have the ability to predict extreme rainfall risks.”

Also in direct service to the population, the Pi Center has developed, in partnership with the DASA group, an algorithm capable of estimating the volume of amniotic fluid with great precision. This unprecedented contribution to the field of fetal medicine helps to reduce risks during pregnancy, using convolutional neural networks and other modern statistical tools.

According to Rodrigo Schuller, rather than solving a problem, this project is also “interested in quantifying uncertainties, identifying how reliable something can be”. For him, one of the big challenges for solutions in the health sector is databases. “In medical applications, the data is sensitive, so there is no leakage of personal information, which is still a major challenge for healthcare solutions.”

Bruno Ramos, a doctoral student in computer engineering at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), liked the innovative use of the algorithm produced by the group.

“I found it very interesting to apply mathematics to such a large area as medicine, with many more real complications than abstract ones – which is what mathematics in general works with. I really liked the solutions to the problem, it’s an application of machine learning. It’s good to know that it works, that it has concrete results and not just another attempt that doesn’t end up working,” he said.

In partnership with Imazon (Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazônia), the Pi Center is also trying to identify deforestation poles in the Amazon. The Pi Center is working to optimize a process that takes an average of 200 hours of work per month. “We’re trying to create a model that will help Imazon indicate whether or not it’s deforestation in the best possible way,” said Melvin Poveda.

The project also seeks to identify fire outbreaks in order to produce statistics and “reports more efficiently”. The Brazilian government is also one of the beneficiaries of the partnership.

The Pi Center

The IMPA Projects and Innovation Center aims to solve concrete problems and develop projects for the national productive sector, based on mathematics. Its main areas of activity include artificial intelligence, machine learning, data dynamics and geostatistics.

“Our mission is to connect IMPA to agents outside academia, such as NGOs and the government itself. These entities have challenges that they face on a daily basis, where they are active in society. And these challenges require mathematical intelligence to solve. We observe these problems and try to find solutions by applying mathematics,” said Ganacim.

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