UFPel is Awarded Google Research Grant

Last August 3 Google announced, in the company’s Engineering Center in Latin America (Belo Horizonte), the 24 winning academic projects of the Google Search Scholarships Program for Latin America. Most of the winners are from Brazil, but research projects from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru were also awarded. UFPel had an awarded work developed at the institution and another one carried out at FURG (Fundação Universidade do Rio Grande) in partnership with a UFPel’s professor.

UFPel’s awarded work, led by professor Ricardo Matsumura de Araujo and the student Glauco Roberto Munsberg from the Center for Technological Development, aims to locate and classify graffiti on Google Street View photos using extracted attributes of the images to group graffiti by styles .

According to the researchers, mapping and grouping graffiti allow us to understand the geographic relationship between different types of graffiti, providing valuable information about the social dynamics of cities, better urban development policies and a better understanding of sociological and anthropological phenomena. The project is part of the doctoral work of UFPel’s administrative staff Virginia Andersson and master’s degree work of Diego Jaccottet.

For a year, winning professors and graduate students will receive monthly scholarships to conduct cutting-edge research in areas related to Computer Science. In total, Google will allocate $ 600,000 to the prize. “The winning projects stand out in terms of impact, originality and quality and are within key areas of interest to Google,” says Google engineering director in Brazil, Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, who coordinated the selection of projects.