luiz
celso gomes jr
MSc Computer
Science - UNICAMP, Brazil
[This page is outdated. I'm now a PhD student at University of Waterloo. I'll work on the new page eventually].
I'm a MSc student in computer science at UNICAMP (State University of Campinas), Brazil. I'm proudly a member of LIS (Laboratory of Information Systems), the former Database Group, at the CS department. My current research regards distributed queries for biodiversity data in the WeBios eScience project. More about that further on this page, specially in the research section.
When I'm not in the lab, you would probably find me
reading, listening to music, playing with friends or walking around by
myself. Those are among the things that I have as hobbies and that you
can find in the hobbies section.
My curriculum vitae 
LIS Web site 
| research |
Among my research interests are: scientific databases, distributed queries, data integration, knowledge representation, query languages and geographic information systems.
My current work concerns distributed queries for biodiversity
research. Biodiversity research is a complex field that involves huge
amounts of data that are gathered by various institutions and used by
scientists to fill their models. In my dissertation work, I'm studying and proposing ways to represent
the concepts behind these data and mechanisms to query and deal with
heterogeneity. Much of the data used in biodiversity research is geographical,
making distributed geographic queries an
important topic in my work. I'm applying semantic Web technologies (such as
OWL, RDF and SPARQL) and geographic standards (such as WFS and WMS from
OGC) to propose a service that processes queries over distributed biodiversity
data sources. Queries submitted to the service can express ecological,
taxonomic and geographic predicates. This proposal is part of the WeBios
eScience project.
My research statement
WeBios page
E. O. Wilson's fabulous book on biodiversity
The Semantic Web from W3C
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web site
| hobbies |
I generally like outdoor activities, specially those involving contact with nature. I was (and am whenever I can) the navigator of various trekking teams (trekking competitions in Brazil are like regularity rallies - taking the car out and putting some extra mud in). I also tried some diving (not scuba) and tennis. Nowadays I play volleyball with friends weekly at UNICAMP and practice some yoga.
I love traveling and I'm always looking for excuses to do that. I rode many miles backpacking through nice places in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.
I read lots of things. I like science-related books
(Sagan's, Dawkins', Gould's, Hawking's), sci-fi, general literature, adventure
reports and some novels. For listening, usually rock (Dave Matthews
Band, Oasis, Coldplay, Bob Dylan, Neil Young) and Brazilian music (Chico
Buarque, Marisa Monte, Tom Jobim, Toquinho, Vinicius). I'm addicted to
documentaries (BBC's, PBS', Cosmos) and also like Friends and Monty Python.
| photos |
| Backpacking in Bolivia and Peru (Dec 2005 - Jan 2006) |  |
| Christmas at Ilha Grande - RJ (Dec 2006) |  |
| SBBD - Florianopolis - SC (Oct 2006) |  |
| Brazilian Trekking Championship - Belo Horizonte - MG (Oct 2006) |  |
| LIS members visiting the world's largest coffee cooperative - Guaxupe - MG (Aug 2006) |  |
| 2nd LIS members' kart race (Jan 2007) |  |
| Something recent... |
|
| links |
Here I try to put together some general links for sites and tools I find interesting.
The Collection of
Computer Science Bibliographies
Princeton University: WebMedia - Lectures
