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Prof. Dr. Mariana Macedo
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
School of Computer Science & Engineering
Constructor University Bremen gGmbH,
Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen Germany
Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen Germany
Fax number
+49 421 200-3103
Email Address
mmacedo@constructor.university
Office
Research I, Room 86
Research Interest
My research explores Explainable AI and Human Behaviour, focusing on mobility inequalities, career development, resource and health access, and societal fairness. Using Data Science, Network Science, and Artificial Intelligence, I investigate how social, historical, and structural factors shape unequal access to opportunities, with the goal of uncovering hidden disparities and informing more equitable policies and decision-making. In parallel, I study AI systems themselves by modelling interactions between agents and analysing their relationships across multiple inspirations to better understand how these systems learn and make decisions. By examining AI through this social perspective, my work contributes to improving transparency, accountability, fairness, and ethical responsibility, helping ensure the safe and trustworthy deployment of AI in real-world applications.
- Applied AI, Human-AI Interface
- Human Dynamics
- Gender, Race & Socioeconomic Inequalities
- Data-Driven applications
- Complex Systems
- Urban Systems
- Optimization, Swarm Intelligence
- Evolutionary Computation
- Multi-many objective frameworks
Work Experience
- Nov 2023 – Feb 2026
Assistant Professor in Data Science
Associate Director of Belonging for the Computing, Mathematics, Engineering, and Natural Sciences (CoMENS) Faculties
Northeastern University, London, United Kingdom - Jan 2022 – Nov 2023
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center of Collective Learning
Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute
University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France - Sep 2018 – Dec 2021
PhD in Computer Science awarded in May 2022
Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in Computer Science
University of Exeter - May 2019 – July 2020
Machine Learning Intern
Nokia Bell Labs, Dublin, Ireland
For more details:
Google Scholar LinkedIn GitHub
External service:
- Network Science Representative, Women in Network Science
- Board Member, Network Science Society & Complex System Society
- Associate Editor of Applied Network Science
University Education
PhD in Computer Science at the University of Exeter
MSc & BSc in Computer Engineering at the University of Pernambuco
Selected Publications
- Macedo, Mariana, and Akrati Saxena. "Gender biases in online communication: A case study of soccer." Applied Intelligence 56, no. 1 (2026): 33.
- Navarrete, Carlos, Mariana Macedo, Rachael Colley, Jingling Zhang, Nicole Ferrada, Maria Eduarda Mello, Rodrigo Lira et al. "Understanding political divisiveness using online participation data from the 2022 French and Brazilian presidential elections." Nature Human Behaviour 8, no. 1 (2024): 137-148.
- Macedo, Mariana, Ana Maria Jaramillo, and Ronaldo Menezes. "Academic mobility as a driver of productivity: a gender-centric approach." In International Workshop on Complex Networks, pp. 120-131. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023.
- Lira, Rodrigo Cesar, Mariana Macedo, Hugo Valadares Siqueira, and Carmelo Bastos-Filho. "Applying reinforcement learning to combine multiple swarm-based algorithms." In 2023 IEEE Latin American Conference on Computational Intelligence (LA-CCI), pp. 1-6. IEEE, 2023.
- Macedo, Mariana, Laura Lotero, Alessio Cardillo, Ronaldo Menezes, and Hugo Barbosa. "Differences in the spatial landscape of urban mobility: gender and socioeconomic perspectives." Plos one 17, no. 3 (2022): e0260874.
- Macedo, Mariana, Maira Santana, Wellington P. dos Santos, Ronaldo Menezes, and Carmelo Bastos-Filho. "Breast cancer diagnosis using thermal image analysis: A data-driven approach based on swarm intelligence and supervised learning for optimized feature selection." Applied Soft Computing 109 (2021): 107533.
- Oliveira, Marcos, Diego Pinheiro, Mariana Macedo, Carmelo Bastos-Filho, and Ronaldo Menezes. "Uncovering the social interaction network in swarm intelligence algorithms." Applied Network Science 5, no. 1 (2020): 24.