Education
Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil
BSc in Computer Engineering
2018 - 2023
Publications
9. Comparative Evaluation of Ray-Tracing and Monte Carlo Virtual Clinical Trials Pipelines for Lesion Detection in Digital Breast Tomosynthesis
Chloe J. Choi, Bruno Barufaldi, João P. V. Teixeira, Raymond J. Acciavatti, Andrew D. A. Maidment
Proceedings Virtual Imaging Trials in Medicine 2024 Page: 116-121, 2024
8. Representation of complex mammary parenchyma texture in tomosynthesis using simplex noise simulations
Bruno Barufaldi, Chloe J. Choi, João P. V. Teixeira, Magnus Dustler, Raphael B. Englander, Thais G. do Rego, Yuri Malheiros, Telmo Filho, Belayat Hossain, Juhun Lee, Andrew D. A. Maidment
SPIE Medical Imaging, 2024, San Diego, California, United States, 2024
7. Multiclass Segmentation of Breast Tissue and Suspicious Findings: A Simulation-Based Study for the Development of Self-Steering Tomosynthesis
Bruno Barufaldi, Yann Nobrega, Giulia Carvalhal, João P. V. Teixeira, Thais G. do Rego, Yuri Malheiros, Telmo Filho, Raymond J. Acciavatti, Andrew D. A. Maidment
Tomography 9, no. 3: 1120-1132, 2023
6. Interactive breast lesion designer for virtual trials based on Perlin noise
Magnus Dustler, Hanna Tomic, Anna Bjerken, Anders Tingberg, Pontus Timberg, Sophia Zackrisson, Arthur Chaves Costa, João P. V. Teixeira, Bruno Barufaldi, Predrag R. Bakic
Live Demonstrations Workshop, SPIE Medical Imaging, 2023, San Diego, California, United States
5. Spatial dependency of lesion detectability in digital breast tomosynthesis
Chloe J. Choi, Bruno Barufaldi, João P. V. Teixeira, Raymond J. Acciavatti, Andrew D. A. Maidment
16th International Workshop on Breast Imaging (IWBI2022), 2022
4. Multiclass segmentation of suspicious findings in simulated breast tomosynthesis images using a U-Net
Yann Nobrega, Giulia Carvalhal, João P. V. Teixeira, Barbara Camargo, Thais G. do Rego, Yuri Malheiros, Telmo Filho, Trevor Vent, Raymond J. Acciavatti, Andrew D. A. Maidment, Bruno Barufaldi
16th International Workshop on Breast Imaging (IWBI2022), 2022
3. Novel Perlin-based phantoms using 3D models of compressed breast shapes and fractal noise
João P. V. Teixeira, Telmo Filho, Thais G. do Rego, Yuri Malheiros, Magnus Dustler, Predrag R. Bakic, Trevor Vent, Raymond J. Acciavatti, Srilalan Krishnamoorthy, Suleman Surti, Andrew D. A. Maidment, Bruno Barufaldi
SPIE Medical Imaging, 2022, San Diego, California, United States
2. Iris-CV: Classifying Iris Flowers Is Not as Easy as You Thought
Itamar Filho, João P. V. Teixeira, João W. L. Lins, Felipe Sousa, Ana Sousa, Manuel F. Junior, Thaís Ramos, Cecília Silva, Thais G. do Rego, Yuri Malheiros, Telmo Filho
BRACIS 2021
1. An Approach for Automatic Description of Characters for Blind People
Itamar Filho, Felipe Sousa, João W. L. Lins, João P. V. Teixeira, Tiago Maritan
WebMedia '21: Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web, 2021
Industry Experience
Microsoft
Software Engineer, Vancouver, Canada
January 2024 – Present
Developing machine learning solutions for the Azure Kubernetes Service Infrastructure team.
Software Engineering Intern, Remote
May 2022 – November 2022
Rei do Pitaco is the first trustworthy Brazilian Daily Fantasy Sports mobile app and recently raised Series A.
Worked in the Data Platform team, building data extraction pipelines using Apache Airflow.
Amazon
Software Development Engineer Intern, Remote
October 2021 – May 2022
Collaborated on the Fulfillment by Amazon Organization on a team focused on Tax Services.
Created dashboards to monitor the SLAs from the team's microservices.
Data Science Intern, Remote
March 2021 – September 2021
Designed and implemented a new Deep Learning-based recommender system that assists Law Students in studying for the OAB Examination (Brazilian Bar Examination).
Developed a microservice using PyTorch, GRPC Python, and SQLModel to recommend questions to the users according to their performance on the application's simulations.
Atoptima and UFPB
Combinatorial Optimization Developer, Remote
November 2020 – April 2021
Contributed to the development of Camina, an Open-source Vehicle Routing Problem Solver in Julia Language.
Developed heuristics and new features that improved Camina's time performance and reduced computational cost to be equivalent to C/C++ solvers, such as VRPSolver.
Data Engineering Intern, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
April 2020 – September 2021
Upgraded the data infrastructure of the Department of Finance of the State of Paraíba and developed a tool that uses artificial intelligence to detect tax fraud.
Maintained the data lake by building data loaders, creating new tables, managing user groups, and setting permissions. Anonymized sensitive data using PostgreSQL Anonymizer.
Software Engineering Intern, João Pessoa, PB, Brazil
September 2019 – December 2019
Collaborated on the development of a Distributed Collaborative Video Surveillance System for the Federal University of Paraíba.
Built an Event-Driven Logging for the distributed system using Apache Kafka and explored methods to detect anomalous events in videos.
Research Experience
Summer Geometry Initiative (SGI) @ MIT
SGI Fellow, Remote
Summer 2023
Summer program that introduces students to research in Geometry Processing through projects:
The (in)accurate Gradients of Neural Representations: Mentored by Peter Yichen Chen (MIT), explored different methods to smooth the noisy gradients of Implicit Neural Spatial Representations for Time-dependent PDEs.
Sampling Surfaces from Point Clouds: Mentored by Silvia Sellán (University of Toronto) and Ana Dodik (MIT), implemented Gaussian and Neural Processes to predict a distribution of possible surfaces of a given Point Cloud.
Exvivo Surface Mesh Reconstruction from In-vivo FreeSurfer Meshes: Mentored by Karthik Gopinath (Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital), translated in-vivo MRI FreeSurfer meshes into ex-vivo meshes using a surface-based approach to close the deep sulci of the brain.
X-ray Physics Lab (XPL), UPenn and ARIA Lab, UFPB
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Remote
June 2021 – October 2023
Contributed to the development of methods for generating realistic simulations (phantoms) of breast anatomy, enhancing the efficiency and realism of the simulations:
Introduced a Perlin noise-based pipeline, reducing the average generation time of small/medium-sized phantoms from hours to minutes.
Developed a Simplex noise-based pipeline, further improving generation time from minutes to seconds for smaller phantoms and from days to hours for large phantoms.
Engineered deep learning models for the segmentation of breast tissue and identification of suspicious findings, contributing to the advancement of diagnostic accuracy.
Currently developing diffusion models to generate phantoms, aiming to further enhance the realism and applicability of the simulations in clinical trials.
Leadership / Extracurricular Experience
Technology and Artificial Intelligence League (TAIL)
Co-Founder and Advisor, Federal University of Paraíba
August 2020 – Present
TAIL is a non-profit organization oriented by the ARIA LAB professors.
The academic league aims to teach new students, produce content, contribute to AI and Data Analysis fields, and help the members achieve their goals (internships, graduation programs, full-time jobs).
Since its creation, TAIL has had over 500 applicants, 130+ members, and 25+ projects developed. It has already helped over 50 students obtain internships and has 60+ active members today.
Honors and Awards
Estudar Foundation Tech Fellowship
2022
This process selects students who will lead Brazil's technological revolutions. It is a merit-based scholarship for outstanding trajectory and academic potential.
Includes a grant to pursue studies (~ $10,000 USD), mentorship, and career support.
One of 0.6% approved over 4,285 applications in 2022.
Teaching
Special Topics - Deep Learning - Federal University of Paraíba
Guest Lecturer on Reinforcement Learning - Hosted by Prof. Tiago Maritan 2023
Teaching Assistant - Federal University of Paraíba
Volunteer TA for introduction to programming classes. 2019 - 2020
Mentoring
ARIA Lab - UFPB
Mentored students in research projects involving medical generative models in partnership with the X-ray Physics Lab, University of Pennsylvania.
Nov 2023 - Feb 2024
TAIL - Technology and Artificial Intelligence League
Mentored students on the development of small AI research projects.
2020 - 2022
Mentoring Feedback
ARIA Lab and TAIL - UFPB
During my last years at ARIA Lab and TAIL, I worked as a mentor for several research projects. Below are some anonymous feedbacks from students I mentored, each quotation corresponds to a different student:
"During my undergraduate studies in computer science, João was a very important mentor for me when I was starting my academic experience at UFPB, and he showed me how to make the most of the course. He also referred me to the ARIA Lab, a research group in the field of artificial intelligence for medicine, where I was fortunate to be guided and start my first paper with his guidance. I am so much inspired by his commitment to train new students, not only me but several others at UFPB’s Center for Informatics. In the future, I also want to contribute with the same spirit of support and mentorship that João values so much."
"João Pedro has been with me since the beginning of my academic journey, from the first semester to the present moment, in the fifth semester. Over these more than two years, his advice, explanations, and career guidance have been fundamental in shaping my passions and driving my academic growth. More than an exceptional mentor, João Pedro has always stood out to me for his understanding and genuine willingness to help, qualities that have been essential for my development and have made him my greatest inspiration."