Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland (2014 - 2019).
Thesis: Rich-context: an unsupervised context-driven recommender system based on user reviews [pdf] [slides].
Francisco J. Peña, Supervisor: Dr. Derek Bridge, Oponent: Prof. Markus Zanker.
M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain (2012 - 2013).
Thesis: BRT Systems Optimization (in Spanish) [pdf].
Francisco J. Peña, Supervisors: Prof. Antonio Jiménez Martín y Prof. Alfonso Mateos Caballero.
B.Eng. in Software Engineering, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia (2003 - 2008).
Thesis: Implementation of a prototype to solve the job-shop scheduling problem using concurrent constraint programming (in Spanish) [pdf].
Francisco J. Peña, Supervisor: Prof. Juan Francisco Díaz.

Research experience

Postdoctoral Researcher, Distributed Computing Research Group, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden (December 2019 - Present).
Research on generating natural language descriptions of source code using deep learning techniques. Our goal is to allow non-experts to use machine learning code.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (November 2018 - October 2020).
Research on generating explanations for artificial intelligence models in the field of recommender systems using natural language processing techniques.
Research Assistant, Insight Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland (July 2018 - November 2018).
Worked in a data analytics project to understand user-smartphone interactions.
Undergraduate Research Student, Technology Management Research Group, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia (May 2007 - February 2011).
Designed and implemented an OLAP tool to query databases and uncover patterns that lead to the success of research groups. This resulted in the implementation of new policies to increase publications, reduce inactivity and create collaborations. Additionally, created a tool to visualize research collaboration networks.

Guest lecturer, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden (Autumn 2021).
- Course: Scalable Machine Learning and Deep Learning. Guest Lecturer in Transformers and Attention.
Guest lecturer, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland (Autumn 2019).
- Course: Seminar Series on Data Science. Responsible for 20% of the course.
- Course: Machine Learning. Guest Lecturer in Recommender Systems.
Lecturer, Software Engineering School, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia (Spring 2009).
- Course: Introduction to object oriented programming.
- Course: Algorithms and programming.

Senior Business Intelligence Consultant, BusinessMind, Bogota, Colombia (April 2012 - September 2012).
Built data warehouses for business intelligence projects.
Platform Consultant, SAS, Bogota, Colombia (February 2011 - April 2012).
Personalized a credit risk solution for one of the biggest banks of Colombia.
Software Developer, Omicsco, Cali, Colombia (April 2009 - February 2011).
Developed a bioinformatics analysis tool for pharmaceutical companies.