The Graduate Program in Computer Science (PPGI) at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) was the first Program in the broad area of Computer Science to have “Information Systems” as its main concentration area. For PPGI-UNIRIO, “Information Systems” is the only concentration area.
PPGI-UNIRIO is structured in two lines of research:
The line of research “Applied Intelligent Systems and Optimization” focuses on the Modeling and Development of Information Systems, and studies alternatives for modeling and representing the knowledge of human and computational agents that interact within an Information System, as well as the adaptation of these systems to distributed organizational architectures and environments.
This line of research assumes that the current trend in Information Systems is to manipulate not only information but also knowledge. The data management component inherent in Information Systems, and the recent advances at both the research and market levels in transforming data into information, and information into knowledge and intelligence, indicate that the process of transforming data into knowledge constitutes a vast field of research. It also follows the needs for integration and globalized access to intra- and inter-organizational information and the advent and consolidation of the Web as an infrastructure for executing Information Systems, making the issue of distribution a broad area of research.
This line of research addresses the current trend in Information Systems to handle not only information but also knowledge. The data management component relevant to Information Systems, and the recent advances at both the research and market levels in transforming data into information, and information into knowledge and intelligence, indicate that the transformation of data into knowledge constitutes a broad field of research.
The objects in the domains to which Information Systems are applied often require complex data structures and cannot be analyzed in isolation. In this sense, the line of research investigates not only alternatives for modeling and representing objects in the domain in which Information Systems are applied, but also the relationships between such objects and methods of automatic reasoning based on this representation.
The research topics of this line are organized mainly under:
- Advances in Educational, Social and Business Technologies
- Data Science for Social Well-being
- Human Computing and Collective Intelligence: New Paradigms of Computing
- Ubiquitous Computing and Artificial Intelligence
- Intelligent Heuristics: Techniques and Applications
- Research and Analysis of Online Social Media
- Urban Mobility and its Impact on Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Operation, Evaluation, and Advanced Management of Computer Networks and New Architectures for the Internet
Professors in the line of research:
The line of research “Business Support Systems” focuses on the Management aspect, concerned with the impact that Information Systems have across several domains of current business and how their use can be continuously improved in organizations. The line of research studies the different contexts of application and use of Information Systems, as well as the management of their development and deployment processes.
Some topics of this line of research are:
- Analysis of complexity in information systems governance and engineering
- Network conversation in education
- Development of Computational Thinking through unplugged artifacts
- Search-based software engineering
- Digital Games with Purpose for Understanding Business Processes
- Process improvement and measurement of software and IT services
- Processes for aligning usability requirements with accessibility guidelines
- Information systems for social management
- Support for managing inter-organizational relationships
Professors in the line of research:
- Bruna Diirr Gonçalves da Silva
- Carolina Sacramento (collaborator)
- Gleison dos Santos Souza
- Henrique Prado de Sá Sousa
- Márcio de Oliveira Barros
- Maria Augusta Silveira Netto Nunes
- Mariano Gomes Pimentel
- Paulo Sergio Medeiros dos Santos
- Rodrigo Pereira dos Santos
- Simone Bacellar Leal Ferreira
- Tadeu Moreira de Classe
Program purposes
The general purpose of the Graduate Program in Computer Science at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (PPGI-UNIRIO) is to promote the Information Systems area through performance of excellence in teaching, research, innovation, and extension in the area.
Given its scope, PPGI-UNIRIO stands out for offering Information Systems as a research concentration area. Information systems play a predominant role in organizational operations and exert a continuous influence on society. Virtually all human activities in modern society involve Information Systems, where human and computational agents interact to achieve their purposes. Systems have been integrating and acquiring complexity that goes beyond technological issues. Information Systems have different facets and require specific solutions depending on their application across domains, with distinct needs for use and administration. Given their complexity, solutions that expand the development and use of Information Systems require both a general view and an integrated view of multiple technologies, application domains, and, consequently, research areas.
Positioning Information Systems as the main research area reflects the demand for innovation and academic research necessary for organizations, society, and the country. The latter, in particular, has been pursuing a policy of increasing investment in training qualified personnel, not only to develop and implement effective management of Information Systems but also to foster innovation.
CAPES Grade
The Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), a foundation of the Ministry of Education (MEC), is responsible for evaluating the National Graduate System. Currently, this evaluation is carried out every four years. In the evaluation of the 2012-2016 quadrennial, the Graduate Program in Computer Science (PPGI) of the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) received a Grade 4, which was maintained during the 2017-2020 four-year period. Currently, the PPGI-UNIRIO has a Grade 5, which recognizes it as a consolidated program of national excellence.
Some Curiosities:
- CAPES Graduate Program evaluation grades range from 3 to 7. Normally, when a new Program is approved, it receives grade 3, and its grade increases as it matures.
- PPGI-UNIRIO was created in 2006, with the Master’s Degree in Computer Science, with the concentration area “Information Systems”. At the time of the Program’s proposal, the evaluators pointed to its innovative character by focusing on Information Systems.
- In 2013, the Doctoral Degree in Computer Science was approved (7 years after the creation of the Master’s Program), with the first class starting in 2014.
- Back then, the average time to start a doctoral program relative to the start of a master’s program in Computer Science was 13.3 years.
- Considering only level 4 programs (before the last three-year evaluation), the average time to start a doctorate degree relative to the start of the master’s degree in CS was 16.9 years.
- The programs that offered a doctoral degree in 7 years or less were: UFF (7 years), UFAM (7 years), USP (0 years), UFRJ – COPPE (0 years). PUC-Rio took 8 years and UFRN 9 years to offer their doctoral degree programs.
- Among the grade-4 programs at the time, the only one that started its doctorate degree program in less time was PUC/PR (started its master’s degree program in 1996 and the doctorate degree program in 2006 – 10 years).
- In 2025, there are only 14 Graduate Programs in Computer Science with a grade of 5 (and PPGI-UNIRIO is one of them).
- Of all the Programs with a grade of 5 or higher in 2026, only 4 were created more recently than PPGI-UNIRIO.
- PPGI-UNIRIO ranks among the top 35% of Graduate Programs in Computer Science.
Background and Context of the Program
The Graduate Program in Computer Science at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (PPGI-UNIRIO) was created in 2006, with the approval of the Master’s Degree in Computer Science. Just six years after its creation, it advanced to level 4 in the evaluation of graduate programs in Computing in Brazil during the 2010-2012 triennial evaluation, and UNIRIO had its doctoral program in Computer Science approved. The Program remained at level 4 until 2021-2024, when it rose to level 5, demonstrating competence in the continuous improvement of scientific and technological production and in strengthening its internationalization efforts, despite the investment restrictions that national Graduate Programs face.
PPGI-UNIRIO advances in the 2025-2028 quadrennium, secure in its consolidation as a space for graduate education, an environment capable of producing high-quality science, and a relevant and outstanding hub of national and international articulation in Information Systems. The applied research focus and the themes developed, aligned with the needs of the market and society, attract a share of demand for graduate education, unlike other courses in the area.
The capillarity and social insertion of PPGI-UNIRIO can be noted by the fact that the vast majority of candidates for master’s and doctorate degree courses are professionals in public and private organizations working in Information Technology activities, who return to their companies of origin with education and research vision, increasing the competence of these companies. Despite its short existence, the Doctorate degree course has been in good demand, receiving enrollments from many students of the Master’s Degree at PPGI-UNIRIO, as well as from Masters graduated from other institutions, such as COPPE-UFRJ, IF-UFRJ, IME, PUC-Rio, UERJ, UFES, UFF, UFJF, UFPA and UFSC.
The evolution of PPGI-UNIRIO follows a strategic vision aligned with national and Computer Science-area demands. At the national level, since its creation in 2006, PPGI-UNIRIO has acted as a catalyst for the recognition of Information Systems (IS) as a research area, following and shaping cutting-edge trends and research in the field. This challenge involved contextualizing the Information Systems area in research terms, bringing to the academic-scientific community discussions about the peculiarities inherent to this area of concentration, strengthening applied research and building a community of researchers around Information Systems within the Computer Science area. In particular, professors from PPGI-UNIRIO participated in both the organization and the proposition of the Grand Research Challenges in Information Systems in Brazil 2016 to 2026, and Grand Challenges in Information Systems in Brazil 2026-2036 (in Portuguese), approved by the Brazilian Computer Society; as well as acted as editors and authors of the iSys: Journal of Information Systems, as well as activities related to the organization of SBSI – Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems.
As a result of this performance, it is possible to observe the maturation of the Brazilian Symposium on Information Systems (SBSI), the consolidation of the Special Information Systems Commission (CESI) as part of the Brazilian Computer Society and the creation and development of the iSys: Journal of Information Systems, which in 2014 started to be managed by the community itself through CESI/SBC. Thus, as already observed when creating the Master’s Degree in Information Systems at PPGI-UNIRIO, several national courses and research groups began to develop strategies for the area, given the signal that this would be an area of continuous evolution. Other IS graduate courses were created, and the trend is for this direction to intensify. More information about the history of Information Systems in Brazil and the role of PPGI-UNIRIO in this history can be found in the book “History and Construction of the Information Systems Area in Brazil: Reports and Studies from a Computer Science Perspective (in Portuguese)“.
