Francielle Vargas      
Francielle Vargas - Profissional
Francielle Vargas

I obtained a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Natural Language Processing, both earned in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics from the University of São Paulo (USP). I also hold a BS in Information Systems and a BA in Linguistics. During my Ph.D., I was a visiting researcher at the University of Southern California (USC) in the USA and an invited researcher and speaker at the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (GESIS) in Germany. I was also honored to receive the prestigious Google Latin America Research Award (LARA). Additionally, I have actively contributed to ACL and AAAI conferences and workshops, serving as a program committee member and co-organizing ICWSM in 2021, 2022, and 2023, along with ACL shared tasks on hate speech in 2023 and 2024. Currently, I am one of the organizers of the Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH @ ACL 2025) and the Explainable Deep Neural Networks for Responsible AI (DeepXplain @ IJCNN 2025). My research focuses on enhancing the interpretability of neural language models, while ensuring their safety, factuality, and fairness. I am particularly interested in addressing challenges related to misinformation and hate speech, and in developing methods and evaluation benchmarks that improve transparency and accountability in AI systems.

Awards, Grants and Scholarships
  • 2024: Google Latin America Research Award (LARA)
  • 2024: Diversity and Inclusion Grant Award (EMNLP)
  • 2024: Diversity and Inclusion Grant Award (NAACL)
  • 2020: Doctoral Research Scholarship (SINCH)
  • 2015: Master’s Research Scholarship (CAPES)
  • 2013: Undergraduate Research Scholarship (CNPq)
  • 2012: Outstanding Academic Award (UFMG)
Research Projects

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