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 also received the prestigious Google Latin America Research Award (LARA) fellowship, and my thesis was recognized as one of the best in the country in Computer Science. In addition, I have actively contributed to ACL and AAAI conferences and workshops, serving as a program committee member and co-organizing ICWSM, WOAH, and DeepXplain, along with shared tasks [i] [ii] on hate speech. My research focuses on enhancing the interpretability of Language Models (LM), while ensuring their safety, factuality, and fairness. I have contributed to efforts addressing hate speech and misinformation in underrepresented communities, and to the development of methods and benchmark datasets that aim to promote transparency and accountability in AI systems.

Awards, Grants and Scholarships
  • 2025: Brazilian Computer Society Thesis Award Finalist (CTD)
  • 2024: Google Latin America Research Award (LARA)
  • 2024: Awarded the ACL Travel Grant (EMNLP)
  • 2024: Awarded the ACL Travel Grant (NAACL)
  • 2020: Doctoral Research Scholarship (SINCH)
  • 2015: Master’s Research Scholarship (CAPES)
  • 2013: Undergraduate Research Scholarship (CNPq)
  • 2013: Outstanding Academic Achievement Award (UFMG)
  • 2012: Outstanding Academic Achievement Award (UFMG)
Research Projects

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