Professor Alex Freitas

Professor of Computational Intelligence,
Head of Research
Email
a.a.freitas@kent.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)1227 827220
Professor Alex Freitas

About

Alex obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Essex, UK, in 1997, doing research on machine learning (or data mining), and he has continued to do research on machine learning up to the present. In terms of application areas, since about 2005 his research has been focusing on creating new machine learning methods for bioinformatics and life sciences data, including the prediction of protein functions, analysing data about ageing-related genes and proteins, predicting the occurrence of age-related diseases, predicting the effects of medical drugs or chemical compounds, etc. In 2011 he obtained a research-oriented master's degree (MPhil) in Biological Sciences from the University of Liverpool, UK, doing research on the biology of ageing, using machine learning and bioinformatics methods.

Research interests

Alex belongs to the following research groups:
His main research interests involve the following areas:
  • Data Mining (or Machine Learning) and Knowledge Discovery, focusing on developing new classification methods that produce interpretable models (e.g., decision trees, if-then rules and Bayesian network classifiers)
  • Applications of classification methods in the Life Sciences, mainly in the Biology of Ageing, but also in Pharmaceutical Sciences
  • Biologically-inspired algorithms: mainly Evolutionary Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimisation.
  • Supervised machine learning.
  • Applications of machine learning in the life sciences.

    • Teaching

    Alex is currently teaching Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (a master-level module) and Natural Computation (evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence).

    Professional

    Senior Member of the Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
    Last updated