CV

Education

• Ph.D in Distributed Estimation Algorithms over Networks (Distinction and Honor), Tecnico Lisboa, 2016
• M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tecnico Lisboa, 2007
• B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tecnico Lisboa, 2007
• Diploma in Modern Languages and Cultures, NOVA University of Lisbon, 2002

Work experience

• 2021 to present: Assistant Professor
  • Department of Computer Science
  • NOVA School of Science and Technology
• 2018 to 2021: Invited Assistant Professor
  • Department of ECE
  • Tecnico Lisboa
• 2017 to 2018: Postdoc researcher
  • Signal and Imaging Processing Group, ISR Lisboa
• 2011 to 2016: Ph.D. student
  • Tecnico Lisboa
• 2008 to 2010: Software Engineer
  • Scheduling team
  • SISCOG, SA
• 2007 to 2008: CAD Engineer
  • Models team
  • Chipidea / MIPS Technologies / Synopsis
• 2006 to 2007: Researcher
  • Vislab Computer Vision group, ISR Lisboa
  • Worked on an EU project to develop AI leveraging the mirror neurons concept.

Skills

• Distributed Machine Learning
• Machine Learning for Space
• Learning with point clouds
• Machine Learning for Healthcare

Publications

Conference ranks follow ICORE2026.

A/A* conferences

• ASTRA: ADMM-Accelerated Topology Reconfiguration for Dynamic Satellite Constellations.
  João Norberto, Ricardo Ferreira, Cláudia Soares. NeurIPS 2026. (A*) Accepted.
• CLASP: Online learning algorithms for Convex Losses And Squared Penalties.
  Ricardo N. Ferreira, Joao Xavier, Cláudia Soares. Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, 2026. (A*)
• Learning Under Noisy Labels, Spurious Points, and Diverse Structures: TS40K, a 3D Point Cloud Dataset of Rural Terrain and Electrical Transmission Systems.
  Diogo Lavado, Ricardo Santos, André Coelho, João Santos, Alessandra Micheletti, Claudia Soares. 2025 IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV). (A)
• Ranking with Confidence for Large Scale Comparison Data.
  Filipa Valdeira, Cláudia Soares. Proceedings of the 2025 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM). (A)
• OrbitZoo: Real Orbital Systems Challenges for Reinforcement Learning.
  Alexandre Oliveira, Katarina Dyreby, Francisco Miguel Caldas, Claudia Soares. NeurIPS 2025 poster. (A*)
• Refined Inverse Rigging: A Balanced Approach to High-fidelity Blendshape Animation.
  Stevo Racković, Dušan Jakovetić, Cláudia Soares. SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 Conference Papers. (A*)
• PeersimGym: An Environment for Solving the Task Offloading Problem with Reinforcement Learning.
  Frederico Metelo, Cláudia Soares, Stevo Racković, Pedro Ákos Costa. Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Applied Data Science Track, 2024. (A)

Journals

• Satellite Safe Margin: Fast Solutions for Conjunction Analysis.
  Ricardo N. Ferreira, Marta Guimarães, Cláudia Soares. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 2026.
• Dissecting medical referrals in health services: role of physician professional networks.
  Regina de Brito Duarte, Qiwei Han, Claudia Soares. BMC Health Services Research, 2026.
• A Multi-Token Coordinate Descent Method for Semi-Decentralized Vertical Federated Learning.
  Pedro Valdeira, Yuejie Chi, Cláudia Soares, João Xavier. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2026.
• SCENE-Net: Geometric induction for interpretable and low-resource 3D pole detection with Group-Equivariant Non-Expansive Operators.
  Diogo Lavado, Alessandra Micheletti, Giovanni Bocchi, Patrizio Frosini, Cláudia Soares. Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 2025.
• Generalizing Trilateration: Approximate Maximum Likelihood Estimator for Initial Orbit Determination in Low Earth Orbit.
  Ricardo Ferreira, Filipa Valdeira, Marta Guimarães, Cláudia Soares. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2025.
• Communication-Efficient Vertical Federated Learning via Compressed Error Feedback.
  Pedro Valdeira, João Xavier, Cláudia Soares, Yuejie Chi. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2025.
• Maximum likelihood localization of a network of moving agents from ranges, bearings and velocity measurements.
  Filipa Valdeira, Cláudia Soares, João Gomes. Signal Processing, 2024.
• Machine learning in orbit estimation: A survey.
  Francisco Caldas, Cláudia Soares. Acta Astronautica, 2024.
• AI for space traffic management.
  Chiara Manfletti, Marta Guimarães, Claudia Soares. Journal of Space Safety Engineering, 2023.
• Probabilistic Registration for Gaussian Process Three-Dimensional Shape Modelling in the Presence of Extensive Missing Data.
  Filipa M. Valdeira, Ricardo Ferreira, Alessandra Micheletti, Cláudia Soares. SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science, 2023.
• A majorization-minimization-based method for nonconvex inverse rig problems in facial animation: algorithm derivation.
  Stevo Racković, Cláudia Soares, Dušan Jakovetić, Zoranka Desnica. Optimization Letters, 2023.
• Decision Support Models for Predicting and Explaining Airport Passenger Connectivity From Data.
  Marta Guimaraes, Claudia Soares, Rodrigo Ventura. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2022.
• Robust Localization With Bounded Noise: Creating a Superset of the Possible Target Positions via Linear-Fractional Representations.
  Joao Domingos, Claudia Soares, Joao Xavier. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2022.
• STRONG: Synchronous and asynchronous robust network localization, under non-Gaussian noise.
  Cláudia Soares, João Gomes. Signal Processing, 2021.
• From Noisy Point Clouds to Complete Ear Shapes: Unsupervised Pipeline.
  Filipa Valdeira, Ricardo Ferreira, Alessandra Micheletti, Claudia Soares. IEEE Access, 2021.
• Range and Bearing Data Fusion for Precise Convex Network Localization.
  Claudia Soares, Filipa Valdeira, Joao Gomes. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 2020.
• FLORIS and CLORIS: Hybrid source and network localization based on ranges and video.
  Beatriz Quintino Ferreira, João Gomes, Cláudia Soares, João P. Costeira. Signal Processing, 2018.
• LocDyn: Robust Distributed Localization for Mobile Underwater Networks.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Gomes, Beatriz Quintino Ferreira, Joao Paulo Costeira. IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2017.
• Simple and Fast Convex Relaxation Method for Cooperative Localization in Sensor Networks Using Range Measurements.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Xavier, Joao Gomes. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 2015.

Other conferences

• Online Learning for Dynamic Constellation Topologies.
  João Norberto, Ricardo N. Ferreira, Claudia Soares. SPAICE 2026. Accepted.
• Identification of the Gravitational Constant from Satellite Trajectories Using Neural Ordinary Differential Equations.
  Katarina Dyreby, Claudia Soares. SPAICE 2026. Accepted.
• Data-Centric Preprocessing for GNSS-Based Orbit Determination via AI, Signal Processing, and Orbital Dynamics.
  Marta Guimaraes, Robert Arthur, Claudia Soares, Chiara Manfletti, Gerarda De Pasquale. SPAICE 2026. Accepted.
• Analysis of Space Research through Neural Topic Modeling leveraging Large Language Models.
  Ruben Catarino Belo, Marta Guimaraes, Claudia Soares. SPAICE 2026. Accepted.
• C-PATH: Conversational Patient Assistance and Triage in Healthcare System.
  Qi Shi, Qiwei Han, Cláudia Soares. 2025 IEEE International Conference on Digital Health (ICDH).
• Language Modeling and Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Integration in Space Operation Decision Support Tools.
  Ruben Belo, Claudia Soares, Marta Guimaraes. 58th IAA Symposium on Safety, Quality and Knowledge Management in Space Activities, 2025.
• Precise and Efficient Orbit Prediction in LEO with Machine Learning using Exogenous Variables.
  Francisco Caldas, Cláudia Soares. 2024 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC).
• One-Shot Initial Orbit Determination in Low-Earth Orbit.
  Ricardo Ferreira, Marta Guimarães, Filipa Valdeira, Cláudia Soares. IEEE Aerospace Conference, 2024.
• Distributed Solution of the Blendshape Rig Inversion Problem.
  Stevo Racković, Cláudia Soares, Dušan Jakovetić. SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 Technical Communications.
• Taxonomy for Resident Space Objects in LEO.
  Marta Guimaraes, Claudia Soares, Chiara Manfletti. International Astronautical Congress 2023. Accepted.
• Predicting the Position Uncertainty at the Time of Closest Approach with Diffusion Models.
  Marta Guimaraes, Claudia Soares, Chiara Manfletti. International Astronautical Congress 2023. Accepted.
• Clustering of the Blendshape Facial Model.
  Stevo Rackovic, Claudia Soares, Dusan Jakovetic, Zoranka Desnica, Relja Ljubobratovic. 2021 29th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO).
• Dissecting medical referral mechanisms in health services using graph neural networks.
  Regina Duarte, Qiwei Han, Claudia Soares. The International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications, 2020.
• Finding Common Image Semantics for Urban Perceived Safety Based on Pairwise Comparisons.
  Gabriel Costa, Claudia Soares, Manuel Marques. 2019 27th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO).
• Locating a target from uncertain data: convex supersets based on linear-fractional representations.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Xavie. IEEE EUROCON 2019 -18th International Conference on Smart Technologies.
• Fast distributed MAP inference for large-scale graphical models.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Gomes. IEEE EUROCON 2019 -18th International Conference on Smart Technologies.
• Understanding the Primary-Specialty Referral Mechanism using Network Science.
  Joao Casal da Veiga, Qiwei Han, Claudia Soares. The International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications, 2019.
• Parameter-free network localization for mobile vehicles by learning from data.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Gomes. 2018 Fourth Underwater Communications and Networking Conference (UComms).
• DIeSEL: Distributed self-localization of a network of underwater vehicles.
  Cláudia Soares, Pusheng Ji, João Gomes, António Pascoal. OCEANS 2017 - Anchorage.
• Collaborative localization of vehicle formations based on ranges and bearings.
  Beatriz Quintino Ferreira, Joao Gomes, Claudia Soares, Joao P. Costeira. 2016 IEEE Third Underwater Communications and Networking Conference (UComms).
• Distributed, simple and stable network localization.
  Claudia Soares, Joao Xavier, Joao Gomes. 2014 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP).

Workshops

• A Systematic Evaluation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation and Language Models for Space Operations.
  Ruben Catarino Belo, Marta Guimaraes, Claudia Soares. AI4Space, 2026.
• SCENE-Net V2: Interpretable Multiclass 3D Scene Understanding with Geometric Priors.
  Diogo Mateus Lavado, Claudia Soares, Alessandra Micheletti. ICML 2024 Workshop GRaM.
• Causal Inference Explanations for Graph Neural Networks.
  Sahil Satish Kumar, Claudia Soares. Causal@UAI2024 Poster.
• A Temporal Fusion Transformer for Long-Term Explainable Prediction of Emergency Department Overcrowding.
  Francisco M. Caldas, Cláudia Soares. Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, 2023.
• Referral prediction in Healthcare using Graph Neural Networks.
  REGINA DUARTE, QIWEI HAN, CLAUDIA SOARES. GReS – Workshop on Graph Neural Networks for Recommendation and Search. Co-located with the ACM RecSys ’21 conference, 2021.
• Conjunction Data Messages behave as a Poisson Process.
  Francisco Caldas, Claudia Soares, Cláudia Nunes, Marta Guimarães, Mariana Filipe, Rodrigo Ventura. Workshop on AI for Spacecraft Longevity, 2021.

Supervisions

See the TrustworthyML@NOVA group page for current students, co-supervisions and alumni.

Teaching

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Service and leadership

• Member of the Scientific Committee of SPAICE 2026 organized by ESA
• AC to UAI 2026
• Member of the Scientific Committee of the Master program on Big Data Analysis and Engineering
• Associated Editor of the Mathematics in Industry journal