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Ana Rita Correia is a Ph.D. candidate in Biomedical Engineering conducting her research at Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), a research unit hosted at the Institute for Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health (ICNAS), University of Coimbra, Portugal, in collaboration with the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC). She concluded the integrated master's degree in Biomedical Engineering with a specialization in Clinical Informatics and Bioinformatics from the University of Coimbra in 2021. During her academic path, Rita had the opportunity to participate in an exchange program at the prestigious Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, where she acquired valuable skills, mainly in the areas of biomedical data processing and analysis and machine learning. Her MSc dissertation project entitled "Assessing Emotional States from Biosignals in Autistic and Neurotypically Developed Individuals" was carried out at CIBIT and focused on physiological measures of the autonomic nervous system extracted from multimodal biosignals and their relationship with the individual's emotional state, with a special focus on the clinical population of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with the goal of finding optimization strategies for personalized rehabilitation. The work developed during Rita's dissertation project resulted in a paper, entitled "Assessing Arousal Through Multimodal Biosignals: A Preliminary Approach", which she presented at the Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) 2021. She worked as a researcher at CIBIT-ICNAS in the project "PCIF/SSO/0082/2018 - Training critical decision-making and managing posttraumatic stress disorder in firefighters", a project that was mainly focused on understanding how different variables influence decision-making in dilemmatic situations and how these relate to the individual's emotional perception. Her work included the collection, processing, and analysis of multimodal physiological signals acquired simultaneously with virtual reality simulations and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Currently, Rita is developing her Ph.D. project titled "Physiological Correlates of Interpersonal Interactions as Biofeedback Targets in Autism Spectrum Disorder", a project that proposes to contribute to the understanding of the intricacies of the physiology of human interaction and how it relates to social behavior, with a special focus on the case of ASD. The objectives of the project are to find strong and meaningful markers of physiological synchrony between dyads that are subject to be endogenously controlled and employ these markers in the development of robust models aimed at assessing, in near-real-time, the physiological linkage between their users. The final goal is to integrate these models into a biofeedback pipeline incorporated into collaborative serious games and validate the system as a potential alternative therapeutical tool for social limitations. Rita's interests include biomedical data processing, pattern recognition, physiological synchrony, personalized care, consciousness, emotion, and cognition.
Identification

Personal identification

Full name
Ana Rita Paulete Correia
Date of birth
1997/10/22

Citation names

  • Correia, Rita

Author identifiers

Ciência ID
AF10-5B86-B83B
ORCID iD
0000-0002-4013-7138

Email addresses

  • arpcorreia@uc.pt (Professional)

Knowledge fields

  • Engineering and Technology - Medical Engineering - Medical Engineering

Languages

Language Speaking Reading Writing Listening Peer-review
Portuguese (Mother tongue)
English Advanced (C1) Advanced (C1) Advanced (C1) Advanced (C1)
Education
Degree Classification
2022/09 - 2027
Ongoing
PhD in Biomedical Engineering (Doutoramento)
Universidade de Coimbra Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Portugal
2016 - 2021
Concluded
Biomedical Engineering (Mestrado integrado)
Major in Clinical Informatics and Bioinformatics
Universidade de Coimbra Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia, Portugal
"Assessing Emotional States from Biosignals in Autistic and Neurotypically Developed Individuals" (THESIS/DISSERTATION)
2020/09 - 2020/12
Concluded
EIT Health Program - Health Care Entrepreneurship (Outros)
Universidade de Coimbra Faculdade de Economia, Portugal

Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
2019/09 - 2020/02
Concluded
Programme for Exchange Students Faculty of Engineering Science (Outros)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Affiliation

Science

Category
Host institution
Employer
2024 - Current Researcher (Research) Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Informatica e Sistemas, Portugal
Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Informatica e Sistemas, Portugal
2021/08 - Current Researcher (Research) Universidade de Coimbra Instituto de Ciências Nucleares Aplicadas à Saúde, Portugal
Universidade de Coimbra Centro de Imagem Biomédica e Investigação Translacional, Portugal
Projects

Grant

Designation Funders
2023/02 - 2027/01 The Physiological Correlates of Autism Spectrum Disorder as Biofeedback Targets
86831DFA
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Contract

Designation Funders
2021 - 2023 Training critical decision-making and managing post-traumatic stress disorder in fire fighters
PCIF/SSO/0082/2018
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
Concluded

Other

Designation Funders
2020 - Current BioHab - a biofeedback solution for cognitive training systems
Santander-UC Seed
Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal
Outputs

Publications

Book chapter
  1. Dionísio, Ana; Duarte, Isabel Catarina; Correia, Rita; Oliveira, Joana; Simões, Marco; Redondo, João; Caldeira, Salomé; Castelhano, João; Castelo-Branco, Miguel. "A multimodal approach to understand and improve cognitive decision-making during firefighting". In Advances in Forest Fire Research 2022, 1559-1565. Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2022.
    10.14195/978-989-26-2298-9_237
Conference paper
  1. Correia, Rita; Agostinho, Daniel; Duarte, Isabel Catarina; Sousa, Daniela; Rodrigues, Ana Pina; Castelo-Branco, Miguel; Simoes, Marco. "Assessing Arousal Through Multimodal Biosignals: A Preliminary Approach". Paper presented in Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 2021.
    Published • 10.1109/embc46164.2021.9630112
  2. Agostinho, Daniel; Correia, Rita; Catarina Duarte, Isabel; Sousa, Daniela; Abreu, Rodolfo; Pina Rodrigues, Ana; Castelo-Branco, Miguel; Simoes, Marco. "Parametric fMRI analysis of videos of variable arousal levels reveals different dorsal vs ventral activation preferences between autism and controls". Paper presented in Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 2021.
    Published • 10.1109/embc46164.2021.9630013
Journal article
  1. Duarte, Isabel C.; Dionísio, Ana; Oliveira, Joana; Simões, Marco; Correia, Rita; Dias, Joana A.; Caldeira, Salomé; Redondo, João; Castelo-Branco, Miguel. "Neural underpinnings of ethical decisions in life and death dilemmas in naïve and expert firefighters". Scientific Reports 14 1 (2024): http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-63469-y.
    10.1038/s41598-024-63469-y
Activities

Event participation

Activity description
Type of event
Event name
Institution / Organization
2021/11/01 - 2021/11/05 Participation in the 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) and oral presentation of the paper "Assessing Arousal Through Multimodal Biosignals: A Preliminary Approach"
Conference
43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)

Mentoring / Tutoring

Topic Student name
2021/09 - 2021/09 Co-mentoring of a Master of Science student in Biomedical Engineering undertaking a summer internship at CIBIT-ICNAS. Carolina Fernandes