Dr. Jorge Fonseca

Dr. Fonseca's focus of his Ph.D Dissertation was OCR Post Processing Using Machine Learning Techniques. Since then he has continued to focus on working in OCR Post Processing and other Natural Language Processing tools that may help OCR Post Processing. He recently created a new and updated N-Gram Dataset of the entire English Wikipedia for researchers to use. Along with this he continues to apply machine learning for other purposes like Data Analytics, Computer Vision, Alzheimer's research, and other projects. Throughout his years as a graduate student, and now as a professor, he took great note of the issues that the academic community faces when it comes to reproducible research. Reproducible Research is a key necessity for quality research that can be build and expanded upon. Since then he has written multiple publications related to the reproducible research crisis and ways to approach it in the Computer Science field. His other research interests include Blockchain Technology, Augmented and Virtual Reality, and Alzheimer's Disease for which he was recently awarded a $3,000,000 research grant from the National Institutes of Health. He hopes to some day work in space-related research. Ad Astra. For more on his Research, head over to the Research Section!

What good is knowledge if one does not pass it on? Dr. Fonseca strongly believes that the key to the success does not lie in a single person, and therefore the only way we advance as a society is by working together - not just across the world, but across time. The only way to achieve this is to pass knowledge to the next generations. In addition to performing research with both graduate and undergraduate students, Dr. Fonseca takes teaching very seriously and teaches a large variety of courses at UNLV. Since 2020 he has been recording and posting publicly, and freely, all of his lectures on Youtube an intends to continue this practice for all new courses. He is part of a new RebelFlex program for Fall 2021 that will broadcast classes live from his classroom for the world to see. Stay tunned. He embraces the power of technology when teaching and has presented at UNLV Teaching Expo 'Using Discord to Improve Student Communication, Engagement, and Performance' for which he has been contacted and mentioned in various universities worldwide. He also believes that Engaging assignments are key to success in programming and typically will try and make the coolest, albeit hard, assignments possible! Typically based on pop-culture at the time of creation. For more on his Teaching, head over to the Teaching Section!

In addition to research, Dr. Fonseca is actively leading multiple app development projects with graduate and undergraduate students. These include Walk2School2Day a mobile app that was funded by the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) to promote healthy living and encouraging K-12 students to walk to school. Another app, ULABS (University Lab And Broad Scheduler) is a Social Distancing App currently being used by the College of Engineering to promote social distancing by scheduling lab space usage, enabling digital submission of paper forms, schedulging meetings with administrative staff and faculty, and for students to receive notifications related to COVID-19. This app was developped with funding from the UNLV Computer Science Department over the course of two months (very quick turn-around time) to respond to needs to comply with social distancing mandates and has been a great success. It was then expanded by a $60,000 grant from CRRSAA. Other apps currently in development include a Showcase App funded by the UNLV Office of Economic Development and many more. His latest project is a Navigation Augmented Reality App to be announced soon. All our apps are publicly available for iOS and Android. For more on his App Development, head over to the App Development Section!