Patricia Santos

Patricia Santos is a Tenure Track Professor on Human-Centered Learning Technologies and a Ramón y Cajal fellow at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF).

She is a senior member of the TIDE (Interactive Distributed Technologies for Education) research group and co-principal investigator of the TESI (Technology, Society, Interactions) research unit. Her research is focused on Technology-Enhanced Learning, specifically in the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Learning Design.

Throughout her career, she has received numerous awards for her innovative work, including the Best PhD Thesis Award for her Summa Cum Laude PhD from UPF in 2011. Her research is deeply embedded in international, multidisciplinary projects, and she has co-authored publications with more than 127 researchers worldwide.

Patricia's postdoctoral career, interrupted by maternity leave in 2015, included a full-time position at the University of the West of England from 2013 to 2016.

Her research career has been developed in the context of competitive and multidisciplinary international research projects. She has publications with 77 international researchers, see: https://dblp.org/pers/hd/s/Santos:Patricia.She has worked in R+D+I projects with academic and industry partners across different countries in Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Netherlands, Greece, Austria, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Romania, Denmark, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Portugal ) and other countries such as Chile and Israel. Relevant past projects are: Learning Layers funded by the EU FP7 program with 12 Million EURO (workpackage co-lead); TENCompetence funded by the EU FP6 program with 13,5 Million EURO (task leader).

Since 2017, She is a senior member of the Interactive and Distributed Technologies for Education (UPF). In 2019, she has generated grant funding of more than 2,5 Million EURO in total (300000 EURO assigned to UPF) for European projects that she actively contributed to wrote proposals for.

She was project manager and research leader of the D-TIPS Erasmus+ project (budget: 225000 EURO). Workpackage leader of two projects: CS-Track H2020 (budget: 2,2 Million EURO) and ‘Courage’ Volkswagen Foundation (budget: 1,5 Million EURO). Task leader of TROMPA H2020 (budget: 3 Million EURO). She has participated as co-IP of the national research project H2OLearn, and GENIELearn (2024-2027), and coordinator since 2018 of the transfer knowledge programme 'Makers a les Aules' (funded by Ajuntament de Barcelona).

She has been involved in the design and development of diverse learning technologies, main ones are: Questinsitu: an authoring tool and mobile app designed and built to support assessment in situ activities  (finalist app of the 13th edition of the BDigital Global Congress); TenCompetence Learning Design Toolkit (IMS award in the category of “Most Innovative New Realization of Standards”); Confer: online collaboration spaces for working groups; ILDE+ Makers a les Aules: a Learning Design community platform to support Maker activities; Empatheia: an online game to support Design Thinking in primary schools; Soele: a SEL learning design evaluation tool; STEMarium: an online communities of STEM teachers promoted by la Generalitat.

My teaching experience is primarily in the field of computer science within engineering studies. I serve as the coordinator for the Data Structures and Algorithms 2 and Person-Machine Interaction courses at the Engineering School at UPF. Additionally, I teach other courses, including Interaction Engineering and Learning Technologies, among others.

Regarding my mentoring experience, I have supervised approximately more than 50 final degree projects in engineering,  master’s theses, and 6 Ph.D. theses (3 defended with Summa Cum Laude). I have also participated as a committee member in Ph.D. defenses.

In terms of funding, I have secured support as a project leader or team member for more than 10 innovative teaching projects, including UPF PlaCLIK teaching innovation projects and grants from the Ministerio de Educación.

Patricia is also the head of the Quality and Innovation unit at the Engineering School and Department at UPF.