Positions
- Professor - College of Engineering and Computing.
- Director - Center of Excellence in C5I.
- Chair - Department of Cybersecurity Engineering.
- Vice President for Securing Automation and Supply Chain Security - Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute.
Affiliations
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE Senior Member).
- IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems (IEEE-AESS).
- International Society for Information Fusion (ISIF Member).
- International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE Member).
- Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS Member)
Courtesy Affiliations
- Senior Scientist - KaDSci, Inc.
- Affiliated Faculty - Center for Air Transportation Systems Research.
- Affiliate Professor - Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica.
- Affiliate Professor - University of Brasilia.
Contact
CYSE Department - George Mason University
10401 York River Rd, Research Building, Suite 330 - MS 4A6
Fairfax, VA - 22030 USA
Phone: +1 (703) 993-9989
FAX: +1 (703) 993-1521
email: pcosta gmu edu (alternatively, you can use this link)
Education
- Doctor of Philosophy
George Mason University - 2005
Dissertation topic: Bayesian Semantics for the Semantic Web. - Master of Science
George Mason University - 1999
Thesis topic: The Fighter Aircraft’s Autodefense Management Problem: A Dynamic Decision Network Approach - Bachelor of Science
Brazilian Air Force Academy (Engineering Degree) - 1986
Short Bio
Paulo Costa graduated with honors in the Brazilian Air Force Academy in 1986 and started his career as a fighter pilot, having flown nearly 1.800 hours in fighter aircraft such as the Brazilian-Italian made AM-X. During this period, he pursued specialization in the Electronic Warfare field, attending courses in both Brazil and England, acting as Electronic Warfare Officer in the Brazilian Air Force's first AM-X Squadron, and then as an invited lecturer in most of the courses from the BAF's Electronic Warfare Center (CGEGAR).
In 1995, he graduated first place out of 115 students, all in the rank of Captain, in the BAF's EAOAr, a major career course. In 1997, he moved to the USA and started his Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering at George Mason University, where he graduated in 1999. At that time, Dr. Costa also earned the GMU Engineering School's C3I Certificate and became a recipient of the Academic Excellence in Systems Engineering Award.
Back to Brazil in 2000, he served in the Air Force Chiefs of Staff, where he participated in many projects in the IT field. In 2003, he graduated with honors from the BAF's ECEMAR, another major career course, and returned to the USA, where he earned his PhD degree in Information Technology at George Mason University. At this time, he became a leading researcher in the field of probabilistic ontologies and developed a probabilistic extension to the OWL Web Ontology Language, called PR-OWL, which extends the former to first-order Bayesian expressiveness using Multi-Entity Bayesian Networks. He is also a key contributor to the development of UnBBayes-MEBN, an open source, freely available, java-based probabilistic reasoner and PR-OWL GUI that enables reasoning with probabilistic ontologies.
Dr. Paulo Costa retired from the Brazilian Air Force in 2008 and continued his academic career at GMU. As a lecturer, Prof. Costa teaches courses on decision theory, dynamic systems modeling, decision support systems design, and probabilistic reasoning. As a researcher, he became an expert in integrating semantic technologies and uncertainty management, and is a pioneer in the field of probabilistic ontologies. Dr. Costa developed PR-OWL, a probabilistic ontology language for the Semantic Web, and is a key contributor to UnBBayes-MEBN, a Java-based, open source implementation of Multi-Entity Bayesian Networks and the PR-OWL language. His research path also includes work as a W3C invited expert in the area of uncertainty reasoning, and as a leading organizer of the Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web workshop series, which is now in its eight edition. Prof. Costa’s academic service includes participation in technical program in several academic conferences and journals, as well as members of review boards in NSF, National Academies of Engineering, and others. He also has been actively involved as PI, co-PI, or technical lead in research projects related to his areas of expertise, such as the ARO-funded project on Mathematical Foundations of High-Level Information Fusion and the ISIF’s ETUR Working Group (eturwg.c4i.gmu.edu).
Dr. Costa is recipient of the GMU’s Academic Excellence in Systems Engineering Award, and is one of the few people to date to have graduated with honors in all the BAF’s three major career courses.
Academic Special Recognitions
- 2nd Place – Jean-Pierre Le Cadre Best Paper Award (co-author)
2023 International Conference on Information Fusion, Charleston, SC, USA. - 2023 Manson Innovation Award
Excellence in commercialization of discoveries, innovations and inventions. - Medalha Eduardo Gomes (Eduardo Gomes Medal)
Awarded in 2018 to those who achieved first place in a major degree in the Brazilian Air Force – retroactive since 1941, when the BAF was created - Best Paper Award (co-author with PhD Student)
Tenth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine (eTELEMED 2018). Rome, Italy. - Best Conference Paper (co-author with PhD Student)
11th International Conference on Semantic Technologies for Intelligence, Defense, and Security (STIDS 2016), Fairfax, VA, USA. - Best Professional Paper award / Best Cybersecurity Paper award (co-author with PhD student)
2015 IEEE-AIAA Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance Conference (ICNS 2015), Herndon, VA, USA. 2015. - Best Paper award (co-author with PhD student)
7th International Conference on Semantic Technologies for Intelligence, Defense, and Security (STIDS 2012), Fairfax, VA, USA. 2012. - Best Student paper (co-author with PhD student) - Information and Knowledge Exploitation track.
16th International Command and Control Research Symposium, Quebec, Canada. 2011 - Best student paper (co-author with PhD student) - C2 Architectures and Technologies Track.
15th International Command and Control Research Symposium, Santa Monica, CA, USA. 2010 - Best Paper award – Collaborative Technologies for Network-Centric Operations Track
14th International Command and Control Research Symposium, Washington, DC, USA. 2009 - Best student paper (co-author) - Network-Centric Experimentation and Applications Track.
13th International Command and Control Research Symposium, Bellevue, WA, USA. 2008 - MITRE Incentive Award for High Quality Publications
The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, USA. 2008 - Best Student Paper – Modeling and Simulation Track
10th International Command and Control Research Symposium, McLean, VA, USA. 2005 - Curso de Comando e Estado-Maior (Command and General Staff) – Honors
Universidade da Força Aérea – ECEMAR – Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. 2003 - Academic Excellence in Systems Engineering Award
George Mason University – Fairfax, VA, USA. 1999 - Curso de Aperfeiçoamento de Oficiais (Officer Training Course) – Honors
Universidade da Força Aérea – EAOAr – Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil. 1995 - Curso de Formação de Oficiais (Baccalaureate Degree) – Honors
Academia da Força Aérea – Pirassununga, SP, Brazil. 1986
