Valeria de Paiva
Welcome!
I am a mathematician and AI research scientist with a passion for natural language processing, logical inference, and the many forms of semantics. I work at the Topos Institute in Berkeley—an inspiring place to explore the deep connections between mathematics, logic, and computation. I earned my PhD under the supervision of Martin Hyland, working on Dialectica categories, and my thesis is available here.On this site you’ll find my research interests, my curriculum vitae and résumé, as well as links to my Wikipedia page and my blog Logic ForAll. You can also watch some of my recent Recorded Talks. From 2020–2023 I served as a council member of the Division of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science and Technology, which invited me to record a short video on logic—earning me the unofficial title of “Ambassador of Logic.”
I am deeply committed to supporting women in logic and computer science. I co-founded and help maintain the Women in Logic website, Women in Logic blog, and Facebook group, as well as a curated collection of Women in Logic talks. I serve on the steering committee for Women in Logic and help organize the Workshop on Women in Logic, which just had its ninth edition in Birmingham, UK. I also contribute to the ACM-W Scholarship Program, which supports women students in computing worldwide.
Research Interests
My research spans category theory, programming languages, type theories, and logic in computer science, as well as the semantics of natural language and logic for lexical semantics. I work on search methods and evaluation, knowledge graphs, and ontologies, and I have a special interest in linear and modal logics and their applications to mathematics. Recently, I’ve focused on NLP methods for mathematical text, building tools to extract, structure, and reason about mathematical knowledge.Events
A complete events list will be added in due course. In the meantime, you can find highlights of projects, talks, and workshops I am or have been involved in, recently.
18th Conference on Intelligent Computer Mathematics (CICM 2025), Brasilia, Brazil, October 6 – 11, 2025.
Co-chair with Peter Koepke. website: https://cicm-conference.org/2025/cicm.php
International Category Theory Conference (CT2025), 13-19 July 2025
Masaryk University, Brno. Scientific Committee member.
website: https://conference.math.muni.cz/ct2025/
Prospects of formal mathematics. A Hausdorff Institute of Mathematics Trimester Program, Bonn, Germany,
May 6 - August 16, 2024. Co-organizer with M. Kohlhase, J. Urban, J. Carette, K. Buzzard.
website https://www.him.uni-bonn.de/programs/future-programs/future-trimester-programs/prospects-of-formal-mathematics/description/
Strange Loop, "War Time Proofs and Futuristic Programs"
(Sep 21 – 22, 2023 ). St. Louis, MO. Plenary speaker `Papers we Love'. website: https://www.thestrangeloop.com/index.html,
recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_6uboxUYR8
Applied Category Theory MRC 2022. Mentor 12 phds and postdocs.
website: https://www.ams.org/programs/research-communities/2022MRC-Categories.
Encontro Brasileiro de Teoria de Categorias. Jan 2021. Plenary Speaker,
recordings https://www.youtube.com/@encontrocategorico5732.
Segundo Encontro Brasileiro de Teoria de Categorias, 20-24 Mar 2023, USP Sao Paulo, Brasil. Invited Speaker and organizer
Terceiro Encontro Brasileiro de Teoria de Categorias EBTC 2025, https://sites.google.com/view/ebtc2025/p%C3%A1gina-inicial?authuser=1 MFPS 2024, Oxford University, June 2024, Co-chair with Alex Simpson website: https://oxford24.github.io/
CALCO/MFPS 2023, Bloomington, Indiana, 19-22 June 2023. Co-chair with Paolo Baldan, website https://coalg.org/calco-mfps-2023/
CALCO/MFPS 2021, Salzburg, Austria, Invited speaker, website: https://www.coalg.org/calco-mfps2021/index.html%3Fp=203.html Women in Logic Workshops.
WIL 2025, associated to FSCD, July 14, 2025. Birmingham, UK. website: https://sites.google.com/view/wil2025/home
WIL 2024, associated to FSCD, July 9, 2024, Tallinn, Estonia.
WIL 2023, associated to FSCD/CADE, 1st July, 2023, Rome, Italy.
WiL 2022, at FLoC 2022, 31st July 2022, Haifa, Israel.
WiL 2021, associated to LiCS 20221, 27th June 2021, Rome, Italy, online.
WiL 2020, associated to FSCD 2020, 30 June 2020, Paris, France, online.
WiL 2019, associated to LiCS 2019, 23 June 2019, Vancouver, Canada.
WiL 2018, at FLoC 2018, 8 July 2018, Oxford, UK.
WiL 2017, associated to LiCS 2017, 19 June 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland. 17th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, CLMPST 2023, July 24, 2023 - July 29, 2023, website: https://clmpst2023.dc.uba.ar/
International UNION OF HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 10–11 August 2018, Niteroi, Brazil. Invited Speaker, http://www.dlmpst.org/pages/activities/icm-2018-satellite.php Joint Meeting Brazil-Portugal 2022 (Independence 200), 18/19 Agosto 2022, UFBa, Salvador, Brasil. website: https://sites.google.com/view/categoriasbrasil-portugal
Joint Meeting Brazil-France in Mathematics, 15-19 July, 2019, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. website: https://impa.br/en_US/eventos-do-impa/eventos-2019/1st-joint-meeting-brazil-france-in-mathematics/ Applied Category Theory Conferences. PC at ACT 2021, 12-16 July 2021. website:https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/events/act2021/
Applied Category Theory Adjoint Schools, since 2018. Mentor at 2020 school, 29 June--July 3 2020, MIT, Cambridge, MA. website:http://www.appliedcategorytheory.org/adjoint-school-act-2020/ Encontro Brasileiro de Mulheres Matematicas, 27-28 July, 2019, IMPA, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. workshop website: https://impa.br/en_US/eventos-do-impa/eventos-2019/encontro-brasileiro-de-mulheres-matematicas/ Other Meetings.
Special Session on Proof Theory, ASL (Association for Symbolic Logic), UC Irvine, March 2020 (organizer with Elaine Pimentel and Reuben Rowe). cancelled by pandemic.
Natural Language and Computer Science workshops.
NLCS 2019, at IWCS 2019, 24 May 2019, Gothenburgh, Sweden.
NLCS 2018, at FLoC 2018 (Federated Logic Conference), July 2018, Oxford, UK. Proof-Theoretic Semantics, 27-30 March 2019,Tuebingen, Germany. website: http://ls.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/PTS3/
SYSMICS 2019.21-25 January 2019, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Invited Speaker website: http://events.illc.uva.nl/SYSMICS2019/
Luxembourg Logic for AI Summit.17-26 September 2018, Luxembourg. website: https://luxlogai.uni.lu
Meaningful Work: Advancing Computational Semantics, 28-31 May 2018, near Oslo, Norway. website: http://moin.delph-in.net/SynSem/MeaningRepresentation
Natural Language and Computer Science workshops.
NLCS 2019, at IWCS 2019, 24 May 2019, Gothenburgh, Sweden.
NLCS 2018, at FLoC 2018 (Federated Logic Conference), July 2018, Oxford, UK
Linearity and TLLA 2020 Workshop.
At FSCD 2020, 30 June 2020, Paris, France. website:https://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/LinearityTLLA2020.
At FLoC 2018, 7-8 July 2018, Oxford, UK. website: https://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/TLLALinearity18/
Segundo Encontro Brasileiro de Teoria de Categorias, 20-24 Mar 2023, USP Sao Paulo, Brasil. Invited Speaker and organizer
Terceiro Encontro Brasileiro de Teoria de Categorias EBTC 2025, https://sites.google.com/view/ebtc2025/p%C3%A1gina-inicial?authuser=1 MFPS 2024, Oxford University, June 2024, Co-chair with Alex Simpson website: https://oxford24.github.io/
CALCO/MFPS 2023, Bloomington, Indiana, 19-22 June 2023. Co-chair with Paolo Baldan, website https://coalg.org/calco-mfps-2023/
CALCO/MFPS 2021, Salzburg, Austria, Invited speaker, website: https://www.coalg.org/calco-mfps2021/index.html%3Fp=203.html Women in Logic Workshops.
WIL 2025, associated to FSCD, July 14, 2025. Birmingham, UK. website: https://sites.google.com/view/wil2025/home
WIL 2024, associated to FSCD, July 9, 2024, Tallinn, Estonia.
WIL 2023, associated to FSCD/CADE, 1st July, 2023, Rome, Italy.
WiL 2022, at FLoC 2022, 31st July 2022, Haifa, Israel.
WiL 2021, associated to LiCS 20221, 27th June 2021, Rome, Italy, online.
WiL 2020, associated to FSCD 2020, 30 June 2020, Paris, France, online.
WiL 2019, associated to LiCS 2019, 23 June 2019, Vancouver, Canada.
WiL 2018, at FLoC 2018, 8 July 2018, Oxford, UK.
WiL 2017, associated to LiCS 2017, 19 June 2017, Reykjavik, Iceland. 17th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, CLMPST 2023, July 24, 2023 - July 29, 2023, website: https://clmpst2023.dc.uba.ar/
International UNION OF HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 10–11 August 2018, Niteroi, Brazil. Invited Speaker, http://www.dlmpst.org/pages/activities/icm-2018-satellite.php Joint Meeting Brazil-Portugal 2022 (Independence 200), 18/19 Agosto 2022, UFBa, Salvador, Brasil. website: https://sites.google.com/view/categoriasbrasil-portugal
Joint Meeting Brazil-France in Mathematics, 15-19 July, 2019, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. website: https://impa.br/en_US/eventos-do-impa/eventos-2019/1st-joint-meeting-brazil-france-in-mathematics/ Applied Category Theory Conferences. PC at ACT 2021, 12-16 July 2021. website:https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/events/act2021/
Applied Category Theory Adjoint Schools, since 2018. Mentor at 2020 school, 29 June--July 3 2020, MIT, Cambridge, MA. website:http://www.appliedcategorytheory.org/adjoint-school-act-2020/ Encontro Brasileiro de Mulheres Matematicas, 27-28 July, 2019, IMPA, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. workshop website: https://impa.br/en_US/eventos-do-impa/eventos-2019/encontro-brasileiro-de-mulheres-matematicas/ Other Meetings.
Special Session on Proof Theory, ASL (Association for Symbolic Logic), UC Irvine, March 2020 (organizer with Elaine Pimentel and Reuben Rowe). cancelled by pandemic.
Natural Language and Computer Science workshops.
NLCS 2019, at IWCS 2019, 24 May 2019, Gothenburgh, Sweden.
NLCS 2018, at FLoC 2018 (Federated Logic Conference), July 2018, Oxford, UK. Proof-Theoretic Semantics, 27-30 March 2019,Tuebingen, Germany. website: http://ls.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/PTS3/
SYSMICS 2019.21-25 January 2019, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Invited Speaker website: http://events.illc.uva.nl/SYSMICS2019/
Luxembourg Logic for AI Summit.17-26 September 2018, Luxembourg. website: https://luxlogai.uni.lu
Meaningful Work: Advancing Computational Semantics, 28-31 May 2018, near Oslo, Norway. website: http://moin.delph-in.net/SynSem/MeaningRepresentation
Natural Language and Computer Science workshops.
NLCS 2019, at IWCS 2019, 24 May 2019, Gothenburgh, Sweden.
NLCS 2018, at FLoC 2018 (Federated Logic Conference), July 2018, Oxford, UK
Linearity and TLLA 2020 Workshop.
At FSCD 2020, 30 June 2020, Paris, France. website:https://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/LinearityTLLA2020.
At FLoC 2018, 7-8 July 2018, Oxford, UK. website: https://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/TLLALinearity18/