Joel Azzopardi
University of Malta
Research areas: Earth and Planetary Sciences · Oceanography · Topic Modeling · Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes · Ocean Waves and Remote Sensing
0000-0001-6709-8530
About
Joel Azzopardi is an Associate Professor within the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta, where he also holds an affiliate academic position in the Department of Geosciences. With over two decades of academic and research experience, his expertise spans Artificial Intelligence, information retrieval and knowledge discovery,, environmental and oceanographic data systems, operational hydrodynamic modelling, and data-driven decision support.
He earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Computer Science and AI with Physics and later completed his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta. His career began within the Physical Oceanography Unit (later amalgameted within the Department of Geosciences), where he played a central role in developing operational ocean forecasting systems and value-added data services. Since 2013, he has been contributing actively to AI education, research, outreach, and interdisciplinary applications at the Faculty of ICT.
Joel has contributed to over 20 national and EU-funded projects (e.g., MyOcean, Calypso, SeaDataNet, Sharemed, i-waveNET, AMPS and Megalith), focusing mainly on the integration of AI techniques with environmental modelling, knowledge discovery from textual data, and the operationalisation of marine services. He has also developed university-wide platforms such as URECA and A4QA to support research ethics and quality assurance.
His recent research explores AI-driven enhancements to meteo-marine station data, cross-lingual legal information retrieval, and the use of LLMs for public sector document understanding. Joel is also a member of the University Research Ethics and Quality Assurance Committees and a recipient of the 2024 Award for Contributions to the University's Research Ethics Process.
Employment
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University of Malta Associate Professor2022 - Present
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University of Malta Senior Lecturer2017 - 2022
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University of Malta Lecturer2013 - 2017
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University of Malta Lecturer2012 - 2013
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University of Malta Assistant Lecturer2008 - 2012
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University of Malta Project Assistant2004 - 2008
Education
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University of Malta M.Phil./ Ph.D.2004 - 2012
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University of Malta B.Sc. (hons) Computer Science and AI (CSAI) and Physics2000 - 2004
Projects & Funding
Projects & funding information is unavailable.
Publications (96)
- The Academic Research Network: Discovering Research and Teaching Across Disconnected Institutional Sources Save
- AMPS-JuST: Dataset of Annotated Judgements from the Small Claims Tribunal Save
- AI-driven modeling of long-term environmental impact on Mnajdra prehistoric megalithic temples, Malta Save
- AI-Driven Generation of Long-Term High-Resolution Meteorological Datasets Save
- Mediterranean Atlas of Physical and Biogeochemical Marine Extreme Events Save
- On the Complexities of Enabling Demonstrated Consent Save
- Citizen science-based jellyfish observation initiatives in the Mediterranean Sea Save
- From Compliance to Collaboration: Redefining QA in Challenging Times through Digital Innovation Save
- LLMs and Knowledge Discovery in Low-Resource Language Parliamentary Corpora: The PQ Dashboard Case Study Save
- Watch and learn: event-domain term extraction from social networks Save
- Comparison of Malta HF Radar Currents with CMEMS Mediterranean MFC Data Save
- IoT-based monitoring system and air quality prediction using machine learning for a healthy environment in Cameroon Save
- AI and machine learning to extend meteo-marine station observations into the future. Save
- The i-waveNET Decision Support System – user-driven aggregations and analysis of forecasts and observations Save
- AI and Machine Learning to extend Meteo-Marine Station Observations into the Future Save
- AI for Wellbeing: A Proof-of-Concept of Data Mining on Wellbeing Research Trends from Malta Save
- PQ Dashboard – Distant Reading of Maltese Parliamentary Questions Save
- Translating Justice: A Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval System for Maltese Case Law Documents Save
- Pattern Recognition for Imputation of Missing Radial Surface Current Data - a Malta-Sicily Channel case study Save
- The myth of reproducibility: A review of event tracking evaluations on Twitter Save