To mark International Women’s Day 2026, ADAPT is highlighting researchers whose work reflects this year’s “Give to Gain” theme in action.
Working at Dublin City University, one such researcher is Assistant Professor, Dr. Sheila Castilho, who focuses her research on machine translation, artificial intelligence, and multilingual communication. Her work examines how language technologies can make knowledge more accessible across linguistic boundaries while encouraging responsible and informed use of AI.
Recently, Sheila was awarded funding through the CHIST-ERA Science in Your Own Language call for the project OSCAIL – Open Science Communication through AI in EU Languages. The project explores how machine translation can support more inclusive scholarly communication by enabling research to be discovered, accessed, and reviewed across multiple languages, helping broaden participation in global research communities.
Alongside her research, Sheila contributes to international academic collaboration. She is co-organising two workshops at the European Association for Machine Translation (EAMT) Conference focusing on the stylistics of Large Language Models (LLMs) in translation and on teaching machine translation and AI. Her ongoing work also includes research on context-aware evaluation translation technologies and machine translation literacy.
Central to Sheila’s work is supporting the next generation of researchers. Through supervising PhD and Master’s students, teaching dissertation modules, publishing with students, hiring research assistants, and mentoring early-career researchers developing proposals, she is committed to supporting the next generation of scholars in the field.
Beyond academia, Sheila also volunteers her time to teach secondary school students about AI and language technologies, helping young learners understand how these tools influence communication, knowledge access, and opportunity.
Through these combined efforts Sheila’s work continues to contribute to more responsible uses of AI, more inclusive multilingual communication, and greater awareness of how language technologies shape access to knowledge in an increasingly connected world.
