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The editorial staff of IDEAL has selected, as it does every year, five people or groups who have stood out throughout 2024 for their contribution to society, science or for their outstanding achievements. These figures, representative of the best of Granada, will be recognised with the award that bears the name of this newspaper, an award that is now in its 37th edition.

The award ceremony, which is by invitation only, will take place this Thursday 5 December at 19:00 at the Palacio de Congresos, and will be attended by the President of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno.

This event, which has become a year-end tradition, will be broadcast live on ideal.es and will receive extensive coverage in a special supplement. This year’s winners cover areas such as sport, culture, associations, science and personal careers in the economic sphere.

They are five outstanding examples of Granada society, selected by the IDEAL team, which acts as observer and narrator of what is happening in the province. The IDEALES awards also seek to highlight the essential role of journalism in an era marked by the proliferation of fake news and disinformation. Since its foundation, IDEAL has been committed to reporting with rigour and reflecting the reality of Granada accurately.

This year, the gala was inspired by a slogan that sums up the commitment and daily dedication of its journalists: ‘Commitment, the value of the word’, a phrase that encapsulates the spirit of the ceremony and the media’s informative work.

One of those selected was Francisco Herrera, professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada and renowned researcher in this field. The University of Granada is positioned as a leader in artificial intelligence thanks to the work of its research groups, among which Herrera’s work stands out.

His career has been key to the University’s consolidation as a benchmark in this field. As a promoter of Granada’s role in the development of artificial intelligence, Herrera has contributed to positioning the city as a leading centre in this discipline. He currently directs the Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence and is a member of the government’s advisory council on artificial intelligence, a body that brings together experts from the scientific, economic and educational fields to address the ethical use of this technology. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain and has received important awards, such as the Medal of Andalusia in 2017.

On the global scene, Herrera is one of the most cited researchers. According to Google Scholar, he has more than 446 indexed publications and his work has been cited 162,512 times. He recently took part in a round table in Abu Dhabi together with Nobel Prize winner Guido Imbens.

Born in Jódar in 1966, he came to Granada to study Mathematics, at which time he began his contact with computer science. He later completed a PhD in artificial intelligence. In recent years, his research has focused on promoting ethical and reliable artificial intelligence, advocating a responsible use of algorithms to ensure that the technology is a beneficial tool for humanity.

Throughout his career, both in his academic work and in the institutional positions he has held at the University of Granada and the City Council, Francisco Herrera has been a strong advocate of Granada’s scientific and entrepreneurial talent in the field of artificial intelligence.

• Method could help communities visualise and prepare for upcoming storms
• University of Granada researcher Natalia Díaz is collaborating with MIT, among others, to generate new models for visualising natural disasters that are more realistic and reliable.
• The combination of deep learning and physics-based modelling reduces errors in the creation of synthetic satellite images for critical applications such as flood simulation.

A new study reveals that deep generative vision models can synthesise highly realistic satellite imagery useful for illustrating future climate events such as flooding, reforestation and sea ice retreat. Although this technology faces a critical challenge – ‘hallucinations’, or the generation of incorrect data in non-susceptible regions, which limits its applicability in risk-sensitive scenarios such as climate change communication – the new study applies physical constraints that greatly improve the plausibility of the visualisations and reduce hallucinations.

The study involved the participation of Natalia Díaz, a researcher at the DaSCI institute, University of Granada, in collaboration with several research centres and foundations in the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

To address this problem, the team used a generative adversarial network (pix2pixHD) to create synthetic satellite images that will represent future floods or the result of positive actions such as reforestation. Initial results showed that, although the model was able to generate photorealistic images, it tended to ‘hallucinate’ floods in the wrong areas.

The proposed solution combines deep learning with segmentation maps generated by physics-based flood models. This improved approach outperforms not only the pure deep learning model, but also manual solutions, by significantly reducing prediction errors and improving the reliability of the images.

The team evaluated the generalisability of their method using different remote sensing datasets and climate events, including reforestation and melting Arctic sea ice. In addition, they have made their code, new metrics and an extensive dataset, including more than 30,000 HD image triplets labelled for segmentation-guided image-to-image translation, equivalent to 5.5 million images at 128×128 resolution, available to the scientific community.

This work marks a crucial step towards the creation of reliable and realistic visual tools for communicating climate change impacts, laying new foundations for collaboration between physics-based modelling and deep learning.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Data Science and Computational Intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry. https://dasci.es/es/

• Example images generated by AI: Top: Pre-flood satellite image. Below: Image generated by the post-flood model.

Contact: 

• Natalia Díaz-Rodríguez – nataliadiaz@ugr.es

More information:

• Original paper: B. Lütjens et al., “Generating Physically-Consistent Satellite Imagery for Climate Visualizations,” in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing,
• doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2024.3493763 2024
• Interacctive demo
• New at MIT

28/11/24 Desarrollan una IA que genera imágenes satelitales de futuras inundaciones y puede servir para evitar catástrofes https://cadenaser.com/nacional/2024/11/28/desarrollan-una-ia-que-genera-imagenes-satelitales-de-futuras-inundaciones-y-puede-servir-para-evitar-catastrofes-cadena-ser/
28/11/24 Crean una herramienta de IA que genera imágenes satelitales de futuras inundaciones https://www.infobae.com/espana/agencias/2024/11/28/crean-una-herramienta-de-ia-que-genera-imagenes-satelitales-de-futuras-inundaciones/
28/11/24 Nueva herramienta de inteligencia artificial genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones https://www.ucodigital.com.ar/smartwatch/nueva-herramienta-de-inteligencia-artificial-genera-imagenes-satelitales-realistas-de-futuras-inundaciones/107748/
28/11/24 Crean una herramienta de IA que genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones https://www.msn.com/es-es/noticias/tecnologia/crean-una-herramienta-de-ia-que-genera-im%C3%A1genes-satelitales-realistas-de-futuras-inundaciones/ar-AA1uVdg5
28/11/24 Una nueva herramienta de IA genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones https://www.iagua.es/noticias/redaccion-iagua/nueva-herramienta-ia-genera-imagenes-satelitales-realistas-futuras
28/11/24 Desarrollan una nueva herramienta de IA para visualizar inundaciones futuras https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/5658711/0/desarrollan-una-nueva-herramienta-ia-para-visualizar-inundaciones-futuras/
28/11/24 Crean una herramienta de inteligencia artificial que genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones https://www.europapress.es/andalucia/noticia-crean-herramienta-inteligencia-artificial-genera-imagenes-satelitales-realistas-futuras-inundaciones-20241128144640.html
28/11/24 Crean una herramienta de inteligencia artificial que genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones https://canal.ugr.es/noticia/crean-una-herramienta-de-inteligencia-artificial-que-genera-imagenes-satelitales-realistas-de-futuras-inundaciones/
28/11/24 Un nuevo herramienta de IA crea imágenes satelitales realistas para anticipar las inundaciones futuras https://actu.ai/es/un-nuevo-herramienta-de-ia-crea-imagenes-satelitales-realistas-para-anticipar-las-inundaciones-futuras-12186.html
28/11/24 El Motor de Inteligencia Terrestre de MIT: Predicción de Inundaciones Impulsada por IA https://neuron.expert/news/new-ai-tool-generates-realistic-satellite-images-of-future-flooding/9518/es/
28/11/24 IA para Visualizar Inundaciones Futuras: Innovación o Riesgo? https://iartificial.blog/aplicaciones/ia-visualizar-inundaciones-futuras/
28/11/24 Herramienta de IA que genera imágenes de satélite realistas para evitar desastres naturales co https://www.pcdemano.com/sc/31812/
28/11/24 Desarrollan una nueva herramienta de IA para visualizar inundaciones futuras https://www.rednoticias.eu/new/desarrollan-nueva-herramienta-ia-visualizar-inundaciones-futuras
28/11/24 Investigadores de la UGR crean un generador autónomo de problemas de IA capaz de mejorar las aplicaciones de mapas https://www.granadaesnoticia.com/universidad/investigadores-de-la-ugr-crean-un-generador-autonomo-de-problemas-de-ia#goog_rewarded
28/11/24 Crean una herramienta de inteligencia artificial que genera imágenes satelitales realistas de futuras inundaciones http://www.cibersur.com/cibersur/impe/iadministracion/023515/crean/herramienta/inteligencia/artificial/genera/imagenes/satelitales/realistas/futuras/inundaciones

In the field of artificial intelligence, automatic planning requires a number of specific problems to advance research and model development.

A research team from the DaSCI Institute and the UGR has created NeSIG, an innovative artificial intelligence methodology that revolutionises the way in which planning problems are generated, making it more accessible and efficient. This solution can be applied to robotics tasks, video game level generation, route planning like Google Maps or logistics problems in general, among other areas.

In the field of AI, automatic planning requires a series of specific problems to advance research and the development of robust models. To date, creating these problem sets has relied heavily on human designers or hand-programmed generators, which are costly and tedious processes.

Researchers Carlos Núñez, Pablo Mesejo and Juan Fernández have worked on this breakthrough. NeSIG, which stands for Neuro-Symbolic Instance Generator, is the first method designed to be domain-independent and capable of automatically creating valid, diverse and hard-to-solve planning problems for planned algorithms. It is based on the use of Deep Reinforcement Learning and the Markov Decision Processes framework, where NeSIG trains generative policies to create problems with desirable characteristics (validity, diversity and difficulty).

Benefits and results of NeSIG

Compared to manual, domain-specific generators, experiments show that NeSIG can generate problems with an average difficulty 15.5 times higher, while reducing the human workload. This automation capability is especially valuable in areas such as machine learning, where large amounts of quality training data are key to improving the performance and generalisation of learning models.

In addition, NeSIG is the first method as such that ‘learns’ to generate valid, diverse and hard-to-solve problems, so there is no other method to compare it to. ‘In general, machine learning models do not usually show generalisation capabilities to perform tasks of different sizes, with a different number of objects, as is the case with reinforcement learning algorithms. This opens a door to new applications in automatic planning, providing a steady stream of complex problems of different sizes, with minimal human intervention,’ explain the researchers.

Impact on the future of AI

The NeSIG proposal marks a paradigm shift in the field of planning problem generation and represents an important step towards complete independence from human designers in the creation of these scenarios. ‘With NeSIG, the future of automated planning becomes more promising, allowing researchers and practitioners to focus on improving algorithms and exploring new applications of artificial intelligence. Some possible applications are data generation for training models, comparing the performance of different algorithms, reinforcement learning, adversarial problem generation, scenario simulation, etc.,’ add the research team.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of artificial intelligence, with a particular focus on data science and computational intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry. https://dasci.es/es/

Bibliographic reference:

Carlos Núñez-Molina, Pablo Mesejo y Juan Fernández-Olivares. «NeSIG: A Neuro-Symbolic Method for Learning to Generate Planning Problems». En ECAI 2024, 4084-91. IOS Press, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3233/FAIA240978 

Contact:

• Carlos Nuñez Molina – ccaarlos@ugr.es   
• Pablo Mesejo Santiago – pmesejo@ugr.es 
• Juan Fernández Olivares – faro@decsai.ugr.es 

The research program will focus on the importance of the ethical dimension of AI and its impact on privacy, fundamental rights and security.

The institution plans to create a ‘reliable’, general-purpose AI platform and to research Risk Scenario Applications.

The project, valued at 1.6 million euros, is being developed in collaboration with Repsol and the University of Modena in Italy and will involve 14 researchers and 10 contract researchers.

The University of Granada (UGR) has presented the University-Business Research Program in AI that it will develop over the next four years in collaboration with Repsol. The activities of the Research Program began with a ceremony at the Rectorate of the UGR with the presence of Enrique Herrera, Vice-Rector for Research and Transfer (substitute Rector); Francisco Herrera, Director of the DaSCI Institute and of the ENIA-IAFER Research Program; Emilia Martínez, member of the Committee and Director of Industrial Optimisation in the area of Technology and Corporate Venturing at Repsol; and José Antonio Montilla, Deputy Delegate of the Spanish Government.

During the event, the members of the Research Program´s Governing Board discussed the project to be developed, entitled ‘Ethical, responsible and general-purpose artificial intelligence: applications in risk scenarios’. This Research Program will focus on the importance of the ‘ethical dimension’ of AI and its impact on privacy, fundamental rights and security. Less obvious risks, such as bias, will also be addressed.

In the context of the Research Program, a ‘reliable’ AI platform called IAFER will be created. Repsol, which will participate in the project, will work together with the other experts in the research and development of Artificial Intelligence techniques that allow it to manage its industrial centres more efficiently, where the interpretability, reliability and robustness of the algorithms already used by the multi-energy company are crucial for the safety of daily operations. In addition, General Purpose AI models will be addressed that allow for almost automatic adaptation to the different challenges faced by the industrial centres.

Subsequently, Professor Dr. Javier Del Ser, principal researcher and head of AI at TECNALIA, Basque Research & Technology Alliance and Associate Professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), gave the lecture ‘Applied Artificial Intelligence: Current Context and Future Perspectives’ at the UGR AI building, in one of the first activities of the Research Program.

Other activities to be carried out by the Research Program include a Winter School, dissemination activities (scientific comics, participation in events for the general public such as Desgranando Ciencia and the researchers’ night) and training activities such as an online learning environment.

The Research Program also has an international dimension and will involve the participation of fourteen researchers, twelve from the UGR and two from the University of Modena in Italy. In addition, eight pre-doctoral researchers and two post-doctoral researchers will be hired to carry out research in various lines and specific objectives. In the case of Repsol, a team of researchers from Repsol Technology Lab, the innovation centre that the multi-energy company has located in Móstoles (Madrid), will participate.

Among the proposals received by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, the UGR’s project was the highest scoring and will receive funding of 1.2 million euros through the DaSCI Institute and within the framework of the European Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, with funds from the European Union-Next Generation EU.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI Institute, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Data Science and Computational Intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry.

Contact:

• Francisco Herrera – herrera@decsai.ugr.es (Director of the Research Program).
• Isaac Triguero –  triguero@decsai.ugr.es  (Scientific head of the project).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Physics to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton ‘for fundamental discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks’. Hinton ‘for fundamental discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks’.

Fellow journalist Antonio Martínez Ron has been quick and has published the following news in Diario.es

Premios Nobel de Física 2024 para los inventores del aprendizaje automático con redes neuronales artificiales

John J. Hopfield’s most cited work:
The study explores the computational properties that can arise from large numbers of interconnected single neurons. It focuses on investigating how collective behaviour in such neural networks can give rise to useful computational capabilities, similar to how collective phenomena in physical systems can give rise to interesting properties. Full text

The most frequently cited article by Geoffrey E. Hinton:
The article discusses the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for image classification, specifically on the ImageNet dataset, which contains over 15 million high-resolution labelled images. The authors trained one of the largest CNNs to date on subsets of the ImageNet dataset used in the ImageNet Large-Scale Visual Recognition Challenge (ILSVRC). Full text

Science Media Center España has asked us for a simple quote to help journalists understand this news.

Our director Francisco Herrera tells us: ‘In the first half of the 1980s there was a revival of artificial intelligence (AI), after the so-called AI reversal of the 1970s, thanks to the important developments in the field of artificial neural networks led by John Hopfiled and Geoffrey E. Hinton. Hinton.

Hopfiled in 1982 connected the biological aspects of nervous systems with the computational domain. In his paper entitled ‘Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities’ (PNAS, 1982) he notes ‘Computational properties useful for biological organisms or for the construction of computers can emerge as collective properties of systems having a large number of simple equivalent components (or neurons). The physical meaning of addressable content memory is described by an appropriate phase space flow of the state of a system.’ With his proposal he defines the so-called Hopfield networks, a type of recurrent artificial neural network, which are used as associative memory systems with binary units, which converge in their learning process, and which have applications in different fields such as image processing, speech processing, among others.

Geoffrey E. Hinton was the father of the training and learning model of multi-layer meeting models (the one-layer model was the so-called perceptron of the seventies), called backpropagation. It is a supervised learning method that adjusts the weights of connections in a neural network to minimise the error between the actual output and the desired output. Backpropagation has been crucial to the development of deep learning, because it allows deep neural networks to be trained efficiently, adjusting weights systematically to minimise error, helps neural networks learn internal representations of data, which improves their ability to generalise to new data, and opened the door to developments in deep learning, image processing, speech, text … It is the basis of what is now the hatching of generative AI.

These results from the first half of the 1980s laid the foundation stones for the development of the following 40 years that have led to the current emergence of artificial intelligence and deep learning, which is based on these results that sought to emulate the functioning of the human neuronal system’.

For her part, our colleague Rocío Romero points out that: ‘It must have been very difficult to choose which researchers were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for the foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks. Research in the area began in the 1950s and after several periods of greater and lesser scientific development, it has come to the present day with renewed vigour. Both John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton stand out for designing different types of artificial neural networks that have given rise to the creation of today’s artificial intelligence tools that allow both the detection of cancers in early stages and the generation of realistic artificial text. It is, in turn, surprising news given that there is no Nobel prize for computer science, highlighting the fact that multidisciplinary work is clearly the future of cutting-edge research’.

More than 125 experts from all over the world have attended several workshops and demonstrations in the facilities of the Faculty of Medicine and the UGR AI building of the University of Granada.

Granada is the venue for the 20th edition of the International Association for Craniofacial Identification (IACI) meeting, the first time in 40 years that Spain hosts this prestigious event.

More than 125 participants from 5 continents (approximately one third online) have gathered at the facilities of the University of Granada (Faculty of Medicine and UGR AI building) to share knowledge and experiences in the field of craniofacial identification, with special attention to the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques.

‘The use of AI in this and other fields represents both opportunities and threats, but we have an IACI community of diverse and distinguished professionals who face the challenges of AI and address them in various workshops, invited talks, oral and poster presentations’ said Óscar ibáñez, researcher at the University of A Coruña, co-founder and CTO of the company Panacea and co-organiser of this meeting.

Over the 5 days of the meeting, participants will enjoy 4 plenary conferences, 25 oral presentations, 28 scientific posters, 10 online presentations, a round table and several professional workshops.

Sergio Damas, professor at the University of Granada, researcher at the DaSCI institute and co-organiser of the meeting says that ‘it is a meeting of great importance at a technical and scientific level, where you can learn about the technology in use and its possibilities. We have also been able to show the module ‘Your skull rings a bell’ which, in the form of a game, invites attendees to take a photo of themselves and find out which skull from our database best matches’.

The meeting was organised by the company Panacea Cooperative Research, the University of Granada and the International Association for Craniofacial Identification (IACI).

The IACI is an international group of professionals who share a common interest in craniofacial identification, broadly defined as any attempt to use human skulls and/or faces for human identification. The association was created in 1992 after four precursor meetings.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Data Science and Computational Intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry.

Contact: Sergio Damas and Óscar Ibañez oscar.ibanez@panacea-coop.com  and sdamas@ugr.es

More information:  Web https://iaci2024.com/ 

• From 3 to 5 February the Faculty of Medicine of the UGR will host this event organised by Granada Salud, a public-private initiative aimed at boosting the innovative and economic potential of the health sciences ecosystem.
• The event will bring together leading experts and talents in biomedicine and biotechnology to share knowledge, promote synergies and highlight the latest research and developments in the field of health.

The PTS Granada Foundation, a public entity with the support of the Regional Ministry of Universities, Research and Innovation, is organising its 3rd Research Congress together with some thirty public-private institutions that make up Granada Salud, an initiative to make the city visible and position it as a benchmark for innovation in health. The DaSCI Institute has been part of this initiative since this year and participates in the organisation of the congress itself.

The 3rd PTS Granada Research Congress, to be held from 3 to 5 February at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Granada (UGR), is consolidating its position as one of the main forums for knowledge exchange and transfer in the life sciences and health sector. This key event in the regional and national scientific calendar will bring together researchers, health staff, students and representatives of research centres and companies to learn about the most outstanding and current lines of research in biomedicine and biotechnology, share advances, possible synergies and collaborations between the different agents of the innovation ecosystem of PTS Granada.

In its previous edition, the congress brought together more than four hundred researchers and more than twenty companies, and generated three hundred communications. A precedent of success and participation that is expected to be repeated this year with a full agenda of plenary lectures, thematic sessions, B2B meetings between attendees, sessions with patient associations and informative conferences.

The 3rd PTS Granada Research Congress promises to be a meeting point for professionals dedicated to science and technology in health. And it will fulfil the mission of promoting the transfer between the academic field and the bio-health industry, promoting innovation and technological development, thus contributing to economic progress and improving the quality of life in Andalusia.

Thematic lines

During the three days of the congress, a diverse range of scientific communications will be addressed in the following thematic areas: Neurosciences; Oncology; Inflammatory Diseases; Infectious Diseases; Nutrition and Food Technology; Physical Activity and Sport for Health; Rare Diseases; Epidemiology and Public Health. One Health; Cardiovascular Diseases. Dermatology. Transplantation. Advances in Clinical Research; Personalised Medicine and Advanced Therapies; ICT for Health; AI Research; Transfer and Provision of Services and Support for Health Research.

In September, the call for proposals for any of the parallel sessions of the congress will open. The prestigious speakers who will give a keynote lecture at the opening and closing sessions will also be announced.

Granada, an Andalusian reference in health sciences and technology

Biomedicine and biotechnology are playing an increasingly important role due to their capacity to improve diagnoses, design new treatments and optimise existing ones. The city of Granada has more than thirty public and private actors in the sector, most of them based in the PTS. And it has an enormous and growing potential in research and business development, healthcare and training. With the aim of making this ecosystem of biosanitary innovation visible and promoting it as an engine of economic and social development for the province, the PTS Granada Foundation is organising the congress together with the member entities of Granada Salud and the management of the Biomedical Research Centre of the University of Granada (CIBM), which is responsible for coordinating the Scientific Committee.

The strategic institutional collaboration alliance Granada Salud has a network of resources for the development of the health sector available to any company, researcher, entrepreneur or citizen. The congress will be an exceptional platform to promote knowledge transfer and collaboration between researchers, companies and the public sector. For this reason, it will have a wide institutional representation and support, and the sponsorship of the most cutting-edge companies in the health and health technology sector.

About Granada Salud

Granada Salud is part of the key objectives of the Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation of promoting and coordinating scientific and technical research, knowledge transfer, support for technological innovation and business investment in technology, as well as the development of entrepreneurial culture and technological entrepreneurship in the region.

The following entities form part of Granada Salud: UGR emprendedora, OTRI-UGR, Centro de Investigación Biomédica (CIBM), Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina López-Neyra (IPBLN), Fundación MEDINA, Centro Pfizer de Genética y Oncología (GENYO), Fundación IAVANTE, Biobank of the Andalusian Public Health System, Instituto Mixto Universitario de Deporte y Salud (IMUDS), Hospital Universitario Clínico San Cecilio, Hospital Virgen de las Nieves, Fundación de Investigación Biosanitaria Andalucía Oriental (FIBAO), Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria (ibs. GRANADA), the Andalusian School of Public Health (EASP), the Experimental Station of Zaidín (EEZ-CSIC), the Granada Confederation of Entrepreneurs (CGE), the Association of Young Entrepreneurs (AJE), the Science Park, the Biological Air Quality Unit (UCBA-UGR), onTech Innovation, the Technological Circle of Granada, the Granada Chamber of Commerce and Andalucía TRADE. And recently IFMIF-DONES; Fundación AI Granada, Instituto DaSCI, Centro Tecnológico CIDAF, CITIC-UGR, and Fundación Andalucía Emprende have joined as new members.

• An article published by DaSCI researchers four years ago on the same topic of the summer school has now reached more than 7,200 citations, which is a great impact in its field.
• More than fifty researchers from all over the world attend the international summer school, where some of the most prominent figures of the moment are giving lectures.

The city of Granada welcomes experts and students from all over the world to the International Summer School organised by ADIA Lab and the University of Granada with the theme Trustworthy, Safe, and Governable AI. The course was inaugurated by Manuel González Bedia, Director General of Strategic Planning for Digital Transformation, Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Vice Rector for Research and Transfer, Francisco Herrera, Director of DaSCI, professor at the UGR and PI of the INCIBE project in which these conferences are framed, and Abdulla AlKetbi, President of the ADIA Lab Operations Council.

The summer school, which runs until 26 July, will address the challenges and opportunities in the field of explainable AI (XAI), an area that has become increasingly relevant in recent years. The growing interest in the subject is reflected in the number of citations and the attention received by articles in this area, such as the article Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI, published four years ago by the team of researchers from Granada, led by Francisco Herrera, which has been a benchmark in this field, accumulating more than 7,200 citations to date.

The lectures will be held in the recently opened UGR IA building located in the Granada Health Technology Park, which is also the headquarters of the Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence and the AI Granada Foundation. The summer school is attended by more than 50 students from all over the world (17 from the United Arab Emirates, 11 from the University of Granada and the rest from places as diverse as the Universities of Deusto, Pablo de Olavide, Córdoba, Jaén, Politécnica de Madrid, Oberta de Catalunya, País Vasco or Navarra within Spain, and from Zurich, Cincinnati, Dakota, Coimbra or El Valle Colombia outside our country).

Programme and Objectives

The summer school programme will include keynote lectures, hands-on workshops and networking sessions, with the participation of leading researchers and industry professionals. Attendees will have the opportunity to explore topics such as the principles of trust and safety in AI, bias detection and mitigation, as well as ethical considerations in AI, the importance of explainability in AI systems, advanced topics in generative AI and their implications for trust as well as privacy and data governance and AI regulation.

Speakers include Francisco Herrera, Carme Artigas, co-chair of the United Nations Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence and former Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, Merouane Debbah, director of the 6G Research Centre, Computer and Communications Engineering at the Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi (UAE) and Shafi Goldwasser, director of the Simons Institute for Computational Theory at UC Berkeley (USA), among others. The industrial sector will also be present with representatives from Minsait, Adigital, Google, Repsol, CausaLens, Nazaries and Thales.

UGR and Granada, epicentre of AI this summer

‘This Summer School is a crucial step in fostering international research on AI. Ensuring trust and security in AI systems is essential as they affect critical areas of our lives. This event brings together experts from around the world to explore the ethical, technical and social dimensions of AI, equipping participants with the tools they need to develop responsible AI technologies that benefit society,’ says Horst Simon, Director of ADIA Lab.

‘Building trust in AI models starts with understanding them, which makes explainable AI crucial. The ADIA Lab Summer School in Trustworthy AI, in collaboration with the University of Granada, offers a unique opportunity to learn from leading experts and gain hands-on experience in explainable and ethical AI’ says Chairman of the Board of Operations ADIA Lab.

Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Vice Rector for Research and Transfer, highlighted the role of Granada and its University in research and transfer of AI to society, especially in the research and teaching hub that is the Granada Health Technology Park.

For his part, Francisco Herrera stressed: ‘Granada becomes the epicentre of AI this summer, and we are proud to host such a relevant and necessary event in the current context’.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Data Science and Computational Intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry. https://dasci.es/es/

More information:

– Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Concepts, Taxonomies, Opportunities and Challenges toward Responsible AI. Alejandro Barredo Arrieta, Natalia Díaz-Rodríguez, Javier Del Ser, Adrien Bennetot, Siham Tabik, Alberto Barbado, Salvador García, Sergio Gil-López, Daniel Molina, Richard Benjamins, Raja Chatila, Francisco Herrera . Information Fusion (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2019.12.012

• DIME+ is a decision support system for organisers of outreach events, especially Citizen Science events.
• An application developed at the University of Granada that allows to have and analyse the feedback of the attendees to the events, it has already been tested in the European Researchers’ Night.

Researchers at the University of Granada have developed an online linguistic decision support system based on citizen participation. One of the authors is researcher Jerónimo Durán, who will defend his doctoral thesis this week at the UGR IA building.

The science outreach and efforts to increase citizen participation have brought research closer to society and inspired new careers in STEM. In virtual events, it is now easier to monitor participation and obtain feedback through online surveys. However, in face-to-face events and crowded contexts, there is no technological solution for gathering attendee feedback on a given event.

DIME+ is the name of the mobile application and is a decision support system for organisers of outreach events, especially citizen science events. The system has already been tested in the European Researchers’ Night event and in the activities developed by the DaSCI institute in the cities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba.

The European Researchers’ Night is the largest dissemination event held in Andalusia, coordinated by the Descubre Foundation and involving dozens of institutions that receive thousands of visits each year. An event in which to discover the more human side of research through direct contact with the experts themselves and which is attended each year, in Granada alone, by more than 15,000 people.

DIME+ is based on the Citizen Crowd Decision Making methodology as a model for evaluating dissemination activities, which focuses on the linguistic opinions of citizens. CCDM is replicable, extensible and adaptable to the context. The evaluation model provides Computation with Words, which allows citizens to express themselves with ratings that approximate natural language and under hesitation. In line with the principles of open research, stakeholders can download anonymised data from the web platform. In this way, future evaluation models could emerge that find alternative ways to explore citizens’ opinions, while providing a very interesting baseline for future analyses of the same type of events.

It is a highly flexible system in which organisers can choose various parameters. It also responds to a real need to evaluate the impact of outreach activities and helps us to perceive the opinion of citizens in a more direct way where citizens can express themselves freely. The evaluations are simple and almost transparent. It is also an adjustable, scalable and extensible system that allows for further studies with more complex linguistic variables such as dissemination models.

• The first prize went to a paper on one of the fundamental problems of AI, the robustness of an open system. The second prize goes to the direct application of AI to the early detection of ASD.
• The conference is one of the most important international conferences in the area of machine learning and neural networks, bringing together theory, analysis and applications in machine learning, with special emphasis on the field of neural networks and deep learning.

The Artificial Intelligence research carried out in Granada has been recognised once again. This time at the World Conference on Computational Intelligence 2024 held from 30 June to 5 July in Yokohama, Japan. The World Conference on Computational Intelligence 2024 includes the 3 most important conferences on computational intelligence technologies (neural networks and deep learning IJCNN, evolutionary computation CEC2024, and ensemble technologies and fuzzy systems Fuzz-IEEE2024).

The conference was the largest ever held with more than 3,250 papers received and 1,681 accepted, with authors from more than 80 countries and 20 tutorials and 5 parallel workshops. A total of more than 2000 AI researchers from all over the world have gathered for this conference. It is one of the most important international conferences in the area of machine learning and neural networks, bringing together theory, analysis and applications in machine learning, with special emphasis on the field of neural networks and deep learning.

Two award-winning works

The article that has received the first prize (2024 BEST PAPER AWARD IJCNN) entitled “Balancing Performance, efficiency and robustness in open-world machine learning via evolutionary multi-objective model compression” is a contribution that addresses a fundamental problem of Artificial Intelligence, its robust behaviour when an AI system interacts in an open world, where it interacts in dynamic scenarios that may change, and requires maintaining accuracy and robustness, that is, safe and reliable behaviour in the dynamic environment. A proposal has been developed based on the use of evolutionary algorithms (inspired by natural evolution) with multiple objectives to evaluate the accuracy, efficiency and robustness of machine learning models.

This work has been carried out in collaboration with TECNALIA, with whom important scientific work has been developed in recent years as a result of the collaboration agreement with the TECNALIA-UGR Chair in AI. The first author, Javier del Ser is technology director of OPTIMA (Optimization, Modeling and Analytics) at TECNALIA Research & Innovation, principal investigator and head of the Artificial Intelligence Platform. Javier del Ser has a long-standing collaboration with researchers at the DaSCI Research Institute. Francisco Herrera and Javier del Ser have jointly published more than a dozen scientific articles of significant impact in the field of AI.

The article that has received the second prize (2024 Runner-up BEST PAPER AWARD IJCNN 2024) entitled “A wearable eye-tracking approach for early autism detection with machine learning: Unravelling Challenges and Opportunities” is a collaboration between researchers from the DaSCI Institute of the Dept. of Computer Science and AI and researchers from UGR departments such as Javier López Martínez (TSTC) and Purificación Checa (Developmental Psychology).

This work is associated with an applied research project of the 2023 own plan with FEDER funds on neurodevelopmental disorders. The first author of the article, Javier López-Martínez, carried out his TFM to initiate this line of work, where he developed a methodology to solve a case study in the diagnosis of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

ASD has a relatively high prevalence (1 in 36 children 2.8%), and it is very important to make an early diagnosis in order to implement good early care. The diagnosis of this condition has been made by means of psychological questionnaires (with a large subjective component) or by means of EEG or MRI tests, an expensive technique.

A very interesting alternative would be to use eye-tracking tests, a very low-cost and child-friendly test. Videos are played to capture the interest of the participants, and eye-tracking traces are obtained; the patterns are different between users with ASD and those who are neurotypical.

Additionally, the paper discusses two issues of interest in this field of study. Firstly by emphasising the benefits of wearables to obtain much more data to support early diagnosis (such as activity bracelets or sensors in the rooms where support tasks are performed), thus enabling a multi-modal approach that brings together different sources of information.

In addition, an analysis of how the qualities of reliable AI would be implemented in this area, transparency, ethics, privacy, etc., are addressed.

The success in obtaining the prize for the best articles in the area of machine learning, with the participation of researchers from different areas of knowledge and from two institutions that are a reference in AI at a national level such as the UGR and the TECNALIA Technology Centre (the main technology transfer centre in Spain), are a further recognition of the important scientific level of AI in Spain.

Francisco Herrera, director of DaSCI, participated as one of the invited plenary researchers with the Keynote Talk entitled “Fuzzy Systems for Safe and Reliable AI: Towards Responsible AI Systems”, which addresses the use of fuzzy systems for the design of AI systems that are reliable and safe.

• It is a forensic identification technique based on the analysis of a skull (post mortem) with facial photographs of the person (ante mortem).
• This is an important step in making objective decisions based on being able to quantify the probability that a skull does or does not match the photographs studied.

Researchers from the DaSCI Institute (University of Granada) and the CITIC centre (University of A Coruña), in collaboration with the company Panacea Coop, have published a study that demonstrates an improvement in the recognition of human remains by craniofacial superimposition, making decision making by forensic experts much more objective.
Craniofacial superimposition is a forensic technique that supports decision-making when it comes to identifying skeletal remains. Specifically, it is based on the analysis of the superimposition of a found, unidentified skull (post mortem) with facial photographs (ante mortem) of missing persons.

Despite its importance and wide applicability, the process remains complex and difficult to address. A variety of computerised methods have been proposed, but subjectivity and qualitative reporting persist in decision-making. This study presents a proposal for an evidence evaluation system based on Likelihood Ratios (LRs), previously used in other forensic fields such as DNA, voice or fingerprints, and recommended by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI).

The paper proposes a pioneering application of this framework to craniofacial superimposition consisting of three experiments in which the system is trained and tested under different facial image conditions: the first uses frontal facial photographs, the second uses lateral facial photographs, and the last integrates both frontal and lateral facial photographs.
In all three experiments, the proposed LR system excels in terms of calibration and discriminative power, providing practitioners with a quantitative tool for test evaluation and integration.

This is for now a proof of concept using synthetic data and will have to be tested with massive real data. Nevertheless, the resulting likelihood ratio system provides objective support for decision making in craniofacial superimposition.

Bibliographic reference:
Práxedes Martínez-Moreno, Andrea Valsecchi, Pablo Mesejo, Óscar Ibañez, Sergio
Damas. Evidence evaluation in craniofacial superimposition using likelihood ratios.
Information Fusion (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2024.102489

• The Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA) held these days in A Coruña, has awarded the first prize to the IMAIapp application, developed by researchers from the DaSCI Institute, the University of Granada, the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Spanish Association of Trade and Industry of Wood (AEIM).
• The application for mobile devices developed by the IMAI Operational Group (GO IMAI) provides customs agents and law enforcement agencies with a tool that allows them to easily establish an early warning when faced with a suspicious shipment.

The Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA), which in its 2024 edition will be held in A Coruña on 19-21 June, announces the 6th edition of the competition for the development of APPs based on AI techniques, with the aim of highlighting the practical importance of artificial intelligence, and due to the significant boom in the development of applications for mobile devices. Currently, the congress website announces the IMAIapp application as the winner of the first place in this competition (https://caepia24.aepia.org/awards.html). 

Currently, the identification of wood only at a macroscopic level is not possible and requires the intervention of highly specialised personnel for a guaranteed identification and expert use. In view of this, the combination of knowledge in macroscopic wood anatomy and artificial intelligence has allowed GO IMAI researchers to work on the design and implementation of a tool that facilitates this identification by the agents themselves in a simple and fast way.

Regulating trade in the timber sector at national and international level is essential to facilitate the control of the timber trade. The app developed for iOS and Android, IMAIapp, is aimed at specialised users such as customs agents, or state security forces, especially those with powers to control the trafficking of protected species (SEPRONA).

This tool, which is capable of running on a mid-range device, allows agents to establish an early warning when photographing a sample of a shipment and verifying that the identification of the timber species corresponds to the documentation provided. The identification is made in a matter of seconds after taking the photograph with IMAIapp and a magnifying lens, which obtains a macroscopic image with which the deep learning algorithm finds the specific characteristics for which it was trained.

The Polytechnic University of Madrid, the University of Granada and the Spanish Association of Wood Trade and Industry (AEIM) make up the research team that has developed this tool. The University of Granada has developed the intelligent model and integrated it into the mobile application, which has a native app for iOS and Android. The Polytechnic University of Madrid has provided the necessary information on the more than 400 commercial species, of which 37 are protected by the CITES agreement. The photographs that have provided the required dataset for the identification of protected species are available in an open dataset:

Montes, Rosana; Herrera-Poyatos, David; Herrera-Poyatos, Andrés; Herrera, Francisco; de Palacios, Paloma; De Marco, Antonio; García-Iruela, Alberto; Garcia-Fernández, Francisco; García Esteban, Luis (Jun 4, 2024). GOIMAI DataSet-Phase-I of high-resolution macroscopic images for the identification of wood species. Available for download at https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.11092208.

GO IMAI members

The project is part of the National Rural Development Programme and is financed by the EAFRD (80%) and the General State Administration (20%). The Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), the University of Granada (UGR) and the Spanish Wood Trade and Industry Association (AEIM) are the beneficiaries. The Descubre Foundation, Everyware Technologies, Donosti Frame and José Luis Fermosel Álvarez are subcontractors of the initiative.

More information: https://goimai.es

• The agreement establishes a stable framework of collaboration in which both entities undertake to develop initiatives in the areas of promotion, training and research.

The PTS Granada Foundation, a public entity supported by the Regional Ministry of Universities, Research and Innovation, and the AI Granada Research & Innovation Foundation, have today signed a collaboration agreement to carry out joint promotion, training and research activities aimed at fostering the development of artificial intelligence and its application in the bio-health sector in Andalusia.

The signing took place in the UGR AI building, headquarters of the AI Granada Foundation, and was attended by the managing director of the PTS Granada Foundation, Luis González, and the vice-rector for Research and Transfer of the UGR and proxy of the AI Granada Foundation, Enrique Herrera Viedma.

The alliance will be valid for four years, and in order to select the activities in which the collaboration will be materialised, it will have a monitoring committee made up of a representative from each institution. Both will establish initiatives and actions for their dissemination, with the aim of guaranteeing the highest degree of knowledge by the public.

The collaboration between the PTS Foundation and the AI Granada Foundation represents a firm commitment and a sum of efforts of both institutions to promote the transfer of knowledge, the advancement of research and technological innovation. The agreement will give continuity to and expand common lines of action already in place, such as the “Matchmaking Experience“, which connects university students with skills in artificial intelligence with professional opportunities in local companies, thus strengthening Granada’s technological ecosystem.

This public-private collaboration is expected to contribute to consolidate and position the province as a national and international benchmark in research and innovation in artificial intelligence, contributing to economic development and improving the quality of life of the people of Granada. As well as creating a stable environment that fosters excellence, responsibility and equity, sustainability and social impact.

This new institutional agreement will not only benefit the entities involved, but will also have a positive impact on the scientific and technological community, companies and society in general at a key moment for the technological and biosanitary development of the region.

The PTS Granada Foundation is an entity of the Andalusian Public Sector and has a board of trustees that includes leading institutions in scientific and technological development, such as the Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation, the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs of the Andalusian Regional Government, the University of Granada, local councils in the region, as well as financial entities and collaborators from the business and scientific sectors. This conglomerate of institutions works together to promote entrepreneurship, the consolidation of quality employment, the training of highly qualified professionals and the improvement of the quality of life of citizens. The mission of the PTS Foundation is to be an axis of wealth generation, promoting the transfer of knowledge between the university, research centres and companies. Its long-term vision is to consolidate the Health Technology Park as a national and international benchmark in research, business innovation and technological development applied to Life Sciences and Health.

The main objective of the AI Granada Foundation is to boost and promote public and private activities related to research, innovation, technological development and knowledge transfer in the field of artificial intelligence and digital technologies, developing activities and integrating initiatives such as the AI Lab centre, aiMPULSA or AIR-Andalusia. The foundation is based on a public-private collaboration model in which the Junta de Andalucía through the Agencia Digital de Andalucía, the Granada City Council, the Granada Chamber of Commerce and different companies are integrated.

A recent study carried out by DaSCI-UGR researchers and the University of Cadiz uses AI to analyse the majority of scientific publications by men and women in the field of library and information science. It is well known in the literature that there is a gender gap in scientific production and impact, where women tend to receive fewer citations than their male colleagues. The results of this study reveal a relationship between the topics addressed and the academic impact achieved, revealing gender disparities in academia.

Previous research has pointed to different factors that help to explain this inequality. Possible factors include women’s late entry into the scientific field, productivity, lower levels of international collaboration, self-citation and the diversity of topics addressed. To find out whether research topics contribute to this gender gap, the researchers divided articles published in bibliometrics and documentation from 2007 to 2023 into two sets, those whose authors were mostly women and those whose authors were mostly men.

What they found was that, in the area analysed, men tend to favour more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) related topics, such as Machine Learning and computer science in general, which tend to have a greater scientific impact. Whereas women are more inclined towards more traditional library, social and health sciences subjects.

This in some ways mirrors the trends seen in the computer science and health sciences professions. According to the Women’s Institute, the presence of women among university graduates in Engineering and Architecture has risen from 9% in 1982 to 29.19% in 2021. In Health Sciences, the percentage of women has risen from 53.8% in 1982 to 71.87% in 2021.

In addition, the article found that the number of female perpetrators, which has a slight increase over the years, declined visibly during the years 2019 to 2022, coinciding with the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding is in line with other studies that identified that women were disproportionately affected during the pandemic due to, among other things, increased household and parental care work, which may have created cumulative disadvantages at the workplace.

The study analysed thousands of documents, in which the gender of most authors could be identified. Through an analysis of the scientific production and citations received in 4 periods from 2007 to 2023, an unequal gender representation in various topics was found. In each of the periods, about 20 topics were identified, with women overrepresented in traditional library and information science topics (such as Librarianship and Information-literacy), as well as topics related to the humanities and health. Meanwhile, the topics with the highest presence of men were those related to innovation and STEM, which received the highest number of citations compared to the previous topics.

The Andalusian Inter-University Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, known as DaSCI Institute, is a collaborative entity between the universities of Granada, Jaén and Córdoba. It is dedicated to advanced research and training in the field of Artificial Intelligence, with a particular focus on Data Science and Computational Intelligence. The institute brings together an outstanding group of researchers working on joint projects, promoting the development and application of innovative technologies in various sectors. With the aim of becoming a benchmark in its field, the DaSCI promotes the transfer of scientific knowledge to the socio-economic environment, thus contributing to technological progress and the digitisation of industry.

Contact: 

• Manuel Jesús Cobo Martín mjcobo@decsai.ugr.es 

More information:

• Choji, T.T., Cobo, M.J. & Moral-Munoz, J.A. Is the scientific impact of the LIS themes gender-biased? A bibliometric analysis of the evolution, scientific impact, and relative contribution by gender from 2007 to 2022. Scientometrics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-024-05005-3 
• Link al artículo https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-024-05005-3 

• IFMIF-DONES, AI Foundation, DaSCI, CIDAF, CITIC-UGR and Fundación Andalucía Emprende join this working group made up of more than thirty public and private entities.
• The new members will strengthen this initiative with the aim of joining forces and generating synergies that contribute to raising the profile of Granada’s scientific-technological ecosystem under the Granada Salud brand.

Granada, 23/05/24.

The Granada Salud initiative takes a significant step forward by expanding its network with the incorporation of new members, which will strengthen the development of this interdisciplinary working group at regional and local level. In addition to the thirty public and private entities that make up this network of resources, the involvement of new strategic entities for innovation and technological development in Granada in the field of health sciences, technology and business has been added.

Granada Salud forms part of the key objectives of the Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation to promote and coordinate scientific and technical research, knowledge transfer, support for innovation and business investment in technology, as well as the development of entrepreneurial culture and technological entrepreneurship in the region.

They are associated with this initiative as new partners of Granada Salud: the materials research infrastructure for future fusion power plants IFMIF-DONES; the AI Granada Foundation dedicated to connecting the university and research centres in artificial intelligence with the productive sector and society; the Andalusian Interuniversity Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence DaSCI, aimed at promoting the work of Andalusian researchers in Artificial Intelligence; the CIDAF Technology Centre, specialising in bioactive ingredients for agriculture, food, livestock and cosmetics; the Andalusian Research Centre in Artificial Intelligence and the Andalusian Institute for Data Science and Computational Intelligence DaSCI, aimed at promoting the work of Andalusian researchers in Artificial Intelligence; the CIDAF Technology Centre, specialising in bioactive ingredients for agriculture, food, livestock and cosmetics; the Centre for Research in Information and Communication Technologies of the University of Granada CITIC-UGR, an entity for the transfer of knowledge to the productive sector and the training of researchers who are drivers of socio-economic growth around ICT; and the Andalusia Emprende Foundation, whose mission is to promote entrepreneurship and business development to contribute to the revitalisation of the regional economy.

The expansion of Granada Salud is an example of strategic institutional collaboration to make visible and boost the potential of Granada’s health sector ecosystem. With the continued support of its members, its recent renewed commitment, and the involvement of new entities of interest, innovation is consolidated and strengthened as an important driver of socio-economic development for the province.

Granada Salud work agenda
On 30 April, the headquarters of the PTS Granada Foundation hosted a meeting of the Granada Salud working group, with the aim of resuming and coordinating its activity, sharing proposals, and establishing a roadmap for the coming months. A working agenda for the implementation of actions aimed at promoting the strategic projection of the Granada Salud brand.

Among the first lines of action developed, a system of joint work has been initiated with the aim of positioning Granada as a benchmark for innovation in health through the website and social networks of Granada Salud and those of its members. To this end, a Manual of Good Practices has been created and shared to establish a practical guide for the dissemination of news, organisation of events and milestones generated in this field. A series of recommendations that will serve to promote the projection and impact of Granada Salud’s communication through the coordination and cooperation of its members.

In addition, several scientific and technical commissions have been created, which have already taken their first steps towards the launch of the 3rd PTS Research Congress in the coming weeks. An event that hopes to repeat the success of previous editions, and which will serve to showcase the research potential of Granada’s health ecosystem.

About Granada Salud
Granada Salud is made up of a network of resources for the development of the health sector available to any company, researcher, entrepreneur or citizen. Its members include UGR emprendedora, OTRI-UGR, Centro de Investigación Biomédica (CIBM), Instituto de Parasitología y Biomedicina López-Neyra (IPBLN), MEDINA Fundation, Centro Pfizer de Genética y Oncología (GENYO), IAVANTE Fundation, Biobank of the Andalusian Public Health System, Instituto Mixto Universitario de Deporte y Salud (IMUDS), Hospital Universitario Clínico San Cecilio, Hospital Virgen de las Nieves, Fundación de Investigación Biosanitaria Andalucía Oriental (FIBAO), Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria (ibs. GRANADA), the Andalusian School of Public Health (EASP), the Experimental Station of Zaidín (EEZ-CSIC), the Granada Confederation of Entrepreneurs (CGE), the Association of Young Entrepreneurs (AJE), the Science Park, the Biological Air Quality Unit (UCBA-UGR), onTech Innovation, the Granada Technological Circle, the Granada Chamber of Commerce and Andalucía TRADE.

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“The professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the UGR highlights the great impact that the projects of this institution have on Granada and its province”.

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“Among the 82 outstanding scientists, Francisco Herrera – ranked second in the world and first in Spain in Computer Science – and Enrique Herrera – ranked 116th in the world and second in Spain in this field – stand out in notable positions among the 1,000 most renowned scientists in the world in their disciplines“

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• The international popular science festival will be held on May 13, 14 and 15 throughout Spain, with free admission.
• In Granada, Pint of Science will be held in the bars La Tertulia, Lemon Rock and Sala Premier.
• The complete program can be consulted at https://pintofscience.es/events/granada

Grenada, May 6, 2024

This morning the international science outreach festival Pint of Science, to be held on May 13, 14 and 15 in Granada, was presented at the Science Park. During these three days, researchers from the city will take science out of the laboratories and share their knowledge with the public in the bars. In this sixth edition, the talks have been organized around three themes with the participation of scientists from different centers of the University of Granada such as the Artificial Intelligence Institute (DasCI-UGR) or the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC-UGR), and the Astrophysics Institute of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC). “From atoms to galaxies”, proposes a journey from subatomic particles to black holes; “Tech me out” dares to address technological innovations and the implications of the development of Artificial Intelligence; and “Our society” collects various research related to our daily lives, such as Nutrition, Democracy or Sex.

“In Granada, this year we celebrate the sixth edition going from two to three bars. To the venues of Lemon Rock and La Tertulia, which repeat participation, we add this year the Sala Premier. It is an event that always has a great reception in the city and the local organizing team has opted to continue expanding the range of talks,” explains Antonio Gomez, local coordinator of Pint of Science Granada. For his part, the national coordinator, Carlos Peris, points out that “worldwide, 560,000 people have attended the festival. In Spain, 93,500 attendees have enjoyed the science talks in one of the 325 bars that have organized events”. Peris thanked the 400 volunteers in Spain who organize the local festivals, with the aim of bringing science closer to society.

Rosana Montes, researcher at DasCI-UGR and speaker at Pint of Science 2024, stressed the importance of taking science out of the laboratories “because it is important that society understands what we do, and we must adapt the message not only to speak in a way that we are understood but also to speak where we are listened to”.

Pint of Science 2024 is a free event for all attendees and in Granada is possible thanks to the sponsorship of the Science Park of Granada, the patronage of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), the Artificial Intelligence Institute (DaSCI-UGR), the Vice-Rectorate of University Extension, Heritage of the University of Granada and Institutional Relations, and the collaboration of the Association of Biotechnologists of Andalusia (AsBAn).

Pint of Science at national and global level

Spain leads the world participation in the Pint of Science festival, with 850 talks in the bars of 67 cities. As a novelty, this year the national organization has reinforced and supported the importance of basic science, which has made it possible to achieve milestones such as vaccines or space travel. In the same way, topics of current social interest such as science policies and energy transition, which directly affect the welfare, economy and growth of the country, have been highlighted.

Pint of Science was born in May 2013 in the United Kingdom when researchers Michael Mostkin and Praveen Paul organized an event in their laboratories in order to show the research they were doing to people affected by different mental illnesses. They themselves saw the great impact it had on those patients, and thought, “if people go to labs… why not bring science to where the people are, the pubs?” Little did they know that a few years later, their idea would travel around the world, being held simultaneously in 2024 in the 5 continents, with 25 participating countries.

The 13th, 14th and 15th of May will be a toast in the bars for science and its dissemination!

The program of Pint of Science in Granada is composed of the following talks:

“Tech me Out”. La Tertulia

Lunes 13 de mayo: 

» ¡EN VAYA CHARCOS ME METO! Rosana Montes (DaSCI-UGR) 

» DESAFIANDO AL ALZHEIMER: IA EN EL DIAGNÓSTICO Carmen Jiménez (DaSCI-UGR) 

Martes 14 de mayo: 

» CATA CERVECERA CON IA CONFIABLE. Alberto Fernández (DaSCI-UGR) 

» RECONSTRUYENDO VIDAS: IA Y DESAPARECIDOS Sergio Damas (DaSCI-UGR) 

Miércoles 15 de mayo 

» INTELIGENCIA ARTIFICIAL GENERAL: VALOR VS SESGOS. Isaac Triguero (DaSCI-UGR) 

» DESENREDANDO GRANADA. Cristina Zuheros (DaSCI-UGR)

“De átomos a galaxias”. Sala Premier

Lunes 13 de mayo:

» GEMELOS DIGITALES POR GEMELOS NATURALES. Juan y Manuel Chiachio (DaSCI-UGR)

» CÓMO LA ASTRONOMÍA HA CAMBIADO TU VIDA. Rubén Fedriani (IAA-CSIC)

Martes 14 de mayo:

» SHH… EL UNIVERSO NOS ESTÁ SUSURRANDO. Clara Cabanillas (IAA-CSIC)

» NI AGUJEROS NI NEGROS: MEJOR FUERA QUE DENTRO. Teresa Toscano (IAA-CSIC)

Miércoles 15 de mayo:

» NANOAGROQUÍMICOS: CULTIVANDO EL FUTURO VERDE. Belén Parra (UGR)

» EXPLORANDO EL LOCO MUNDO DE LAS PARTÍCULAS. Adrián Carmona (UGR)

“Nuestra sociedad”. Lemon Rock

Lunes 13 de mayo:

» ¿CÓMO COMER DEL AIRE? Pablo Garrido (UGR)

» ¿VER PARA CREER? IA Y DESINFORMACIÓN. Javier Cantón (UGR)

Martes 14 de mayo:

» CIENCIA ABIERTA PARA CAMBIAR EL MUNDO. Pablo García (UGR)

» ENTRE SÁBANAS CON LABSEX. Carlos Pérez (CIMCYC-UGR)

Miércoles 15 de mayo:

» IA Y NEUROTECNOLOGÍA: ¿DR. JEKYLL O MR HYDE? María Ruz (CIMCYC-UGR)

» HASTA EL INFINITO Y MÁS ALLÁ DEL VOTO. Giselle García (UGR)

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The enormous potential of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is now recognized across all sectors, as are the challenges and risks that must be addressed responsibly and ethically when implementing it. With this in mind, this study has been created as a guide that includes recommendations, in-depth analysis of the tools available on the market, and use cases and best practices in the public and private sector. The study is the result of the work of the Cotec working group, coordinated by Repsol and Tecnatom, in which more than 40 representatives of the Foundation’s member organizations participated, including researchers from our DaSCI institute.

This article explores the topic of artificial intelligence and large-scale language models (LLM), explaining what they are and how they differ from other forms of artificial intelligence. It also describes how IAG works, what advantages it offers over other GLM-based dialog systems, and what precautions should be taken when using it. It also includes a comparison of the most important vendors of these tools and gives advice on when it is appropriate to use commercial or open source software. Finally, it describes the organization profiles according to the proposed use case: adapter, user or developer.

The publication identifies six key aspects of IAG implementation: identifying use cases, assessing business readiness, building a partner and vendor ecosystem, managing risk, understanding financial models, and knowing how to scale and manage use cases.

Over six months of working group meetings, success stories were identified and included in the document in various fields: entertainment, education, healthcare, marketing, customer care, manufacturing and IT or law, among others.

Among the proposals made in the paper is the establishment of strong governance at various stages of the IAG development lifecycle. “In any development where we implement solutions of this type, we must consider the ethical and social implications of this technology and recognize that maintaining the privacy or security of the data we use is important,” the authors state.

They also stress the importance of “ensuring that the IAG systems implemented are used responsibly and do not contribute to discrimination, inequality or environmental degradation, as these systems result in intensive consumption of resources.”

The report was presented in February with the presence at the closing ceremony of the Director General of Digitalization and AI of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function, Salvador Estevan, who in his speech announced the intention to generate a sandbox framework that “helps to generate guidelines that allow SMEs and companies in general to address the implementation of AI with the greatest guarantees and in the most efficient way possible”.

You can download the text in this link.

The UGR obtains, in collaboration with Repsol, one of the university-business chairs in Artificial Intelligence awarded by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation.

It is financed with 1.6 million euros over four years and will allow the development of the project ‘Ethical, Responsible and General Purpose Artificial Intelligence: Applications in Risk Scenarios’

The University of Granada, in collaboration with Repsol, has obtained funding of 1.6 million euros to create a university-business chair that, in the next four years, will develop the project Ethical, Responsible and General Purpose Artificial Intelligence: Applications in Risk Scenarios. The UGR presented its project in November to a call from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation that, within the framework of the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA), will finance university chairs dedicated to research, dissemination, teaching and innovation on Artificial Intelligence ( AI) and cybersecurity. This January 23, the resolution was made public and the project was the best valued of all those presented, obtaining the maximum possible financing.

Ethical, Responsible and General Purpose Artificial Intelligence: Applications in Risk Scenarios is a project co-financed by Repsol, which will contribute 400,000 euros to the chair, in addition to the 1.2 million financed by the Ministry. This chair represents a new milestone in the collaboration between the UGR and Repsol, which for five years has maintained a close and uninterrupted collaboration through various research projects and technology transfer based on Artificial Intelligence.

In this case, it is an ambitious project where progress is made in one of the great challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the development of intelligent technologies with an ethical dimension and responsible use that fall within the so-called trustworthy AI (Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence). , in English). The project includes an extensive scientific dissemination program to publicize this reliable AI, as well as a training space that will address the creation of specialized courses on this topic.

This university-business chair also has an international projection with the inclusion of two researchers from the University of Modena, Rita Cucchiara and Lorenzo Baraldi, with extensive experience in the field of explainability of AI algorithms. These join an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Repsol and the University of Granada (Francisco Herrera, Enrique Herrera, Sergio Damas, Natalia Díaz, Coral del Val, Daniel Molina, Francisco Lara, Isaac Triguero, Victoria Luzón, Rosana Montes, Siham Tabik and Rocío Romero). All participants have extensive experience in this area of ​​research.

The development of trustworthy AI systems entails a series of ethical and regulatory requirements that must be taken into account. These issues require diving into philosophy (in terms of ethics), law (in terms of regulation and user rights) with compliance with the European regulatory standards for artificial intelligence that will be approved in 2024 and compliance for two years. later (the so-called Artificial Intelligence Act) and sociology (exploring the social implications of new technological developments). The chair will address a pressing challenge in our society for the development of artificial intelligence that complies with ethical principles as well as the associated regulation.

The development of reliable AI systems is a multidimensional challenge that must be addressed from multiple perspectives. From a technical point of view, systems must be robust, fair, guarantee data privacy and be transparent and explainable. Many of these properties transcend their mere technical aspect, since they must be validated in a specific scope of application. For example, the concepts of explainability and fairness may be different in a scientific context than in a social context, or robustness depends on the specific use case, etc.

At the level of the scenario applied in the area of ​​development of Repsol, a line of research is proposed to develop artificial intelligence models for use in critical infrastructures, such as an oil refinery, that are robust and that guarantee safety in taking decisions. decisions of intelligent systems. Application domain experts will define validation procedures and evaluate the quality of these procedures. Repsol will facilitate this real scenario for the application of the systems and processes that will be developed in the project. This is one of the so-called high-risk scenarios for the use of artificial intelligence in European regulation and therefore requires the development of reliable artificial intelligence models.

On the other hand, AI research is advancing at an accelerated pace and new lines appear that take on special relevance. One of them is known as General Purpose AI (GAIA), which deals with the development of AI technologies that can adapt to different problems and contexts in an almost automatic way. This project addresses these advanced models that can be applied to different prediction problems present in a refinery through the transfer of knowledge from one problem to another.

During the four years of execution of the chair, both engineers will be hired who will be able to carry out their doctoral thesis in the different lines proposed by the project, as well as postdoctoral researchers who can add their experience in the area.

This call from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation will mobilize around 59 million euros through public-private contributions that will allow scholarships for around 150 researchers in the next four years. The program is part of the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (ENIA), the Digital Spain 2026 agenda, as well as the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Photos: Francisco Herrera, director of the Chair and in another image, Chair members Sergio Damas, Enrique Herrera and Rocío Romero.

#Outreach #November

November has allowed DaSCI researchers to visit university centers in Cuba and Brazil, with the aim of joining ties between Spain and Latin America, to publicize the institute’s research areas and to promote future lines of collaboration.

Plenary talk by Francisco Herrera “Secure and reliable artificial intelligence: Risk and auditability scenarios” at the II International Symposium on “Generation and Transfer of Knowledge for Digital Transformation” (SITIC2023, November 15 – 17, 2023) in the framework of the IV International Scientific Convention UCLV 2023. Central University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villas, Cuba.

In addition, this event was the setting for the awarding of the title of Visiting Professor to Dr. Francisco Herrara Triguero in recognition of his scientific career and collaboration with Cuba and especially with the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science of the UCLV.

Talk “Artificial Intelligence in the 21st Century: What it can offer us, and what we have to be careful of” by Daniel Molina at the State University of Londrina (Universidade Estadual de Londrina), Brazil.

• Get access to the presentation at zenodo.
• See announcement at State University of Londrina.

#InMedia #Awards #November 2023

Last Monday at the Open Days of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba (ACC) in an open session on Artificial Intelligence, the Director of the DaSCI Institute gave a lecture entitled “A Holistic Vision of Artificial Intelligence. Safe and Reliable: Risks, Ethics, Regulation and Auditability”.

At the same event, he was officially awarded the status of Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba, which was granted to him in August 2022 together with the researcher José Luis Verdegay, also from the University of Granada.

This appointment comes in recognition of his extensive research career and the promotion of knowledge and technology transfer in international and national projects as well as with companies at all levels.

Both researchers have more than 1,000 scientific productions, including more than 50 books and more than 700 articles in leading journals.

#InMedia #Awards #October2023

The award recognizes the contribution of women pursuing doctoral studies in the area of computer science to encourage their start in the research career and create references for new generations.

The Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) has awarded a runner-up prize in the third edition of the SCIE-ZONTA-SNGULAR awards to Práxedes Martínez Moreno, a PhD student at DaSCI Institute, University of Granada. The research line of the winner is New Methods of Human Identification by Craniofacial Superposition Based on Artificial Intelligence, and is directed by Sergio Damas, professor of the Department of Computer Languages and Systems, and Pablo Mesejo, professor of the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.

In the resolution of the second prize to Práxedes Martínez Moreno, the jury explains that the winner develops “a very promising research activity and also a very active commitment in activities aimed at promoting the participation of women in the field of technologies, being aware of the personal effort that sometimes this means for women”.

All Information in the following links (In Spanish):

Canal UGR Noticias

Granada Hoy

CANAL SUR MEDIA | July 8, 2023

In the public television program Los Reporteros, Canal Sur journalists offer a space of analysis on the pros and cons of solutions based on Artificial Intelligence. It is shown as a new tool that can add great value for Andalusia. In the program, Andalusian researchers are interviewed with focus on Granada and Seville.
In the case of Granada and the spaces associated with the PTS and the DaSCI institute, Professor Francisco Herrera and the researchers and members of DaSCI, Rosana Montes and Isaac Triguero, are interviewed from minute 7:18 onwards.

Source: https://www.canalsur.es/television/la-revolucion-de-la-inteligencia-artificial-en-andalucia/1949944.html

InMedia #Awards #March2023

The awards ceremony of the prizes ‘Granada. City of Science and Innovation 2022, was held last Friday at the Manuel de Falla Auditorium. We accompanied Óscar Cordón, DaSCI researcher who received an award in the category of Innovation to Knowledge Transfer.

It has been an afternoon in which science and its dissemination has occupied a protagonist space and in which the great scientific talent of all those recognized with these awards given by the City of Granada has been valued.

More information (In Spanish):

Granada Hoy

Ahora Granada

Europa Press

#News #InMedia

The IDEAL newspaper of Granada publishes in its publication of Sunday, February 19, 2023 a news item that lists ten cutting-edge researches that will be of interest for their results. They refer to projects of the University of Granada, DaSCI, CSIC and Genyo among others. Two of those mentioned are GOIMAI (https://goimai.es) and the Forensic Lab, research carried out by DaSCI members.

Home page: https://www.ideal.es/ciencia/diez-investigaciones-granadinas-20230219174042-nt.html

Downloadable:

CANAL SUR #InMedia

Last Monday, January 16, Natalia Diaz (DaSCI researcher) participated in the program Conciencia of Canal Sur to talk about explainable, reliable and responsible Artificial Intelligence.

(Minute 13.30 of video. In Spanish)

#Media #Awards #January 2023

The rector of the University of Granada, Pilar Aranda, presided last January 11 the award ceremony of the first edition of the awards and runner-up prizes for the best bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral theses in the field of equality and inclusion. In total, 12 awards have been granted: 4 for TFG, 4 for TFM and 4 for doctoral thesis.

The inclusion prize for a doctoral thesis was awarded to Liliana Beatriz Herrera Nieves for the research entitled ‘Evaluation of Moodle Usability. Ambientes Educativos Virtuales Inclusivos a partir del Diseño Universal de Aprendizaje’ and directed by the directors Emilio Crisol and Rosana Montes, secretary of DaSCI.

Post in CanalUGR: https://canal.ugr.es/noticia/la-ugr-concede-los-premios-a-los-mejores-trabajos-fin-de-grado-fin-de-master-y-tesis-doctorales-de-igualdad-e-inclusion/

Photo gallery of the awards ceremony: http://sl.ugr.es/0d1w

Post in GranadaHoy Press: https://www.granadahoy.com/granada/Entrega-fin-doctorales-inclusion-UGR_3_1756054397.html

#News #InMedia

In the special supplement of the newspaper El Mundo of Monday, December 26, 2022, Artificial Intelligence is presented as the idea of the year. With the title “The great leap forward of Artificial Intelligence” and the support of the Dall.E image generator that illustrates the 8 pages of this special, three questions are covered, which will be answered by specialists and also by the OpenAI chatbot.

For this issue, journalist Angel Diaz interviewed three DaSCI researchers: Natalia Diaz, Rosana Montes and Sergio Damas.

Home page: https://www.elmundo.es/television/medios/2022/12/25/63a8bde9e4d4d855188b4588.html

Downloadable supplement: https://dasci.es/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022-12-26_especial_IA_ElMundo.pdf

#News #InMedia

“Artificial Intelligence products will come with a prospectus, like medicines”

After 11 years between Paris, California and the Netherlands, Natalia Diaz joins the group of experts in AI at the University of Granada.

IDEAL de  Granada (In Spanish)

#News #InMedia

Six DaSCI researchers share their projects in IDEAL newspaper

These tools show how Science leaves the laboratories to have a direct impact on companies and administrations by providing solutions.

IDEAL de  Granada (In Spanish)

#News #InMedia

The work that has been prefaced by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, Carme Artigas.

The text collects the different editions of the course on Law and Artificial Intelligence in which participate, among others, the director of the Institute Francisco Herrera and the researchers Óscar Cordón and María José del Jesus.

IDEAL de  Granada (In Spanish) 

#News #InMedia

In a joint interview with EFE, Rosana Montes and Siham Tabik, full professors in the departments of Languages and Computer Systems, and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada, respectively, give good proof that AI and sustainability already go hand in hand.

In a world increasingly concerned about the consequences of climate change, artificial intelligence (AI) puts all its potential at the service of sustainable development, with algorithms that “jump” from computers and cell phones to nature to contribute to environmental improvement.

These two experts, concerned about issues related to the environment and in favor of promoting interdisciplinarity in science, agree that the revolution represented by AI, must be compatible and is also necessary for sustainable development in general, and for the fight against climate change in particular.

Complete News. EFE COMUNICACIÓN (In Spanish)

#In press #Nov24

During his visit to the DaSCI Institute facilities in the Health Technology Park, the mayor was able to see the use of the 3D scanner of our forensic laboratory. Professor Sergio Damas, gave a demonstration and explained the uses and applications of this line of research, one of the 33 lines in total that our institute has.

In statements to the press, Mayor Paco Cuenca said: “Granada’s candidacy is not a one-time occurrence, but a definite ambition thanks to the opportunity generated by the University to take advantage of the talent that is developed in the different research frameworks for the transformation and improvement of the productive model in our city” #AESIAgr

Access to the news in the press:

• Granada Hoy https://www.granadahoy.com/granada/alcalde-Granada-justicia-AESIA_0_1741627035.html
• Granada Digital https://www.granadadigital.es/resumen-semanal-una-estrella-para-granada-y-un-borron-mundial-para-la-humanidad/
• Andalucía Europa Press https://www.europapress.es/andalucia/noticia-alcalde-afirma-justicia-granada-albergue-agencia-estatal-inteligencia-artificial-20221124145753.html

#News #InMedia

UGR Researchers Eugenio Martínez and Zoraida Callejas are interviewed by the EFE news agency and introduce us to natural language processing and its need to humanize technology.

Natural language processing is the set of computational and informatics techniques that enable machines to understand and generate human language, whether spoken or written, in any language. Its potential applications go beyond machine translators or virtual assistants such as “Alexa” and encompass almost all areas of life.

Complete News, EFE COMUNICA (In Spanish)

#TG7 Granada #LaGuinda #Monday November 7, 2022

Panel discussion with representatives of the team work on the preparation of the proposal presented by the City of Granada to be a candidate for the headquarters of the State Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence. The program La Guinda of the local television of Granada TG7, brought together representatives of the City Council of Granada, the University of Granada, the Technological Park of Health, the Technological Circle and the Chamber of Commerce of Granada.

CANAL SUR

A few days ago, the researcher of the Coral del Val Institute, participated in the program Conciencia on Canal Sur to talk about how artificial intelligence has changed what we know about the history of man based on his genetics.

(Minute 12 of video. In Spanish)

#News #InMedia

NATALIA DÍAZ: AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND

Artificial intelligence will be increasingly present in our lives thanks to recent advances in machine learning techniques, which allow machines to confront immense data sets and find patterns that a human would be unable to see.

The problem is that these kinds of algorithms work like what experts call a black box, that is, it is not possible to look inside them to understand what they have done and why.

Full article in the newspaper EL MUNDO (In Spanish)

#News #InMedia

The researcher of the University of Jaén (UJA) Macarena Espinilla Estévez has been recognized in the II Margaritas Salas Awards for her scientific career, in the framework of Talent Woman Spain 2022, event that has celebrated its fifth edition in the Palace of Fairs and Congresses of Malaga.

All the information in the DIARIO DIGITAL (In Spanish)

It ends a week of recognition for our researchers that began on Monday 24 with the publication of the “Ranking of the World Scientists: World’s Top 2% Scientists”, prepared by Stanford University, which places 127 UGR researchers among the most influential in the world.
Of that number, a large group of 18 researchers in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, are researchers of the DaSCI Institute, which comes to recognize the quality of the research done from our institution.

This ranking, considered one of the most prestigious worldwide, was created by a group of experts from Stanford University, Elsevier and SciTech Strategies. The ranking uses information on the publications of researchers, contained in the Scopus database. To produce it, Scopus data on the number of articles published (1996-2021), the number of times each research has been cited and the length of time researchers have been active were analyzed.

Three days later, the U.S. magazine U.S. News & World Report published the Ranking “2022/2023 Best Global Universities” in which the University of Granada was recognized as the third most important in Europe in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

This ranking evaluates the quality of universities in more than 90 countries, based on 13 indicators that measure their academic performance in research and their global and regional reputation. For this purpose, data from the Clarivate database are used. The result is the 2,000 best universities in the world. Globally, the data place our University in 313th place worldwide and sixth out of 53 nationally.

And all this at a time when Granada left ready the document to be submitted for the candidacy as the headquarters of the Spanish Agency for Supervision of Artificial Intelligence and we can only hope that the great results in both rankings are the necessary impetus to achieve it.

More information: (in Spanish)

CANAL UGR

CANAL UGR

Ideal de Granada

On October 22nd, the signing of a general protocol of action between the Rey Juan Carlos University (Research Center for Intelligent Information Technologies and their Applications of the Rey Juan Carlos University) and the University of Granada (Andalusian Interuniversity Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence), for the realization of joint research and transfer activities, was closed.

These collaborations will be articulated through the signing of more specific agreements that will manage future projects; cooperation in training programs or exchange of research and technical staff; cooperation in technology diffusion and innovation programs; reciprocal sponsorship in conferences, cycles, seminars or events organized by either institution.

In the morning of Wednesday, July 7, the UGR Research Awards were presented. The ceremony was led, Pilar Aranda, accompanied at the presidential table by the secretary general, María Asunción Torres, and by Francisco Javier O’Valle, director of Research Centers and Institutes and president of the jury

The University of Granada firmly believes that an effort must be made to transfer to society all the research, teaching and management that is done on a daily basis in the different institutions that make up our university. These awards recognize the value of people and institutions that “help society to understand what we do, how, where and why”.

Our institute has been awarded 4 times in the following modalities:

• UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA AWARD FOR SCIENTIFIC DISCLOSURE, for BARBER’S SCIENCE, of which our colleague Fco. Javier Martínez Murcia.
• UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA AWARD FOR EXCELLENT RESEARCH WORK in the area of Technical Sciences to Enrique Herrera Viedma, Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, UGR. For the work referred to below: “Consensus Building for the Heterogeneous Large-Scale GDM with the Individual Concerns and Satifactions” Zhang, HJ, Dong, YC, Herrera Viedma, E. IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, 26,2, 884-898. 2018

• UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA AWARD FOR COMMUNICATION AND INNOVATION IN DIGITAL MEDIA, in its collective modality to the Andalusian Interuniversity Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence (DaSCI), Rocio Celeste Romero Zaliz.

• UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA AWARD FOR KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER, to Francisco Herrera Triguero

More information (In Spanish):

CANAL UGR

IDEAL de Granada

CANAL SUR TV

A few days ago Canal Sur dedicated a program to the figure of our director Francisco Herrera. Analyzed by those who know him best, Enrique Herrera, Óscar Cordón, Rosana Montes and Nuria Rodríguez, in about half an hour we can get an idea of who is Francisco Herrera.

Natalia Díaz, has been awarded in the category of Science of the “XIV Andalusian Future Awards”

Natalia Díaz, DaSCI researcher, has received in Malaga the recognition of her research career. The XIV Andalusian Future Awards, organized by Grupo Joly and Caixabank, have awarded her in the category of Science. More than 200 people attended the Automobile Museum in Malaga to recognize the talent of young Andalusians like Natalia, who are called to be the present and the future of the Andalusian community.

The Spanish Army organizes in Granada a conference on decision-making processes in the digital era.

On the morning of May 18, DaSCI has been present at the conference on digitization in the armed forces organized by the Army. DaSCI researchers attended the event, in the Auditorium of the Campus de las Salud, where Francisco Herrera (Director of the Institute) participated in a round table on Artificial Intelligence and employment.

The event was inaugurated by the Chief of Staff of the Army, Amador Enseñat, and Pilar Aranda, rector of the University of Granada.

The day was divided into three moments, a first conference by the Director of the Center for Information Systems and Technology and Communications of the Ministry of Defense, José María Millán. A round table on Artificial Intelligence and employment moderated by the journalist Marisa Rodríguez and in the afternoon session “Ethical and legal challenges of AI” have been addressed with a panel of experts moderated by Quico Chirino (deputy director of the IDEAL).

All the information about the conference in the following links (In Spanish):

The Army and Future Challenges

IDEAL

On YouTuve the video that shows us how was the exhibition PIONERAS INFORMÁTICAS. Recognizing the contributions of women in computer engineering.

This is a Cultural Project coordinated by Lina García Cabrera, José Mª Serrano Chica (University of Jaén) and Irene Pedrosa García (IES Auringis) and that has been carried out in the exhibition hall of the Zabaleta building of the University of Jaén between March 3 and April 7, 2022.

On the morning of May 4, Francisco Herrera, director of the Institute, was interviewed on Cadena Ser in Granada. He has talked about digital transformation, cybersecurity, digital twins and the commitment of companies like Ghenova for Granada. Also about #aiMPULSA and our desire that Granada becomes the new headquarters of the Spanish Agency for Artificial Intelligence Supervision.

You can listen to the complete program in this link (In Spanish)

A multidisciplinary scientific team at the University of Granada (UGR) has designed the MVPAlab application, which thanks to programming and artificial intelligence (AI) offers an intuitive and easy-to-use tool for the analysis of brain electroencephalograms, key explorations in human neuroscience. This work exemplifies the existing collaboration between university institutes of the UGR that unite AI with the study of the human brain.

The group of researchers leading this advance is formed by David López and José M.G. Peñalver, from the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), Juan Manuel Górriz Sáez, from the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence  (DaSCI), and María Ruz Cámara, director of CIMCYC.

More information in the following links (In Spanish):

IDEAL de Granada

LA VANGUARDIA

CANAL UGR

Until April 7, the exhibition ‘Pioneras informáticas: reconociendo las aportaciones de la mujer en la Ingeniería Informática’ can be visited at the University of Jaén in the Exhibition Hall of the Zabaleta building (D 1) of the Campus Las Lagunillas of the UJA.

The exhibition is coordinated by the professors of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Jaén Lina García Cabrera (DaSCI Researcher) and José Mª Serrano Chica, and the teacher of the IES Auringis Irene Pedrosa García, the exhibition arises as a result of the Call for Cultural Projects of the Vice-rectorate of Projection of Culture and Sport, and has been coordinated by Lina García Cabrera and José María Serrano Chica, and Irene Pedrosa García.

All information in AULA MAGNA, El Periódico Universitario (In Spanish)

The city of Granada is gaining momentum to host the National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre and Agency, which would turn the historic city into the most important technological and scientific reference point in Spain. Granada already has the Ifmif-Dones particle accelerator and a quantum supercomputer.

We analyse the relevance of this initiative and the immediate future of AI with Javier Martínez, head of the Google Cloud pre-sales team; José Luis Florez, director of Plaiground, the business unit of Minsait (Indra) specialising in AI, and Enrique Herrera Viezma, vice-rector for research and transfer at the University of Granada.

Enjoy the programe (In Spanish)

During the 14th, 15th and 16th of February, a delegation of representatives from different sectors of our city, including Enrique Herrera (Vice Chancellor and member of DaSCI) and Francisco Herrera (Director of the Institute) traveled to the Dubai Expo where they presented the programs and strategic projects of the UGR. Among others, AIRAndalusia and the DaSCI Institute.
The Vice Chancellor for Research and Transfer of the UGR, Enrique Herrera, has valued the visits and meetings developed as “very rewarding”, since they have dealt with relevant aspects such as “the regulation of artificial intelligence at international level, in which the UGR can make great contributions, especially in Dubai, where the full potential of this technology has not been implemented yet.

All information in CANAL UGR

Local Media (in spanish):

La Universidad de Granada presenta sus proyectos estratégicos en Dubái

Gastronomía, inteligencia artificial y turismo, las bazas de Granada en la Expo Dubái 2020

The University of Jaén brings computer science to schools through the ‘Hour of Code’ initiative.
“Programming is easy, fun and creative and has a very important future” says DaSCI researcher Lina García.
In the following video they encourage us to also be part of the Hour of Code initiative.

The following image shows how the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of the Vice-Rectorate for Communication and Institutional Projection and the Department of Computer Science of the University of Jaén are offering a one-hour introduction to Computer Science, designed to show that everyone can learn to program and thus understand the basic fundamentals of the discipline.

The activity in figures:
– Participating researchers: 1
– Participating students UJA: 12
– Number of code hours: 88
– Participating educational centres: 13

#podcast #EL PLACER DE ADMIRAR

Paleontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga talks on Radio Nacional de España with Francisco Herrera, in a conversation in which he discusses how he sees the future of society in a highly technological world in which Artificial Intelligence (machines, robots, intelligent systems) plays a fundamental role. For example, repetitive tasks are likely to be done by machines.

Part I – January 8th https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/el-placer-de-admirar/francisco-herrera-trigueros-08-01-22/6251845/

Part II – January 15th https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/el-placer-de-admirar/francisco-herrera-trigueros-ii/6251858/

Enrique Árbol has talked to Francisco Herrera, director of the DaSCI Institute and councillor of the Granada City Council about the news published these days in different media of the province about the intention of making Granada the next host of the National Centre and the State Agency for the supervision of Artificial Intelligence.

You can listen to the hole interwiew, at the following link (in Spanish)

News #Press Release

The rector of the University of Granada, Pilar Aranda; the Minister of Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge and Universities of the Junta de Andalucía, Rogelio Velasco; the mayor of Granada, Francisco Cuenca, and the president of the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium Enterprises (CEPYME), Gerardo Cuerva, have presented this morning the Andalusian Digital Innovation Center AIR-Andalusia, together with representatives of all the entities that make up the consortium.

AIR-Andalusia is a center specialized in artificial intelligence and applied robotics. This organization was created as a support tool for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and public administrations to improve their efficiency and competitiveness, providing them with access to different digitization services focused on the optimization of business/production processes, products or services using digital technologies.

• Its objective is to be a support tool for SMEs and public administrations in the field of technology and innovation.
• This consortium is constituted as a representation of the entire Andalusian ecosystem: from universities or research centers, to business associations, chambers of commerce, parks, European Business and Innovation Centers (CEEIs/BICS), companies and technology clusters.

AIR-Andalusia official website: https://www.airandalusia.es/

Photo gallery of the presentation: https://www.flickr.com/photos/canalugr/sets/72157720226324531/

Video of the presentation

Thursday 25th of November of 2021, Macarena Espinilla Estevez, DaSCI researcher, passed the exams for the access to Professors at the University of Jaén. She defended this position with a research project “Recognition of activities in intelligent environments” and a teaching project “Computer architecture in the Degree of Computer Engineering“.

The main strength of our institute lies in our researchers and this recognition of Macarena’s career is a source of joy for all of us, our most sincere congratulations! 

#Webinar Thursday

AIRANDALUSIA is the Andalusian eDIH in which DaSCI collaborates so that SMEs and freelancers can find services that facilitate innovation. An innovation based on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and associated Disruptive Digital Technologies, innovating and transferring technology to society and industry.

Artificial Intelligence has established itself as one of the technologies with the greatest transformative power in society and business. Therefore, it is essential to know the latest trends around it and the fundamental role played by the European Union to promote it as a differential element in the digital transformation of companies.

That is why Javier Melero, Deputy Director of Strategic Area of DaSCI, presented the following talk:

HOW SMES CAN TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / EDIH AIRANDALUSIA.

More information: https://www.cea.es/webinar-inteligencia-artificial-y-su-aplicacion-en-las-empresas-airandalusia-el-hub-digital-andaluz-de-ia/

#InTheMedia #UCO Wednesday, November 10, 2021

A post in the Diario de Córdoba comments on the results of the Stanford University ranking associated with the impact of research in various areas, based on metrics of impact of researchers’ publications worldwide. This list identifies the top of the world’s research in their respective areas, and is prepared annually.
In this particular case, DaSCI’s Deputy Director, Sebastian Ventura appears in the ranking prepared by Professors Baas, Boyack and Ioannidis, from Elsevier B.V., SciTechStrategies Inc. and Stanford University, respectively.

See which other DaSCI researchers are in world rankings.

Source: Diario de Córdoba

#networking

The Andalucía Conectada platform offers a virtual training space associated with emerging technologies. Thanks to its catalog, you can locate the best training offer according to the level or competence that the content covers. Focused on the ICT sector, we know from the Ministry of Economic Transformation, that Andalusian companies are betting on AI as a differential value.

For this reason, the webinnar held on October 19 at 10 am was attended by the deputy director of DaSCI, Pedro Garcia, who had the opportunity to talk about the level of development of Artificial Intelligence in Andalusia.

In his words, predictive analytics, machine learning and data science are the areas of Artificial Intelligence with the highest level of implementation in companies.

#recognition

This city council sees in the word Effort a more than necessary value in the educational world. Therefore, it has created the Rosa Rodríguez Extraordinary Award for Compulsory Education at provincial level to the best academic record of the course. In this way it wants to recognize the most diligent secondary school student in the province during the year.

The award, whose rules were approved in the plenary last September 2021, bears the name of the researcher from Guarromanense of the University of Jaén, Rosa María Rodríguez Domínguez, an example of personal and academic improvement. “It represents tenacity, perseverance and dedication to a dream. It is our small tribute to a great woman and neighbor,” says the mayor, Alberto Rubio.

More information: El Observador – At the center of the news.

#Conference

The professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the UJA, and DaSCI researcher M.ª José del Jesus Díaz, gave in her institution the master lecture entitled ‘Artificial Intelligence and data for society’. The event could be followed live on YouTube.

This lecture presented a reflection on the benefits that Artificial Intelligence, through machine learning and the ethical use of data, brings to society. To do this, it briefly reviewed its history and milestones, analyzed some of its applications, especially in the field of health. It also identified the challenges to be addressed to continue advancing in the development of a reliable and human-centered artificial intelligence.

More information about the event and its content, in the Digital Journal of the UJA: Artificial Intelligence and data for society.

DaSCI Researchers participate in the XIX Conference of the Spanish Association of Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA).This year CAEPIA is being held in the context of the 6th Spanish Congress on Computer Science (CEDI 2020), which includes many events and activities related to Computer Science, with greater visibility and social impact.

The Conference of the Spanish Association of Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA) is a biennial forum open to researchers from all over the world to present and discuss their latest scientific and technological advances in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.).

On this occasion, one of the two Plenary Lectures at CAEPIA 2021 was given by Óscar Cordón, (researcher of the DaSCI institute) titled “Artificial Intelligence for Forensic Anthropology and Human Identification”. Prof. Oscar Cordón was also awarded by the Spanish Association of A.I. (AEPIA) for his activities and his promotion of A.I.

More information (In Spanish)

Ideal de Granada

Granada Hoy

#TV #Granada #Science

Participating in this debate are three leading figures. The director of the DaSCI institute, Francisco Herrera, the director of the Fundación Descubre, Teresa Cruz and the director of the Participation and Social Innovation unit, MediaLab, of the Vice-rectorate of Institutional Policy and Planning of the University of Granada, Esteban Romero.

You can watch the full content of the program (50 minutes)

The creation of “AI Lab Granada” is the result of the efforts of the University of Granada, Indra and Google Cloud to make Granada and the PTS Foundation – Parque Tecnológico de la Salud a leading space in research and knowledge transfer.

The agreement signed by Pilar Aranda, rector of the University of Granada (UGR), Isaac Hernández, Google Cloud’s country manager, and Cristina Ruiz, Indra’s CEO, marks the beginning of this great project. This public-private collaboration, which in the words of Rogelio Velasco, Minister of Economic Transformation of the Regional Government, is essential in order to have the necessary resources for digitalisation to reach everyone.

The Centre will have more than 100 PhDs in AI and 165 consultants, developers and researchers and an ecosystem of startups and entrepreneurs. It will develop artificial intelligence solutions that will increase the efficiency and sustainability of businesses, public administrations and society. Promoting an inclusive, sustainable and focused AI to improve people’s quality of life.

You can find all the information by clicking on the following links (in spanish)

El País
IDEAL
Granada Hoy
EuropaSur

At the proposal of the Pfizer Foundation in its latest meeting with the evolution that does not cease, a session was organised to analyse the transition “from Big Data to Medicine on Demand”.

In this session, moderated by Sergio Rodríguez, President of the Pfizer Foundation, different experts, including our director Francisco Herrera, analysed from different perspectives how AI will be an essential tool for Preventive and Predictive Medicine in the next 10 years.

You can read the full article at the following LINK

On Friday the 2nd of July, the IDEAL newspaper dedicated its Gourmet space to talk to Francisco Herrera, our director, about digitalisation in the hotel and catering industry and what Artificial Intelligence can do for gastronomy and restaurants. A fundamental sector for the economy of our region.

All the information in the IDEAL newspaper (In Spanish)

The Hojjat Adeli Award for Outstanding Contribution in Neural Systems, established by World Scientific in 2010, is awarded annually to the most innovative article published in the previous volume/year of the International Journal of Neural Systems.

The award, which is endowed with a plaque and a cash prize of $5000 this year, goes to the following publication:

M. Leming, J.M. Gorriz, and J. Suckling, Ensemble Deep Learning on Large, Mixed-Site fMRI Datasets in Autism and Other Tasks, International Journal of Neural Systems, 30:7, 2020, 2050012 (16 pages).

The author is Juanma Górriz, a researcher at the DaSCI Institute with an extensive research career in the field of biomedical signal processing and the diagnosis of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. In 2015 his work was recognised with the medal of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the category of Young Researcher and since the birth of the Institute in 2018 his research group Signal Processing and Biomedicak Application is part of it.

Last Friday, 18 June 2021 and coinciding with the Institute’s Council Celebration, a large number of DaSCI researchers gathered in a virtual meeting to celebrate the DaSCI Day.

This year we have been working intensively on improving communication and dissemination aspects in the Institute. In this process we have been advised by the “Fundación Descubre” and one of their proposals was to find a space and a time for all members of the Institute to celebrate and take the pulse of our activities. Over the last few years, the number of researchers and students at DaSCI has not stopped growing and there are now more than 140 of us who have never had the opportunity to meet together before.

This year, since we were not all vaccinated yet, it didn’t seem sensible to have a physical meeting, so we had a virtual meeting in which we shared an “aperitif”. We had a very pleasant time with a lot of laughs, a contest and even a raffle with two brand new winners.

We are determined that this will be the first of many physical meetings that will take place every June 14th, the date on which the Institute is officially born and on which we hope to continue celebrating the growth of our project.

The podcast sheds light into the technologies used in the processing and analysis of information. Hosted by Rocío Romero and Francisco Jesús Martínez, both researchers at the DaSCI institute, the podcast deals with the latest advances in these technologies and their future prospects in simple language and for all audiences. The podcast is a biweekly series and each episode deals with a different area of the field, including short news items, radio fiction and interviews with experts.

SintonIA – Artificial Intelligence (AI) on air. This is the title of the new podcast of the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence (DaSCI), launched on 15 March, 2021. The programme is part of the institute’s communication and dissemination strategy and, according to its authors, aims to bring to the general public what lies behind the technologies that are shaping the present.

Hosted by computer scientists Rocío Romero and Francisco Jesús Martínez, SintonIA talks about statistics, neural networks, data science, practical applications and the latest advances at the institute in a friendly and light-hearted way. Each episode includes references to short news items, an in-depth topic and interviews with experts in the field.

The first episode was dedicated to women in computer science, and featured several guests at different stages: a female undergraduate student, a PhD student and an engineer from a large IT company.

The “World Scientist: World’s Top 2% Scientists” is a list created by a group of researchers coordinated from Stanford University, which has been recently published in the prestigious journal Plos Biology, and in which the world’s elite in the world of scientific research is included.

Among the authors recognized in the area of Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing are Francisco Herrera, Director of the Institute (among the 300 best in the world in this area) and other members of the Institute such as Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Luis Martínez, Salva García, Cristóbal Romero, Rosa M. Rodríguez, Óscar Cordón, Sebastián Ventura, Francisco J. Cabrerizo, Jesús Alcalá, Julián Luengo and Javier Ramírez.

The research was carried out by a group of experts formed by John Loannidis (Stanford University), Jeroen Baas (Elsevier B.V.), Kevin W. Boyack (SciTech Strategies), and Richard Klavans (SciTech Strategies).

From Scopus data, they have created a database that collects more than 100,000 scientists with standardized information on their citations, the h-index (an index to measure an individual’s scientific research output), the co-authorship-adjusted hm-index, citations of articles in different authorship positions, and a composite indicator (with metrics with and without self-citations).

The database collects 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, in addition to allowing to know the results of researchers throughout their career or in the year 2019.

For us, this list represents the enhancement of the work done every day by DaSCI researchers and we are happy to have 12 of the greatest among “ours”.

The program Conciencia of CanalSur has dedicated its space this week to Artificial Intelligence and has done so with two members of DaSCI who are world leaders in this area: Francisco Herrera (director of our Institute) and Enrique Herrera-Viedma (Vice-rector of Research and Transfer of the UGR)

In Spanish

Ferrovial has partnered with Spain’s Royal Academy of Engineering (RAI) and the University of Granada (UGR), through the DaSCI Research Institute, to examine the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a view to understanding how engineering and the technology solutions strongly anchored in Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help attain the goals.

The UN established the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. The goals signal a paradigm shift in the way companies and governments design new business models and public policies based on sustainability. Governments, the private sector and civil society all have an important role to play in this regard.

The project, entitled “Engineering as a Path to the SDGs: Artificial Intelligence and Disruptive Digital Technologies” was launched in March 2020 and focused on studying artificial intelligence and digital technologies and their application to the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda. The result is a 465-page book, with original illustrations by Pablo García-Moral, written by a team of 16 people coordinated by Rosana Montes (UGR), Francisco Herrera (UGR and RAI), Javier Pérez de Vargas (RAI) and Rosario Marchena (Ferrovial).

The book, entitled “Inteligencia Artificial y Tecnologías Digitales para los ODS” (Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies for the SDGs), by Rosana Montes and co-authors, published by Real Academia de Ingeniería, is organized into three parts: an introduction to artificial intelligence and digital technologies, an analysis of their application in achieving the SDGs, and a set of recommendations on actions that may lead to the execution of projects and contribute to the attainment of the associated targets. In this connection, specialist scientific literature was reviewed, including more than a thousand bibliographic references on the 169 targets that are proposed in order to achieve the SDGs.

The book concludes with a brief discussion revolving around five key lessons learned, which are outlined in the graphic below:

The study can be consulted and downloaded through the following link:
http://www.raing.es/es/publicaciones/libros/inteligencia-artificial-y-tecnolog-digitales-para-los-ods

In September we are launching a cycle of seminars especially designed for those PhD students who are just starting out their research career. This series of seminars will take place every Monday at 16.30 and will last approximately 1 hour. The first speaker will be Francisco Herrera, director of the Institute. His first three seminars will be focused on:

• What is a doctoral thesis?
• Research and Creativity
• Communicating the Research

If you are interested in participating in these events, please contact Nuria Rodríguez Barroso who will provide access details.

Professor Oscar Cordón, member of the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, has made a dissertation at the request of the Mexican Government’s Directorate-General for Public Policy on Human Rights.
The online talk, entitled ‘Artificial intelligence applied to forensic science’, was given as part of the seminar ‘Forensic science from a human rights perspective’.

More info in IDEAL de Granada (In Spanish)

Ivan Palomares presented a tutorial in the SIGIR 2020 ACM Congress on Information Retrieval.

“Reciprocal Recommendation: matching Users with the Right Users” aims to bring the youngest scientific community closer, the so-called reciprocal SRs that are characterized by recommending users to each other in a personalized way to connect or establish some kind of relationship (either personal, professional or academic).

Their range of real applications is currently increasing: from online dating apps to job search platforms, online learning, shared economy and social networks.

If you are interested in the topic click here to download all the slides of the presentation

Formed by outstanding personalities from the scientific, economic and educational fields, it is an advisory body for analysis, advice and support to the Government in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Francisco Herrera, Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada and Director of the Andalusian Research Institute in Data Science and Computational Intelligence, has been selected as one of the members of the new Advisory Board on Artificial Intelligence of the Spanish Government.

More Information in Canal UGR, El Independiente de Granada and Ministerio de Asuntos Económicos y Transformación Digital (In Spanish)

Cultural activity within the framework of the virtual conference cycle “After Covid-19, what?” organized by La Madraza. Centre of Contemporary Culture. University of Granada.

The director of DaSCI defends that science will be the one to allow us to get out of the health crisis and that should be used in the economic field “as an engine of development”. He also urges the “digital transformation” of the city councils

The Digital Transformation of the city councils and the commitment to make cities and their metropolitan areas an Intelligent Territory can give us a boost in the Digital Economy Era, its penetration in society will accelerate in the coming times.

“Thanks to science we will get out of the crisis”

More information in LARAZON.ES (In Spanish)

The Andalusian Research Institute on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Granada (UGR) and the Radiodiagnostic Service of the San Cecilio Clinical University Hospital have developed an automatic system that allows the detection of Covid-19 through patients’ chest X-rays.

The Andalusian Research Institute on Data Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Granada (UGR) and the Radiodiagnosis Service of the San Cecilio University Hospital are working on the development of an automatic system to detect the pulmonary affectation produced by Covid-19 through the patients’ chest X-rays.

With a reliability of 80% we are currently working to further increase this percentage in the coming weeks.

Ideal de Granada (in Spanish)

A group of researchers including Manuel Chica, a researcher at the Institute, has published “Nature Scientific Reports” an article in which they develop their research by applying artificial intelligence techniques to collaborative economy platforms such as Airbnb or Blablacar in order to understand the mechanisms that govern them.

Researchers from the University of Newcastle (Australia) and the Technischen Universität Berlin (Germany) have also participated in this work.

In recent years the number of collaborative economy platforms such as Airbnb or BlaBlacar has increased enormously, changing the way we travel, go on holiday or stay. So much so that the collaborative economy (‘sharing economy’ in English) has shaped our current society and influenced government and business decisions. The Internet and the use of mobile apps have facilitated the development of the collaborative economy, increasing the number of users and existing applications and platforms.

More info (In Spanish)

Europa Press Andalucía

Canal UGR

LA VANGUARDIA

Ideal de Granada

Granada Hoy

María José del Jesus Díaz, the only professor of the Area of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at UJA, and a founding member of the DaSCI Institute.

“Currently there is a very low percentage of students in degrees linked to engineering, and the percentage is even lower than when I was studying. I think this is a major problem because all fields should benefit from the female and male perspective. Women must be part of the digital transformation and the AI momentum in which we are immersed.”

Read the full article in the Andalusian digital newspaper Información (In Spanish).

During these days the Law School will host important references from the world of Law and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a course that will last until next Friday, February 7.

The course is called “Law and Artificial Intelligence”. Francisco Herrera, and Oscar Cordón , both leading researchers of AI in Spain and DaSCI .

The ETS of Computer and Telecommunications Engineering of Granada is ranked in the fifth position in the world of research in AI. On the other hand, Granada is currently the judicial capital of Andalusia and one of the most important and oldest Spain’s law schools is in Granada. In this context, this event aims to be a national and international reference.

More information Canal UGR and Canal Sur News (in Spanish, startin at minute 8)

Led by researchers from the Institute, this project aims to develop software that will enable the Ministry of Defence to have Artificial Intelligence systems for decision-making.

The project will be led by María José del Jesus and Francisco Charte as co-directors of the University of Jaén and Francisco Herrera and Siham Tabik as co-directors of the University of Granada. The rest of the research team is composed of six members of DaSCI.

The tool to be developed with Artificial Intelligence techniques aims to identify significant elements and anomalies in conflict scenarios from images from different sources and with different typology. In the words of María José del Jesus “”we propose a project centred on one of the R+D themes contemplated in the call for proposals from the Ministry of Defence. “The project tries to contribute to give an answer to some of the needs of the 2035 Brigade of the Spanish Army. In this scenario, Defense can benefit from the development of tools that integrate and merge this information and optimize the management of these large volumes of data and learn models to have complete knowledge of what is happening in a given area and help in the decision making process”

Without a doubt, this is a new challenge for the Institute that will allow us to continue researching and finding synergies with sectors that are a priori as distant as the military.

More information Canal UGR and COPE Jaén (in Spanish)

Óscar Cordón, Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the UGR and meber of the DaSCI Institute, has been working since 2005 with a group of researchers from different disciplines such as anthropology or forensic medicine, in the automation of the process of identifying human remain by applying Artificial Intelligence techniques. More details in regional TV News “ConCiencia” (Canal Sur)

Full story in Canal UGR (in Spanish)

The “South Tech Week 2020” will take place in Granada 11-12th March 2020. This event will bring together more than 1000 people. The venue will be the “Palacio de Congresos” of our city. This event was announced on Tuesday at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Engineering building of the University of Granada.

After the presentation of the event Francisco Herrera (director of our Institute) gave a lecture on “Challenges of Artificial Intelligence”.

For Francisco Herrera, “AI is a technology that will transform our society and will have an impact on all areas of knowledge. It will mean a revolution similar to the one that provoked the Internet”. In DaSCI we focus our efforts in three areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Data Science, Computational Intelligence and technological applications based on AI.

More info in canal UGR and Periódico Ideal (in Spanish)

Researchers from the Institute in collaboration with researchers from Almeria have developed a tool that allows us to locate and count whales.

Canal UGR (In Spanish)

The ENHAnCE project, in which 9 European institutions are participating, has been financed with 2.67 million euros.

The coordination of a European project of the H2020 programme is a success for the University of Granada (UGR) and for the DaSCI Institute to which some of its principal researchers are affiliated. The consortium will be led by Professor Manuel Chiachío and made up of 9 top-level scientific and technological institutions: University of Granada (Spain), German Space Agency (Germany), University of Nottingham (UK), University of Strathclyde (UK), Milan Polytechnic (Italy), Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), CEA-Tech Institute (France), Belgian Centre for Aeronautical Research, Cenaero (Belgium), Foundation for Research, Development and Application of Composite Materials, FIDAMC (Spain).
The project will start on 1 January 2020 and will have a duration of four years and a funding of 2.67 million euros to be distributed among the different members of the consortium.

The principal objective of the ENHAnCE project is the development of technology for the creation of intelligent ultralight structures. These structures will have self-diagnostic and prognostic capacity in the form of cyber-physical systems, and will be applicable to aerospace structures, wind turbine blades, as well as other civil engineering structures such as bridges, towers, and so on.

More information in: IDEAL, LA VANGUARDIA, 20 MINUTOS y NOTICIAS UGR (In Spanish)

Canal Sur News (In Spanish):

The rector of the University of Granada (UGR), Pilar Aranda and TECNALIA’s Deputy Director General of Technology, Jesús Valero, have signed a collaboration agreement for the creation of the “TECNALIA Chair in Artificial Intelligence” which will be endowed with 50,000 € per year.

For more information: Actualidad Canal UGR , IDEAL (In Spanish)

A study focusing on the Rioja Qualified Designation of Origin (DOCa) carried out by UNIR Marketing professor Carmen Zarco and the expert from the University of Granada, Óscar Cordón, shows that only around 32% of the wineries affiliated to this Designation have a Twitter profile, although not all of them develop active and direct communication.

View in Europa press (content in spanish)

According to a press release from the Delegation of the Regional Government of Andalusia in Jaen, this institute will research in two major fundamental areas, Data Science and Computational Intelligence, two areas of great projection in the field of international research and with scientific recognition at the universities of Jaen and Granada.

For more information: 20minutos, IDEAL, and esandalucia (in Spanish)

Francisco Herrera Triguero, Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada (UGR), joined the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain yesterday as a full member of the academy, in an event that took place at the headquarters of the institution in Madrid and was attended by the rector of the UGR, Pilar Aranda.

More information in Noticias UGR (in Spanish)

The BBVA Foundation grants with 100,000 euros a research project at the University of Granada (UGR) called ‘Deep Learning’ applied to Security, Ecology and Natural Language’, coordinated by Francisco Herrera Triguero, professor of the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.

The aim of this project is to generate high quality data for Deep Learning models, obtain algorithms that improve the understanding of these models and apply this knowledge in areas such as Security, Ecology and Language.

More information in NovaCiencia (In Spanish)

On Monday 4 March, 2019 the Spanish Strategy for R+D+I  in Artificial Intelligence was presented in Granada.

The event,  took place in the Palacio de Exposiciones y Congresos, was presided over by the Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Pedro Duque, and closed by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.

More information (in spanish):

• El País
• Canal UGR

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/coral-del-val-explica-la-identificacion-de-genes-relacionados-con-la-personalidad-humana-en-inquietamente-de-rne-5/ (in Spanish)

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/la-cara-oculta-del-big-data-de-la-prediccion-a-la-manipulacion-social/ (in SPanish)

First prize: Francisco Herrera, Álvaro Martínez-Sevilla, Siham Tabik, Rosana Montes, Alberto Castillo Lamas, Teresa Cruz Sánchez, José Policarpo Cruz.

MonuMAI: an app to increase the social value of Andalusian architectural heritage.

MonuMAI is a mobile application (app) that is developed within the framework of a Citizen Science project of the same name. The aim of the app is to develop an intelligent system to recognize the different artistic styles and provide information and relationships on the proportions and ‘other geometric elements in art …

https://sci2s.ugr.es/caepia18/premiados.html#apps

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/francisco-herrerra-en-a-hombros-de-gigante-de-radio-nacional-de-espana-17-de-diciembre-de-2018/ (in Spanish)

Links to IDEAL, a spanish Newspaper:

Vídeo en Ideal: https://www.ideal.es/miugr/prestigio-ranking-proyeccion-5841464313001-20180928100925-vi.html

First prize of the CAEPIA 2018 Competition of Apps based on Artificial Intelligence by the App MonuMAI Francisco Herrera, Álvaro Martínez-Sevilla, Siham Tabik, Rosana Montes, Alberto Castillo Lamas, Teresa Cruz Sánchez, José Policarpo Cruz. MonuMAI: an app to increase the social value of Andalusian architectural heritage

https://sci2s.ugr.es/caepia18/premiados.html#apps (Link a Spanish Media)

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/asi-se-ve-la-app-de-monumai/ (in Spanish)

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/caepia-2018/ (in Spanish)

University of Granada (UGR) researchers have designed a computer algorithm that automatically recognises guns on video in real-time, as Jim Drury reports.

Go to video

“Artificial Intelligence in Defense Technology”

http://www.ejercito.mde.es/multimedia/Videos-2018/RRFF/05-factor-ind-tec.html (Link to video in Spanish)

Go to https://dasci.es/mediateca/coffeeversityinteligencia-artificial-realidad-y-ficcion/ (in Spanish)

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05147

Current surveillance and control systems still require human supervision and intervention. This work presents a novel automatic handgun detection system in videos appropriate for both, surveillance and control purposes. We reformulate this detection problem into the problem of minimizing false positives and solve it by building the key training data-set guided by the results of a deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) classifier, then assessing the best classification model under two approaches, the sliding window approach and region proposal approach. The most promising results are obtained by Faster R-CNN based model trained on our new database. The best detector show a high potential even in low quality youtube videos and provides satisfactory results as automatic alarm system. Among 30 scenes, it successfully activates the alarm after five successive true positives in less than 0.2 seconds, in 27 scenes. We also define a new metric, Alarm Activation per Interval (AApI), to assess the performance of a detection model as an automatic detection system in videos.