Ainhoa Vivel, winner of the Altia TFG 2023 Award

The CiTIUS researcher and student of the master's degree in AI of the ETSE has won the fourth edition of these awards, which have recognised her Final Degree Project as a student of Computer Engineering at the technical school of the USC.

A graduate student of the Computer Science degree at the School of Engineering (ETSE), summer scholarship holder at CiTIUS, and currently a master's student in Artificial Intelligence and researcher contracted by the centre within the framework of the Nós Project. The career of Ainhoa Vivel Couso, closely linked to the USC through its research and training centres of reference in the technological field, has just climbed a new step after obtaining the IV Altia Premia; a joint recognition for the best Final Degree Project (TFG) with which the company Altia and the ETSE itself seek to encourage and promote the technological talent of the students of the Degree in Computer Engineering of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The work, entitled 'AgeX: Automatic natural language explanation of dental age calculation', deals with the use of machine learning techniques with neural networks in the estimation of dental age, and has been supervised by the centre's researchers María José Carreira, José María Alonso and Inmaculada Tomás.

"We managed to combine language technologies with results generated from AI techniques for automatic data analysis," says Ainhoa. "In this way, the self-generated narratives allow a dental expert to understand, and therefore trust, the results generated by the model", explains the researcher, who hopes that this award will stimulate interest in her area of work: "I hope that the awarding of this prize for my work will encourage more students to do research on Explanable Artificial Intelligence and/or language technologies".

A very familiar award

This initiative, carried out jointly by Altia and the ETSE, was created with the aim of stimulating the training and digital talent of the students of the Degree in Computer Engineering and to reward their talent, passion and effort; rewarding the winner with a prize of €1,500.

This is an award in which CiTIUS research staff have so far played an undisputed leading role, as members of the centre have won this award in three of its four editions. Like Ainhoa Vivel, Marcos Fernández Pichel and Martín Aller Domínguez also won this award in previous years. In addition, numerous works presented by researchers from the centre have always been among the finalists for these awards. A success explained, to a large extent, by the connection between CiTIUS and the Escuela Técnica Superior de Enxeñería, with a crucial role in the training of new students who, in many cases, decide to continue their careers by making the leap into the world of research through the USC's Singular Centre for Research in Intelligent Technologies.