CiTIUS receives the Special CPEIG Award from the Professional Association of Computer Engineering of Galicia
The scientific director of CiTIUS, Senén Barro, will receive the award at the gala of the 'XVI Night of Computer Engineering in Galicia' to be held on June 21 in Santiago.
The Professional Association of Computer Engineering of Galicia (CPEIG) awards the CPEIG Special Prize of the 'XVI Night of Computer Engineering of Galicia 2024' to the Center for Research in Intelligent Technologies of the University of Santiago de Compostela (CiTIUS) for the organization of the ECAI 2024 (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence), one of the most important events in the world in artificial intelligence to be held in Santiago de Compostela from 19 to 23 October 2024, turning the city and Galicia into the world capitals of artificial intelligence.
CiTIUS projects Galicia's artificial intelligence to the whole of Spain and Europe with world-class events, such as the ECAI 2024 -27th European Congress on Artificial Intelligence-, or leading other high-impact international projects to improve society through intelligent technologies.
CiTIUS is the reference research center in the field of AI in Galicia, and one of the few specialized in this field at national level. It belongs to the Network of Singular Research Centers of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and is part of the CIGUS Network, which integrates the Research Centers of excellence currently accredited by the Xunta de Galicia. In little more than 10 years of life, CiTIUS has become a research reference in the field of artificial intelligence.
Global vision
The center participates in nine European projects, leading some as important as HYBRIDS, a pan-European initiative for the detection of disinformation, hate speech and fake news on the Internet; NL4XAI, a project that provides machines with natural language technologies to explain the basis of their decisions; and MENELAOS_NT, an international consortium that seeks to apply intelligent technologies to optimally integrate sensor data of different types, both at macro and microscopic level, with the aim of exploring the environment in a multimodal way.
In addition, CiTIUS is the only research center in Spain that leads two university-industry chairs granted by the State this year: 'CAMELIA', a project in collaboration with the company Plexus Tech, focused on the field of artificial intelligence applied to personalized precision medicine; and the Televés-USC Chip Chair, focused on the field of microelectronic design. It also leads jointly with the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILG) the Proxecto Nós, which aims to develop technological resources that place the Galician language in society and in the economy of artificial intelligence, as is already happening with developments such as the first free neural translator into Galician from Spanish, English, Catalan and Basque. In addition, Nós is part of the ILENIA Project, funded by the PERTE New economy of language, to cooperatively promote language technologies in the languages of the State, and of the Spanish strategy for the development of foundational models, which today are at the forefront of AI.
Since its foundation in 2012, CiTIUS gave birth to the creation of four technology-based companies, emerged as spin-offs from the center's research: Cilenis, Imagames, InVerbis, and Situm Technologies, a world leader in global indoor positioning technologies.
The center is formed by a team of more than 150 people (31 of them senior researchers) and had a budget of more than 11 million euros in the last 3 years (2021-2023), highlighting European projects (21%) and transfer contracts (20%). CiTIUS research activity is organized around four scientific areas: green and smart devices and computing, fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence, smart technologies and ethical, legal, social, economic and cultural framework (ELSEC).
The scientific director of CiTIUS, Senén Barro Ameneiro, will collect the award at the '16th Night of Galician Computer Engineering' to be held on June 21 at the Hotel OCA Puerta del Camino de Santiago. The event is a meeting point between the members of the CPEIG and a large number of companies and ICT professionals in Galicia, which has an outstanding participation of business, institutional and political positions. The Night is already a consolidated gala where the professional association aims to show society the work developed by engineers and computer engineers in the information society and initiatives related to the field of ICT.