The School and the Department of Engineering at UPF are celebrating their 25th anniversaries this academic year. To mark this milestone, the season of DeepTech Talks is being held to address some of the main current and future challenges in the field of engineering and technologies, dealing with topics such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). All of the DeepTech Talks sessions will be held in UPF’s Poblenou campus auditorium.

On Friday, 22 November in the morning, the second DeepTech Talk will take place and will be dedicated to examining the first European Union regulation on artificial intelligence -the so-called AI Act-, following on from the first session dedicated to ethics and blockchain. During the symposium, the potential of the regulations, which came into force on 1 August 2024, will be analysed to ensure that AI technologies are developed and used safely and reliably, and respecting the rights of citizens and companies.

Ignasi Belda, director of the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA), will be the main speaker at this conference, organized by the UPF Department of Engineering in collaboration with ACCIÓ (Agency for Business Competitiveness) and the Digital Cluster of Catalonia.

The session will be opened by the vice-rector for Knowledge Transfer, Vanesa Daza, and the president of the Digital Cluster, Joana Barbany. There will also be a talk by the secretary for Digital Policies of the Government of Catalonia, Maria Galindo. The event will finish off with two round tables, one focusing on the analysis of the AI Act from the academic and public policy perspective, and the other on the applications and uses of artificial intelligence in industry. AI experts from both academia -from UPF and also from the UPC and the UdG- and from the business and industrial environment will be participating.

Keith Miller, a full professor at the University of Missouri and blockchain expert, keynote speaker for the first DeepTech Talk on ethics and blockchain

The first of this season’s talks was held on Friday, 18 October in the morning, titled Ethical Guidelines for Blockchain Systems within the EU. The ethical implications of the use of this technology (regarding transparency, privacy, sustainability and social inclusion), which have scarcely been analysed since the emergence of blockchain at the beginning of the 21st century, were dealt with.

To address this issue, the presentation “Putting Blockchain Ethics into Perspective” was given by Keith Miller, a full professor of Lifelong Learning in Science at the Faculty of Education and the Department of Computer Science of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who also gave this interview for the UPF Engineering website.

During the session, a round table was also held on the first guidelines developed by the EU on how to develop blockchain technology to meet the ethical commitments and fundamental values of the Union (set forth in the document Ethical Guidelines for Blockchain Systems). Experts such as Roman Beck, a professor of Economics and an expert on this technology at the IT University of Copenhagen and director of the European Blockchain Centre; and Signe Agerskov, also a researcher at the same centre and a co-author of the first EU recommendations guidebook on this topic, among others, also participated. The session was opened by Vanesa Daza, as director of the Artemisa International Chair in Cybersecurity and a researcher in Engineering at UPF, and Migle Laukyte, a member of the team of the Chair and a researcher into blockchain.

Other sessions scheduled for 2025

For 2025, the following DeepTech Talks sessions have been scheduled:

• 31 January: Artificial Intelligence (multimodal analysis) and sports: challenges and opportunities.
• 28 February: Why do we need biomedical engineers in hospitals?
• 28 March: Are humans still smarter than machines?
• 30 May: Artificial intelligence and music: challenges and opportunities.
• 27 June: UPF spinoffs and startups 

Further information at UPF Engineering DeepTech Talks.