Aligned with the first María de Maeztu workshop on data-driven knowledge extraction (28-29 June 2016) a visit of members of our External Advisory Board took place to assess the progress done by DTIC-UPF with respect to their previous recommendations.
Our External Advisory Board is composed by internationally renowed scientist covering DTIC's research areas, and representative from different sectors (academia, industry, policy making): Prof. Elisa Bertino, Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, Director of the Cyber Center (Discovery Park) and Research Director of CERIAS; PhD. Ioannis Maghiros, Head of Information Society Unit. Institute for Prospective Technological Studies. DG JRC - European Commission; Prof. Alison Noble, Technikos Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of Institute of Biomedical Engneering. University of Oxford; PhD. Nuria Oliver, Chief Data Scientist, Data-pop Alliance (previous - Scientific Director in Multimedia. Telefónica R&D); PhD. Antonio Torralba, Associate Professor (MIT). Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Prof. Shimon Ullman, Samy and Ruth Cohn Professor of Computer Science. Department of Computer Science And Applied Mathematics. Weizmann Institute of Science; Prof. Moshe Vardi, Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology; PhD. Robert Zatorre. International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), BRAMS Co-Director, Professor, Dept. of Neurology and Neurosurgery. McGill University.
During this visit the members of the Board positively assessed progress with respect to several of the recommendations from the visit in 2014. The award of the prestigious María de Maeztu accreditation, which includes actions in its strategic research program to enhance multi-disciplinary collaborations as one of its central objectives, was especially acknowledged. The members analysed the preliminary version of the updated strategic plan of the department, providing suggestions such enhancements with more detailed targets and metrics, the strategic use of new potential faculty positions that may be available in the future, the work to broaden the funding opportunities and the opportunity that the María de Maeztu project can bring to involve researchers from other departments / schools / colleges at UPF.
Elisa Bertino, in addition, gave one of the keynote lectures of the María de Maeztu Workshop, on the topic "Big Data privacy and security"
