The role of the technology in health care was analyzed in the 24th BrEakfaSt La Salle (21th December, 2010). In the round table took part prestigious doctors specialists in pediatrics, robotic and computer science experts from La Salle Campus Barcelona and the director of the innovation park La Salle Technova Barcelona.
Prof. León Chua visited Barcelona to preside over the examining committee of one of our former members and current collaborators, Giovanni Pazienza. On this visit, he had time to share his main discovery with us in the talk: “Memristor: 37 years later”.
Through an unusual presentation, overhead transparencies, amusing jokes, technological explanations hidden in works of art, this endearing scientist brought the technology of the future closer to us.
To know more about this conference and the memristor, please refer to the full “El País” article.
Nowadays our society is worried about the decrease in the number of engineers and we do not understand why the profession that ten years ago was seen the job of the future, has not turned out to be so.
On the 22nd January, the program “Einstein a la platja” on BTV raised this question with experts who described the ideal engineer of the future, what skills should have, and how degrees should be adapted to recover vocational interest in engineering.
In a relaxed discussion, Ramon Ollé, president of the Business Engineering School La Salle, outlined a profession with more business concepts whereas Joan Amat, professor of Univeristat Politècnica de Catalunya, focused on technical abilities.
David E. Goldberg, professor of the University of Illinois, went one step further by proposing a social and entrepreneurial engineer. This new approach, with creativity as a backbone, highlights the importance of engineers in our society where they have moved from a secondary to a main role providing people with new and helpful devices aimed at making their lives easier and enjoyable.
Two weeks ago, one of the most important researchers in evolutionary computation visited the GRSI. After 25 years of an intense and extensive research on genetic algorithms, our guest, Prof. David E. Goldberg, focuses his interest on a new field, the entrepreneurship, where he displays his creativity to explore which non-technical skills an engineer should develop and how to adapt the training to attain these qualities. This new Prof. Goldberg’s passion leads him to write his latest book, entitled “The Entrepreneurial Engineer”. Some of his ideas are briefly presented in the Prof. Goldberg’s interview by “El Mundo”, in Spanish language.
Last Sunday, Loebner prize contest, the first instantiation of the Turing test, was held at Reading University, UK under the direction of Professor Kevin Warwick. What’s this all about? The challenge is to test whether a machine can imitiate human behavior, including their errors and their limited capacity to perform certain tasks.
To know more about the Turing test, the Loebner prize, and the challenges that AI is currently facing, listen to the interview here, where Giovanni Pazienza and Albert Orriols discuss about the contest and the research in the GRSI group.
Francesc Teixidó (Xec) is presenting his work on building picewise linear regressors from sets of continuously-labeled data with a hierarchical evolutionary algorithm. Fluent spanglish and nice, clear slides! And the best: today night celebration for the success :). Hope to see the follow-up of the work next year in Montreal!
Josep M. Martorell receives the PhD degree after his dissertation defense. The thesis, entitled “Definició d’una metodologia experimental per a l’estudi de resultats en sistemes d’aprenentatge artificial”, was directed by Dr. Josep M. Garrell.
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Núria Macià receives a Research Grant from Govern d’Andorra. |
