La Salle-URL PhD student Álvaro Heredia is the winner of the sixth edition of the inter-university competition 'Tesi en 4 minuts' organized by the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació (FCRI). The final, held at the CaixaForum in Lleida, included the participation of one doctoral student from each of the twelve Catalan universities, each one of whom was the winner of the previous phases of each center. In total, 145 doctoral students from all over Catalonia have participated in this year's edition.
Álvaro Heredia qualified for the inter-university final after being the winner among the candidates for the PhD program in Information Technologies at La Salle-URL and, later, winning first prize in the contest held within the framework of the Ramon Llull University (URL), in which representatives of all its centers participated. The doctoral thesis is entitled 3D Computer Vision and Deep Learning for Non-Invasive Diagnosis of Psychotic Disorders and studies the diagnosis of psychotic diseases through 3D computing.
The objective of the 'Tesis en 4 minuts' initiative is to make university doctoral research visible and disseminate knowledge, while at the same time challenging doctoral students from any scientific discipline to explain their research in just four minutes using simple and understandable language for the general public. All the participants are doctoral students of at least second year and none of them may have defended the thesis before submitting applications at their university. The contest has the support of the Generalitat de Catalunya through the Consell Interuniversitari de Catalunya.
The final of the contest was broadcast live, and can be retrieved on the Youtube channel of the FCRI.
