A Coruña, April 24, 2019.- The Rector of the University of A Coruña, Julio Abalde, and the Vice-Rector for Scientific Policy, Research and Transfer, Salvador Naya, presented this morning at a press conference the two new researchers that the Academy incorporates with the InTalent UDC-Inditex program: Mónica Ferrín Pereira and José A. Iglesias Guitián.
In her speech, Mónica Ferrín expressed her satisfaction at returning to Galicia after twenty years away and effusively thanked the InTalent UDC-Inditex program for making this return possible. “I am very grateful to Inditex for opening the doors of research to come to Spain. Inditex sheds a little light on this dark panorama that many researchers have”, she declared. For her part, José Iglesias joined in thanking the multinational and the UDC “for making this agreement that brings us back home possible”, in his case it was twelve years that he had been outside Galicia.
The Rector described today as “very important for the UDC” because, “we are making the incorporation of two new researchers of magnificent level a reality”. Abalde announced that the UDC is finalizing a program so that these InTalent UDC-ITX researchers can join the University staff at the end of their three-year contract as InTalent. The Rector warmly thanked Inditex for the support of this talent recruitment program that has become a seal of quality for the University of A Coruña. “The InTalent UDC-Inditex program is already a hallmark for which the UDC is recognized internationally”, he stated and highlighted the importance of the program to recruit talent of international reference but also so that high-level researchers can return to the community in which they were trained, as in the case of these two scientists: Ferrín at the USC and Iglesias at the UDC; he also underlined an unintended but noteworthy effect, as it is that of the six researchers, three are women. “It was not an intended effect because applications are evaluated based on their academic and professional curriculum, but it is very satisfying to have this parity and also to incorporate researchers from all areas of knowledge,” he highlighted.
In this third call for InTalent UDC-Inditex, 106 applications were submitted by researchers of the highest prestige from 26 nationalities, as highlighted by the vice-chancellor for Scientific Policy, Research and Transfer. The program, which is very competitive, stipulates high-level minimum requirements such as having two years of experience abroad and a significant research career that is evaluated by an external international panel. “From the applications received, we see that there are many researchers who want to return,” declared Salvador Naya. The vice-chancellor also highlighted the international impact of this program, which has been put forward by the OECD as an example of a success story in university-business relations, or by the ECUSA association, Spanish Scientists in the USA, who are very interested in this program as a way to return to the country.
José A. Iglesias Guitián is a researcher in Computer Science. His specialization is visual computing and computer graphics. He currently works at the Centre de Visiò per Computador and is an associate researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, also collaborating as a teacher. His current research activity focuses on the exploration of advanced rendering and lighting techniques for scientific visualization, and more recently for their application in virtual simulators. He previously worked for almost two years for The Walt Disney Company and Disney Research. He will join the UDC next September. Throughout his research career he has published 14 articles in journals, nine of which are published in the top 3 in the list of referenced journals in computer graphics. He is co-inventor of three patents in the USA and was awarded a Disney Inventor Award in 2016.
Project
His research project focuses on the exploration of advanced rendering and lighting techniques for scientific visualization, as well as their recent adoption in virtual simulators and for the synthetic generation of more realistic data and images. Visual computing is emerging as an extremely powerful alternative for the synthetic generation of data and images that can augment the current capabilities of artificial intelligence, computer vision or simply human abilities when performing particularly complicated or tedious tasks (e.g. medical communication and diagnostics, automatic annotation of millions of images, etc.). Obtaining large amounts of data, necessary to feed current artificial intelligence algorithms, can be one of the main obstacles when moving forward with a machine learning-based solution. A promising direction to address this problem involves generating the necessary images and data digitally, that is, using virtual simulations generated by a computer within a virtual world that models those aspects of the real world to be taken into account for the solution of a given problem. The improvement of computer graphics techniques will help to produce new, more realistic synthetic images, as well as to increase existing databases. This project aims to advance our knowledge of the processes for synthetic image generation, as well as to study the impact on future vision and machine learning systems. Examples of medical imaging or virtual traffic simulators will be used as possible fields of application for this research.
Mónica Ferrín Pereira graduated in Political Science and Administration from the University of Santiago de Compostela. She holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute, an international centre for doctoral and post-doctoral studies funded by the European Commission and the EU Member States. Her doctoral thesis ¿Que é a democracia para os ciudadanos? (What is democracy to citizens?) won the Juan Linz Prize for the best doctoral thesis in Political Science from the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies.
Traballou como profesora e investigadora pos-doutoral no Collegio Carlo Alberto de Turín e na Universidade de Zurich, onde participou en numerosos proxectos nacionais e internacionais. Foi ademais membro do comité de expertos da OCDE para a medición da confianza política e social. Ten publicados numerosos capítulos e artigos en editoriais de prestixio internacional.
Project
Mónica Ferrín is currently working on two lines of research: 1) the study of Europeans’ attitudes towards democracy; and 2) gender inequality in the public sphere.
Europeans’ attitudes towards democracy: One of the main challenges facing European democracies today is public dissatisfaction with democracy; a dissatisfaction that has increased after the great economic crisis that affected most countries in Europe. The aim of this research is to study the changes in Europeans’ attitudes towards democracy after the “great crisis” and the causes of public dissatisfaction: are we facing a crisis of democracy? To answer this question, Mónica Ferrín is working on the design of a survey on attitudes towards democracy to be carried out by the European Social Survey. (www.europeansocialsurvey.org) in 2020/2021, and in which citizens from most European countries will participate.
Gender inequality in the public sphere: Not all citizens participate equally in the political sphere. This implies a series of normative problems, since unequal political participation is accompanied by unequal political representation. The case of women is especially glaring, since they make up more than half of the population. Even today and despite many efforts to achieve gender equality, women participate less in politics than men in most countries. The objective of this project is to study the reasons why women participate less in politics and, by extension, in the public sphere.
InTalent UDC-Inditex is a collaboration project between the University of A Coruña and the company Inditex for the retention, recovery and recruitment of research talent with the aim of generating a scientific and research network of excellence within the University of A Coruña. It is a unique and unique program in Spain. The Rector of the UDC, Julio Abalde, and the President of Inditex, Pablo Isla, signed the agreement to create this program in October 2016, in which the multinational committed to financing this initiative with 1,450,000 euros. This program has already allowed the incorporation of four internationally renowned researchers who carry out their research activity at the UDC, to which José A. Iglesias and Mónica Ferrín have now joined.
Elena Pazos, with the project: “Development of chemical tools with applications in biomedicine”.
José Antonio Cortés: “Social benefits and impacts of environmental conservation policies in post-crisis Europe: the Galician case”.
Ana Rey: “Use of polymeric biomaterials as controlled release systems for non-viral vectors in cartilage regeneration”.
Jorge Ledo: “Communication theory and historical transformation between the fall of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity”.
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