4th Hipatia Award to Nuria Oliver, international expert in artificial intelligence
Rebeca de Miguel
Head of Operations of ELLIS Alicante
The 4th Hipatia European Science Prize highlights her research work on new AI methods and systems to drive positive social impact.
During the award ceremony held earlier this week at the Barcelona City Council and chaired by mayor Jaume Collboni, Nuria Oliver gave the lecture Towards a Socially Sustainable Artificial Intelligence.
The international expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Nuria Oliver, scientific director and co-founder of the [ELLIS Alicante Foundation (https://ellisalicante.org/), has been proclaimed the winner of the 4th Barcelona Hipatia European Science Prize, promoted by the Barcelona City Council in collaboration with the Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the European Academy (AE-BKH). The prize, worth 30,000 euros, is awarded for her research into the development of new AI methods and systems with a positive social impact. This is the first time that this prize has been awarded to a Spanish researcher.
The award highlights over 25 years of exceptional international impact, which has resulted in more than 40 registered patents. In recent years, Nuria Oliver has focused on the ideation and co-creation of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), of which she is vice-president. This network, which already has 41 units in 16 countries in Europe and Israel, is the largest pan-European initiative of scientific excellence in Artificial Intelligence focused on basic research leading to technological innovation with positive social and economic impact.
Within the ELLIS network, the ELLIS Alicante Unit, of which Dr. Oliver is the director, was created in 2020 with the backing and support of the Generalitat Valenciana as a private non-profit foundation dedicated to scientific research on responsible AI for Social Good. ELLIS Alicante advocates for the development of Artificial Intelligence that is always people-centered, responsible, transparent, and focusing on relevant issues, such as algorithmic fairness and transparency, privacy, inclusivity in human-IA interaction and the study of the social impact of AI. The aim is to ensure the positive impact of AI on society. The laureate is passionate about the dissemination of science and technology, with hundreds of appearances in the media, and is particularly committed to attracting young talent - especially women - to the engineering and computer science fields.
The fourth deputy mayor of Barcelona City Council and head of the Department of Science and Universities, Jordi Valls, stressed “the importance of consolidating the European Hipatia Prize with the start of this second three-year period, and doing so by awarding the prize to Dr. Nuria Oliver, a world leader in the use of artificial intelligence in different fields that share a common goal: to use the potential of artificial intelligence to improve people’s quality of life”.
For more information about research at ELLIS Alicante, please visit ELLIS Alicante