Yesterday we visited the premises of the International Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science – AIR Institute – in Béjar. The research centre will have offices that have been refurbished and granted by the City Council of Béjar inside of the building conceived as the city’s Entrepreneurship Centre.

The objective of the Foundation is the promotion and development of scientific activity and technological innovation, whereby the premises in Béjar are one of the fundamental axes within the strategic plan. Four contracts have already come into effect, and new contracts will be signed in the coming months, until a group of at least 30 people is formed. To this end, we will engage in activities to attract and retain talent by encouraging the incorporation of new professionals, who will come from all over the world, although priority will be given to recruiting students from the Béjar School of Industrial Engineering.

AIR-Béjar

The main lines of research to be pursued will focus on intelligent textiles, providing support to Bejar’s textile companies through new innovations in the sector and trying to place the city once again as a benchmark in this industry. Other lines of research will include the digitalisation of the industry, IoT, Edge Computing, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.

At all times we will seek to transfer all this knowledge to the local population, through support and promotion of the above-mentioned areas of research; the promotion of competitiveness and business internationalisation; social development and improvement of the rural environment by promoting projects related to information technology and communications.

The news has been repeated in several local media.

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.