We had the opportunity to receive Luis Oliva, General Administrator of the National Authority for Government Innovation – AIG of Panama and Dr. Yen Caballero, Coordinator of the Office of Educational Innovation of the AIG at the AIR Institute and BISITE Research Group laboratories. Juan Manuel Corchado, as director of the BISITE group and president of the AIR Institute, presented several projects that could be of interest for future partnerships with that institution.

The visit was an opportunity to learn about the initiatives developed by Panama’s National Authority for Government Innovation. Moreover, to explore new alternatives offered by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, IoT or Big Data, in order to establish strategic synergies to strengthen the projects that have been planned in the short and medium term to promote digitization in their country.

This is not the first time we have undertaken initiatives with this Latin American country. Epidempredict for COVID-19 is one of those initiatives; it is an extraordinary and innovative concept that has been developed with hybrid artificial intelligence models and automatic data acquisition and analysis tools.

The visit has been fruitful, and I am sure it will bring exciting new opportunities for the expansion of our projects in Panama.

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.