Castilla y León has held an innovation awards ceremony. The setting for the Innovadores 2023 Awards gala was the Business Solutions Center in Arroyo de la Encomienda, Valladolid, which publishes a long-established supplement on research and innovation, “El Mundo de Castilla y León”. The event has been a grand celebration attended by scientists, academics, businessmen and political representatives. The true highlights of the event were the award winners, among them, two were from Salamanca.
My sincere congratulations to José Carlos Pastor, creator of the Institute of Applied Ophthalmobiology, who received the Innovadores 2023 Award for a lifetime of innovation in the field of medicine.
Julia Almeida Parra and her research group at the Salamanca Cancer Center are an example to follow, as the jury recognized them with the Innovadores Supplement Best Project Award for a brilliant research which enabled them to predict the people who are likely to develop chronic lymphatic leukemia, the most common type of leukemia in Western countries among the elderly. I am proud to be the colleague of Julia Almeida at the University of Salamanca, who is an excellent researcher as reflected in her award-winning project, which paves the road towards the detection of this disease in subjects with no evidence of the disease from a single blood test.
While Julia Almeida is a reference in the field of cancer research, the Salamanca-based company Arsoft, led by Santiago González, embodies the enthusiasm and talent of young people. No wonder it has received the Iberaval Award for the Best ICT Project for its platform for studying medical images with XR technology.
In addition, young researcher Alba González Álvarez, who develops implants for the human body, received an award at the gala, and the Institute of Sustainable Processes received the Iberdrola award for the best University Research Project.
Researchers from the AIR Institute and the BISITE Group of the University of Salamanca also joined this celebration of innovation by contributing to the special supplement of the “El Mundo” newspaper. Thank you for the opportunity to present one of our major projects, Certify, which focuses on the certification of high security mechanisms to protect systems related to IoT-based devices.
Castilla y León is a land of innovators. It is nice to be reminded of that from time to time.
