Speakers table

María Fernández Guajardo

Executive in AI & Emerging Tech – Google

With 25 years of experience in technology, María Fernández Guajardo has led disruptive projects in companies such as Google, Meta and Silicon Valley startups. Her expertise in generative AI, machine learning and computer vision has allowed her to drive key products such as Gmail, Facebook Reels and the introduction of Oculus in the enterprise environment.

An engineer from the University of Zaragoza, she began her career in the hardware industry with Texas Instruments and Cadence. She is co-author of the book Sail to Scale, a reference for entrepreneurs, and has been recognised as one of the 40 most influential leaders in Silicon Valley.

In her keynote on 24 September, she will present the concept of “Inspirational Pragmatism”, a strategic approach to tackle the era of linguistic AI with agility and purpose. He will explain why many AI projects fail, how to scale with impact and what frameworks to apply to transform uncertainty into opportunity. A key session for those who want to move from planning to actual implementation in AI.

Marta R. Costa-jussà

Research Scientist – Meta AI

A researcher at Meta AI since 2022, Marta R. Costa-jussà is an expert in machine translation with a solid international background. With a PhD from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), she has worked at leading centres such as LIMSI-CNRS (Paris), the University of São Paulo, the Institute for Infocomm Research (Singapore), and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Mexico), among others.

She has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant and two Google Faculty Research Awards. In recent years she has participated in two key projects in Meta: No Language Left Behind and Seamless, both published in the prestigious journal Nature, contributing to the advancement of multilingual systems capable of translating between hundreds of languages without the need for parallel data. In addition to publishing hundreds of scientific articles, she is co-author of the novel Mia’s Dream, which combines popular science and narrative.

On September 25, he will deliver a talk entitled “Massive Multilingual Machine Translation and its Evaluation”, where he will explain the most recent advances in massive multilingual machine translation, reviewing models such as NLLB and Seamless. In addition, he will introduce BOUQuET, a new collaborative, multi-directional, and multi-domain benchmark for evaluating machine translation.

Ignacio Marrero

Director Data, Analytics & AI – UST España & Latam

Ignacio Marrero is the head of the Data, Analytics and AI practice at UST for Spain and LATAM. His experience includes different sectors and areas of expertise with 20 years in the field of Data and Artificial Intelligence. He started as a researcher in Astrophysics, acquiring a deep scientific and computational background. Over the next 10 years he grew as an Enterprise and Solution Architect, complementing his experience with a solid foundation to tackle enterprise-level technical challenges. From 2012 to 2015 he was founder and CTO of a Big Data and Analytics startup. In the last 12 years he has held the role of Head of Data, Analytics & AI in different global companies, developing cutting-edge solutions, managing teams and creating relevant business opportunities for different clients worldwide.

Carlos Martinez Miguel

Director Global de Soluciones y Servicios de Inteligencia Artificial y Big Data en Telefónica Tech.

Anteriormente fue el Director Global del negocio de Big Data e Inteligencia Artificial en LUCA, la unidad de datos de Telefónica que se fusionó a principios de 2020 con las unidades de IoT, Ciberseguridad y Cloud para crear Telefónica Tech. Durante sus más de 20 años de carrera ha ocupado diversas posiciones ligadas al desarrollo de nuevos negocios digitales como IoT, Ciberseguridad o eHealth y a la incorporación de nuevas tecnologías impulsando la transformación en los principales sectores económicos.

Es Ingeniero de Telecomunicación por la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid y Diplomado en Ciencias Empresariales por la UNED, habiendo además cursado estudios de postgrado en gestión empresarial en ESADE e IESE.

Alberto José Bugarín Diz

Full Professor of AI at CiTIUS and School of Engineering (ETSE), Universidad de Santiago de Compostela

Full Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence and coordinator of the Intelligent Systems Group (GSI), recognized as a competitive reference group by the Xunta de Galicia.

His research focuses on various areas of AI and its applications: natural language generation (Data-to-Text systems), trustworthy AI, soft computing, machine learning, and approximate knowledge representation and reasoning.

He is the co-author of nearly 230 scientific works on these topics and has participated in more than 63 R&D projects and innovation and transfer contracts, serving as principal investigator in 25 of them.

Pablo Pérez Benedí

Director of the Ecosystem Area at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón (ITA).

Industrial Organization Engineer and holder of a Master’s degree in Mobile Communications and Economics. He worked for 10 years at the Vodafone Group, in one of the company’s seven R&D centers worldwide, serving as Head of R&D and leading the international research area “Services Enablers”. He later became Director of the Microsoft Technology Center, a benchmark center for Microsoft’s future technologies in Southern Europe.

He is currently working at ITA as Head of the Department of Strategic Innovation and Results Exploitation. In addition, he is President of the Aragón Digital Innovation Hub and coordinator of the Aragonese Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

In addition, Pablo is pursuing a Doctorate at Zaragoza University, focusing on new organizational models and cooperation.

David de La Torre Vidal

Telecommunications Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid.

He joined the CDTI as a technician in the Industrial Technologies and Information Society Division for the assessment and evaluation of R&D projects and technology-based companies in the field of software technologies, web platforms and multimedia technologies. He has also collaborated as an external expert in the evaluation of R&D projects in the field of Information Technologies for entities such as the State Innovation Agency, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Enterprise, as well as various regional R&D support entities. He is currently responsible for the Digital Technologies Department, belonging to the Technology and Internationalisation Directorate of CDTI.

Previously he worked as R&D engineer and Head of Service in the Planning Division of Telefónica Research and Development.

Jorge Rico Ródenas

Graduate in Journalism and Linguistics from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Jorge Rico is the director of the PLN area at Sigma Cognition. For the last 12 years he has coordinated and developed projects related to data annotation, natural language processing, machine learning and large language models. He is an expert in text classification, entity recognition, automatic summarisation, question and answer systems and dialogue systems. He has previously worked at the Phonetics Laboratory of the CSIC and at the Real Academia de la Lengua. He is a guest lecturer on the master’s degree in Language Science and Hispanic Linguistics at the UNED.

Antonio Jara

Scientific Director at Libelium

Dr. Antonio J. Jara is an expert in data spaces, digital twins and artificial intelligence applied to cities and territories. He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Murcia, as well as being the founder of HOPU, a start-up acquired by Libelium. He currently technically coordinates the EU Local Local Digital Twin Toolbox, the largest European initiative in urban artificial intelligence, as well as the DS4SSCC data spaces BeatTheHeat, Geo4Water, SEDIA LDT-DS and EDIC Simpl Smart Cities Node. He is leading the standardisation in data quality in the IEEE and a contributor to the standardisation of Digit Twins in ETSI TC DATA (ISG CIM), OASC MiMs, Citiverse in ITU-T and data spaces in UNE. He is a member of the Boards of the FIWARE Foundation, FNDB, and GAIA-X Spain. Author of more than 100 scientific publications with more than 14500 citations. Recognised international speaker, he combines research, standardisation and entrepreneurship to drive digital infrastructures useful in the digital transformation of cities and destinations.

On 25 September, he will participate in the round table providing insight into the evolution of data spaces and their role in the digital and sustainable transformation of smart tourism, opportunities, Spanish leadership and success stories.

Alfonso Ureña

L. Alfonso Ureña is professor of Computer Languages and Systems at the University of Jaén and director of the Isdefe/CETEDEX-UJA Chair. He stands out for his career in artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP), with more than 250 publications in prestigious journals and conferences. He has led national and international projects, promoted technology transfer (including a spin-off in language technologies) and supervised numerous doctoral theses.

He has held relevant positions such as president of SEPLN for 16 years, director of CEATIC and member of the Governing Board of COSCE. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Alliance for the New Language Economy.

Recognised with the Eliza Award in 2024 for his contribution to PLN in Spain and Latin America, he is currently leading the ALIA project within the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy 2024.

German Rigau

Degree and PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). University Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science of San Sebastian (EHU). From February 2019, deputy director of HiTZ (Basque Centre for Language Technology) at the EHU. From 2022, representative in Spain of the ESFRI Strategic Working Group on Social Sciences and Humanities. Since September 2023, national coordinator of ESFRI’s European research infrastructures: CLARIN-ERIC and DARIAH-ERIC. Coordinator of the distributed research infrastructure CLARIAH-ES. Since 2025, President of the scientific association ELRA.

He has published more than 200 journal and conference papers in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP), and in particular, lexical semantics, semantic processing, inference and generative AI. He has led more than 15 European projects and 10 national research projects and networks. He currently coordinates HiTZ’s participation in the ILENIA and ALIA projects.

Fernando de Santos

Telecommunications Engineer from Zaragoza. He works at Ibercaja. Passionate about people and technology, he comes from the field of development and data. For several years, he was head of operations at Ibercaja Connect, where the relationship between technology and people was key.

Now he is the coordinator of IAON, a public-private initiative promoted by Ibercaja, Ibercaja Foundation, Microsoft and the Government of Aragon that seeks to democratise access to AI for the whole of society.

Rubén Rosales

Telecommunications Engineer from the Carlos III University of Madrid, with postgraduate training in professional skills development from the University of Alcalá de Henares and a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Alfonso X El Sabio University.

He has developed his career in multinational telecommunications and technology companies, leading digital transformation, IoT and Smart Cities projects. He is currently Product Manager of Smart Cities and Tourism at Telefónica, where he promotes innovative solutions for smart tourist destinations and connected cities.

Manuel Palomar

Director of CENID – Digital Intelligence Center.

Full Professor at the University of Alicante, PhD and Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and professor at the University of Alicante. His academic and scientific career has been marked by a strong commitment to research in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He has held various key positions at the University of Alicante, most notably serving as Rector from 2012 to 2020.

He was President of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing (SEPLN) from 1996 to 2006 and a member of the Board of Directors of the Confederation of Scientific Societies of Spain (COSCE). In 2020, he promoted the creation of the Digital Intelligence Center (CENID).

Cristina Aranda

Consultant in Innovation, Big Data, AI, and Intelligent Process Automation

Cristina Aranda holds a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, a Master’s degree in Internet Business, a Bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Philology, and is the author of the book “Vidas Futuras” (Aguilar, 2024, 2nd ed.). She is a consultant on innovation, big data, AI and intelligent process automation, whose clients include the Damm group, Vocento, Libelium, the Ministry of Economy, ARPA mobile equipment, Ashoka, Tenerife Tourism, Ferugby, among others. She is also co-founder of the MujeresTech association, a non-profit organisation that promotes the presence of women in the digital sphere, the Spain AI Aragón community, the Huomantech event and the ELLIS Alicante foundation, a centre of excellence focused on research and development in person-machine AI. In addition, Dr Aranda advises national and regional governments and institutions on technology, innovation, diversity and inclusion, and is a speaker at national and international events. Her talks at TEDxZaragoza2018 and BBVA’s Aprendemos Juntos (We Learn Together) are particularly noteworthy. Cristina led the Technology area of the Covid19 Think Tank of the Government of Aragon, was the Director of the Digital Humanities and Spanish Technologies Cluster of the Community of Madrid, a member of the Advisory Council of the PERTE for the New Economy of Language and a Councillor for SD Huesca. Cristina teaches at ISDI, IE, EOI and IIA and is a member of the Social Council of the UNED.

Aitor Soroa

NLP Researcher at Hitz Center, Associate professor at UPV/EHU

Professor Dr. Aitor Soroa holds a degree in Computer Science and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2004. He is currently an Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, a position he has held since 2008. He has published more than 100 papers in international journals and conferences in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing.

He regularly serves as a reviewer for prestigious international journals such as AIJ, LRE, JNLE, and JSL, and as an area chair (senior program committee member) and regular reviewer for top-ranked CORE A and A* conferences, including ACL, EACL, NAACL, CONLL, ANLP, EMNLP, AAAI, and IJCAI. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR).

Professor Soroa has been Principal Investigator in several European, national, and Basque Government-funded projects, and has participated in over 30 national projects and 40 technology transfer contracts. He is currently the Director of the HiTZ Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Language Technology at the University of the Basque Country (EHU)

Arturo Montejo

Professor and Researcher at the University of Jaén, Chief Technology Officer at Yottacode S.L.

Arturo Montejo Ráez holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a European Mention from the University of Granada (2006). He is a professor and researcher at the University of Jaén (Spain) and a member of the SINAI research group. His scientific contributions have been cited in over 2,500 articles, including 21 publications indexed in JCR and more than 50 conference contributions. He regularly serves as a reviewer for several prestigious scientific journals and has participated in 20 national and international projects.

He is currently the National Expert of the European research infrastructure CLARIN ERIC, which applies language technologies to the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is also a member of the management committee of the European research network COST YouthDMH on digital mental health in young people.

His current research interests include the detection of mental disorders in social media, dialogue assistants, language models as agents, text corpus analysis, the detection and mitigation of biases and stereotypes in language models, and the integration of empathy into natural language processing systems.

Estela Saquete

Professor at University of Alicante, Computer Science

Full Professor in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at the University of Alicante. Her research focuses on the field of Natural Language Processing, particularly on structural ambiguity resolution, text mining, natural language generation, and information extraction.

She has participated in numerous national and international projects and is the author of multiple publications in prestigious journals and conferences. In addition, she has served on program committees and organized various academic events related to NLP. She holds three six-year research periods (sexenios de investigación) and one transfer period (sexenio de transferencia). She is also the Head of the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at the University of Alicante

José Luis Galar

Head of the Tourism Analysis and Strategy Division at Turismo de Aragón

José Luis Galar is Head of the Analysis and Strategy Area at Turismo de Aragón, a public company of the Government of Aragón. He holds a PhD in Education from the University of Zaragoza, a Master’s Degree in Research on Lifelong Learning, and a Master’s Degree in Social Psychology, both from the University of Zaragoza. He also holds a Degree in Tourism from the same university.

Before joining Turismo de Aragón 23 years ago, he worked as Commercial Director of a hotel chain and as managing partner of a travel agency, while also teaching for 11 years at the University School of Tourism of Zaragoza. He has taught in several courses and master’s programs and has given lectures at various forums.

Paloma Martínez

Full Professor at Carlos III University of Madrid

Paloma Martínez Fernández holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. She is currently a Full Professor in the Area of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Computer Science at Carlos III University of Madrid.

She leads the HULAT (Human Language and Accessibility Technologies) Research Group, and her main line of research is Natural Language Processing, particularly its application to information accessibility in different domains. Her current work focuses on addressing the challenges faced by people with cognitive disabilities when using generative Artificial Intelligence tools.

Paolo Rosso

Full Professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia

Paolo Rosso is Full Professor of Computer Languages and Systems at the Universitat Politècnica de València, where he teaches and leads Natural Language Processing activities at the Pattern Recognition and Human Language Technology (PRHLT) research center. His research focuses mainly on disinformation and hate speech in social media, both explicit and implicit, through the use of stereotypes and figurative language (humor, irony, and sarcasm).

He has led national and international projects, published more than 400 articles in prestigious journals and conferences, supervised 30 Ph.D. theses, and contributed to the organization of over 50 evaluation tasks in forums such as IberEval/IberLEF, SemEval, FIRE, Evalita, and CLEF. He is currently involved in organizing the sixth edition of the EXIST task on the identification of sexism in memes and videos.

Paula Peña

Project Manager and Researcher in Big Data and Cognitive Systems (AI) at ITA

Paula Peña Larena holds a Master’s degree and an Engineering degree in Computer Systems and Informatics from the University of Zaragoza (Spain), and she is currently pursuing doctoral studies. With more than 20 years of experience at the Technological Institute of Aragón, she has managed and participated in projects on AI, Big Data, and Cognitive Systems.

She has also contributed to projects leveraging semantic technologies, such as ontologies and knowledge graphs, for the structured representation of information, as well as the integration of large language models (LLMs) to enhance natural language understanding and generation capabilities.

She is currently co-leader of the “Smart Governance and Smart Cities” Task Force of the BDVA. She has participated in national and international conferences and has produced several scientific and technological publications in conferences and journals in the fields of information systems and AI. She has actively collaborated in multiple national and international R&D projects funded by the European Union. Her main research interests include AI, semantics, LLMs, data mining, and Big Data.

Rafael del Hoyo

Head of Big Data and Cognitive Systems at the Technological Institute of Aragón (ITA)

Dr. Rafael del Hoyo holds an M.Sc. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from the University of Zaragoza, with a dissertation in Artificial Intelligence. With more than 20 years at the Technological Institute of Aragón, he has led initiatives in AI, Cognitive Systems, and Big Data, in addition to serving in key roles such as Coordinator of ICT Technologies.

He has taught at the University of Zaragoza and, since 2010, at the University of San Jorge. He is a member of the BDVA Technical Board and Co-PI of the IODIDE group, recognized by the Government of Aragón. He leads the AI group at the Digital Innovation Hub, promoting solutions for SMEs.

He has participated in European projects (H2020, Eureka), national programs (Plan Avanza), and collaborations with multinationals such as Telefónica and Bayer. He has been Principal Investigator in several European projects and CDTIs, combining technology transfer with publications in high-impact journals. His areas of interest include data mining, AI, and Big Data.

Rafael Muñoz

President of SEPLN (Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing). Full Professor of Computer Languages and Systems, University of Alicante

Rafael Muñoz Guillena (Alicante, 1967). Full Professor in the Department of Computer Languages and Systems at the Polytechnic School of the University of Alicante. Since September 2023, he has been President of the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing. Since September 2022, he has served as Vice President of the same society. Since January 2021, he has been Secretary-General of the UA Digital Intelligence Center (CENID), aimed at promoting innovation and digital transformation processes in public administrations.

From February 2020 to December 2020, he was Vice-Rector for Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Alicante. His responsibilities included promoting knowledge transfer to society through both scientific dissemination and contracts with companies or patent licensing. He also supported the creation of technology-based companies and the development of the Alicante Science Park, among other initiatives. From June 2012 to February 2020, he served as Vice-Rector for Campus and Sustainability at the University of Alicante. From March 2005 to June 2012, he was Director of the Secretariat for the Internationalization of Research and Technology Transfer at the Vice-Rectorate for Research, Development, and Innovation

Manuel Bedia

Director General. Commissioner for the New Language Economy (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Spain)

Manuel González Bedia is a professor at the University of Zaragoza. He holds a degree in Physics, a Master’s in Social Studies of Science, and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering with the Extraordinary Doctoral Award from the University of Salamanca. He previously worked at Complutense University and Carlos III University of Madrid, and was a visiting researcher at the Universities of Edinburgh and Sussex.

His research has focused on Artificial Intelligence, bio-inspired systems, and artificial cognition. He directed the ISAAC research group (Interactive Systems, Adaptability, Autonomy, and Cognition), from which he coordinated an H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Cofund (2021–24). He was the founder of the “Thematic Network for Research in Cognitive Sciences,” an interdisciplinary research framework on cognitive systems involving eleven Spanish universities and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) (2011–13).

He has held several positions in the Spanish General State Administration, including Advisor to the Minister’s Cabinet at the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities; Deputy Director-General for University Research Activity at the Ministry of Universities; Director of the Commissioner for the New Language Economy at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation; and Director-General for Strategic Planning in Advanced Digital Technologies at the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service. He is also a member of the Governing Council of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

Rafael Valencia

Full Professor at the University of Murcia

Rafael Valencia García is Full Professor in the area of Computer Languages and Systems at the University of Murcia, where he obtained his European Ph.D. in 2005. His main research lines include Natural Language Processing (NLP) and semantic technologies.

He has been Principal Investigator in more than 30 research projects and contracts funded by public and private entities and has supervised numerous doctoral theses in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and NLP. He is co-author of more than 150 works published in high-impact journals and in national and international conferences.

He is the Director of the UMUTeam research group, which has recently co-organized several evaluation tasks, including PoliticES 2023, FinancES 2023, HOPE 2023, EmoSPeech 2024, and SatiSPeech 2025.

Luis Chiruzzo

Professor at Universidad de la República

Luis Chiruzzo is an associate professor at Universidad de la República, Uruguay. He studied Computer Science Engineering at Universidad de la República, and has a MSc. and a PhD. in Computer Science from Pedeciba – Universidad de la República. He is co-referent of the NLP research lab at the Computer Science Institute in Universidad de la República.

He belongs to the Uruguayan National System of Researchers (SNI). His main research interests include NLP and machine translation for low-resource languages, indigenous languages, sign language processing, uses of NLP in education, sentiment and humor analysis, and parsing.

Salud María Jiménez Zafra

Professor and Researcher in the SINAI Research Group – University of Jaén

She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a specialization in Internet Information Processing, a degree in Computer Engineering, and a diploma in Statistics from the University of Jaén, where she is currently a professor and researcher in the SINAI research group. Her research focuses on Natural Language Processing (NLP), exploring how to equip machines with Artificial Intelligence to process and understand human language. Her lines of work include the analysis of negation in Spanish, opinion and sentiment analysis, the detection of hate and hope speech, and the evaluation of written proficiency in Spanish as a Foreign Language through Generative Artificial Intelligence.

She has received nine research awards, including the Extraordinary Doctoral Award and the prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in NLP from the Spanish Society for Natural Language Processing, and has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships such as FPU, Juan de la Cierva, PAIDI 2020, and Ramón y Cajal.

She participates in national and international initiatives to promote research in Spanish NLP. She has organized 26 shared tasks, workshops, and international conferences, and is currently collaborating in the organization of IberLEF 2025, PolyHope at IberLEF 2025, the 2025 NLP Doctoral Symposium, and the III Andalusian AI Forum

Óscar Rubio

Chief Technology Officer de Imascono

Telecommunications Engineer and PhD in Cybersecurity from the University of Zaragoza, with a strong track record in research and development of advanced technological solutions.

At Imascono, he manages the technological strategy, as well as the research and technical standardization of Imascono Tech, the company’s in-house team of engineers and technologists who design and create the new codes, frameworks, and tools that bring its experiences to life. Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, cybersecurity, 3D art, and Big Data are the main areas of research and development.