The BSC AI Institute aims to advance AI research and innovation, establishing BSC as a European leader in the convergence of supercomputing and AI.
The new institute’s goals include developing advanced AI solutions for key sectors such as biomedicine, finance, climate, and public services.
The researcher Ricardo Baeza-Yates joins the Barcelona Supercomputing Center - Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) as Director of the recently created BSC AI Institute, an initiative aimed at promoting innovation in artificial intelligence within a collaborative research ecosystem, in which disciplines as diverse as biomedicine, climatology, engineering, computational architecture and the humanities converge in a common space.
Previously Research Director of the Experiential Artificial Intelligence Institute at Northeastern University's Silicon Valley campus, Baeza-Yates is a world expert in responsible AI and data science. His special interests include information retrieval, web search, data mining, data visualisation and algorithmic biases and their social impact.
He holds a PhD in Computer Science and is also a professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the University of Chile, where he was the youngest professor to achieve this distinction. He was also one of the first researchers to obtain an ICREA position from the Generalitat de Catalunya, in 2004, and was a member of the Spanish government's AI Council that drafted the current AI strategy.
Since 2006, Baeza-Yates has focused his career on applied research, translating theoretical knowledge into the development of technological solutions. Between 2006 and 2016, he was Vice President of Research at Yahoo Labs, first in Barcelona and then in Silicon Valley, leading teams in Europe, America and Asia of up to 150 people. He was responsible for opening Yahoo's European lab in Barcelona in 2006, and established new labs in cities such as Haifa, London and Santiago de Chile. From 2016 to 2020, he was CTO of NTENT, a semantic search technology company based in California, also opening European headquarters in Barcelona.
He has received several prestigious awards in recognition of his career, including the ‘Ángela Ruiz Robles’ National Prize for Applied Computing, awarded by the Spanish Scientific Society for Computer Science and the BBVA Foundation, the Chilean National Prize for Applied and Technological Sciences, and the distinctions of being named a Fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is the author of over 600 scientific publications and the co-author of the world's most widely used textbook on information retrieval and search technologies.
More than 320 AI experts
The BSC AI Institute has been created with the mission of driving research excellence in AI, leveraging the BSC's commitment to innovation and its interdisciplinary expertise at the intersection of supercomputing and AI. The new BSC AI institute’s goals include the development of advanced solutions in strategic sectors such as biomedicine, finance, climate and public services, promoting AI that aligns with European ethical values.
Baeza-Yates will lead the establishment and operational management of the Institute, fostering collaboration between the over 320 AI researchers across different BSC research groups, talent development and the coordination of international projects with leading institutions. He will also oversee professional development programmes and collaborate in the deployment and management of the BSC AI Factory initiative, which aims to provide advanced AI capabilities to enhance its development within the business ecosystem.
Baeza-Yates' appointment strengthens BSC's commitment to the development of responsible, fair and socially impactful AI, a critical foundation for constructing a more egalitarian, inclusive and responsible society.