The Barcelona Supercomputing Center, recognized as Spain's most important center for digital innovation.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) has been awarded the ESIC Catalunya Aster Prize for Digital Innovation, in a ceremony held on Thursday, February 2nd in Barcelona. The jury has recognized BSC as the most important center for digital innovation in Spain and one of the leading ones globally, with outstanding projects in the fields of earth sciences, health, digital technology, and materials.
The award also considered the creation of around 100 jobs in spin-offs born at the BSC, and especially highlighted the MarIA project, a massive artificial intelligence system to understand and write in Spanish, and the AINA project based on data and Artificial Intelligence technologies to make machines understand and speak Catalan.
The director of BSC, Mateo Valero, received the award from the president of the jury in the Digital Innovation category, Carlos Grau, during the ceremony held at the International Convention Center of Barcelona (CCIB) in front of more than 1,200 people.
Since 1982, ESIC's Aster Prizes recognize the merits of individuals and entities in their professional activity with the goal of promoting integration between academic training and business life with a focus on socially responsible values and actions. In addition to BSC, the Aster Prizes have also recognized the work of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, entrepreneur Enrique Tomás, the Cola-cao Foundation, and the Catalan Association of Economic Information Journalists, among others.