New degree in Artificial Intelligence at UPC

Today the Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB) presented the new degree in Artificial Intelligence, to be started by September 2021 and created with the support of the Digital Policy Department and the Secretary of Universities and Research of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan government).

The presentation has been done in the Manuel Martí Recover auditorium of the FIB school, chaired by the Dean of FIB school and with the presence of the Rector of the UPC Mg. Francesc Torras Torras, the Catalan Minister of Digital Policy, Mr. Jordi Puigneró, and the Secretary of Universities and Research Dr. Francesc Xavier Grau, from the Catalan government. Because of the COVID19 limitations, presential audience has been limited to 20 persons in the auditorium and the event has been streamed for all other attendants.

The Degree in Artificial Intelligence aims to train future professionals to join the AI ecosystem. They will have the ability to identify real situations in which AI techniques are suitable to offer innovative solutions either in business or organisations, and to apply them to generate added value as well as intelligent decision support. 

The Catalan AI ecosystem is rich and very promising and having this new AI degree will contribute to both retain local talent as well to attract international talent to Barcelona and Catalonia. 

This degree is the first official AI degree in Spain, without a hybrid focus with other specific areas (like business, health or cybersecurity), and has an AI generalist approach including applications in many verticals (health, mobility, industry 4.0,  environment, etc) and specializations in most of the branches of modern AI (including Data Science, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Speech Processing, Robotics, Reasoning, Intelligent Decision Support  and Ethics among others). This curriculum has been possible because UPC is pioneer in AI in Spain and has a long trajectory of AI experts with more than 30 years of  accumulated experience and high level research in the field.

Indeed, the KEMLg (Knowledge Engineering and Machine Learning group), today a part of our research center IDEAI, leaded the creation of the first PhD program in AI in Spain back in 1985 and also the first Official Master in AI, active since 2005. The Master in AI was created as an Interuniversity Master with the collaboration of the UPC, UB (Universitat de Barcelona) and URV (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) and still today is the unique official master in AI in the entire Catalonia.

Offering the degree in AI, the UPC has positioned itself as the unique Spanish university able to provide a complete official training in AI, starting with the newcomer Degree and following with the Official Master and PhD program.