In order to get to know those who make up Cenia, the different areas of action and to promote communication and cohesion, the National Center for Artificial Intelligence held its first annual workshop entitled “Formemos Lazos” (Let’s Form Bonds) last Friday, April 22 at Casa Tudor, Talagante. This internal activity was attended by senior researchers, associates and staff, the team of developers, undergraduate and graduate students and the executive team. Representatives from the Instituto Milenio Fundamento de los Datos (IMFD), one of Cenia’s strategic partners, also participated.
At the beginning of the activity, Alvaro Soto, director of the Center, welcomed the participants, highlighting the benefits of the professional and academic synergy that arises in this type of meetings, which is essential to build an organizational culture on solid foundations: “the main objective of this first workshop is to build bonds and establish open and horizontal communication as fundamental pillars of our organizational culture, which will be the basis on which we will work to contribute to the development of an AI at the service of people and a better society”.
Next, the executive team of the Center was presented, which includes: the Executive Management, Technology Transfer, Liaison with the Environment and Communications. Each director shared the main guidelines for this first year in operation, some of the projects that are being developed in conjunction with the fifteen companies associated with Cenia and the main initiatives to be developed during 2022. The first block concluded with the presentation of the IMFD, who emphasized the importance of caring for and nurturing collaborative networks.
In the second block, the Cenia Scientific Committee was presented, composed of researchers Denis Parra, Paula Aguirre, Leopoldo Bertossi, Pedro Maldonado and Claudia López, and then the main projects developed in each of the Center’s research lines were presented: deep learning for vision and language, neuro-symbolic AI, brain-inspired AI, physics-based machine learning and human-centered AI.
Marcela Peña, Deputy Director of Cenia and Coordinator of the Scientific Committee, highlighted the importance of creating personal bonds and strengthening identity among the people who make up Cenia: “these types of dynamics contribute to identifying synergies among our members around common objectives, and are useful for strengthening the ties of young professional and academic talent to our Center”.
During the afternoon, an activity was carried out in groups made up of members from different areas: professionals, researchers and students. This dynamic sought to know what are the expectations, initiatives and commitments that each member has from and for Cenia. The conclusions were shared in a plenary session, which allowed reflecting on the role and contribution of each of the participants to the construction of the Center.
Currently, the National Center for Artificial Intelligence has a team of more than 150 people, including researchers, development engineers, executive staff and graduate students. Under the motto “Artificial Intelligence at the service of people”, this team is the main effort in the country and in all Latin America to promote the creation of a virtuous ecosystem of artificial intelligence that contributes to improve the quality of life of our society and those who compose it.
