Universitat de Barcelona

Maite 2023

Maite is "Catedrática" (Full Professor) at Universitat de Barcelona (UB). 
She is member of the WAI (Volume Visualization and Artificial Intelligence) research group (2009 SGR 362)- CLiC Centre de Llenguatge i Computació (2014 SGR 623, 2021 SGR 00313) and researcher in charge (Investigadora Responsable) of WAI as associated unit to CSIC by IIIA (the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute). She is also a member of the Consolidated Educational Innovation Group INDOMAIN (Grup d'Innovació Docent Consolidat: GIDC) at UB (code GIDCUB-13/138) as well as former board member of the ACIA: Associació Catalana d'Intel.ligència Artificial, and emeritus board director of the EURAMAS (European Association for Multi-Agent Systems).

Scientific Publications


CONTACT INFORMATION:
Departament de Matemàiques i Informática (MatInfo)
Universitat de Barcelona (UB)
C/Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 585 (located at Plaça Universitat campus)
08007 Barcelona

Tel.: +34 93 4037154, Fax: +34 93 4021601, e-mail: maite_lopez@@@ub.edu
UB Oficial webpage: maite_lopez.ub.edu


EDUCATION

-September 1999: Ph.D. in Computer Science entitled "Approaches to Map Generation by means of Collaborative Autonomous Robots" at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA) under the supervision of Professor Ramon López de Màntaras.

-January-June 1998: Visiting Researcher at the Robotics Laboratory from the University of Southern California USC, California (USA).

-1996: M.Sc. in Computer Science with thesis entitled: "Unknown Environment Map Generation by means of Autonomous Cooperative Robots".

-1994-1996 : Ph.D. courses requirements completed in the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Politechnical University of Catalonia, G.P.A. : 3.86

-1989-94 : B.Sc. in Computer Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) . Final year project concerning the design of an Environment for Qualitative-Quantitative Rule Based Expert Systems Development.

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RESEARCH INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES

Open democracy, collective intelligence, ethics and moral values:
- Invited talk entitled "Ethical Values in Multi-Agent Systems" at IV International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Applied Computing, Mexico (on-line), November 16th, 2023 video (Spanish) .
- Talk entitled "Value-Engineering for Ethical AI" at The many challenges of Artificial Intelligence workshop by CSIC AIhub, La Cristalera Madrid, November 13th-15th, 2023.
- Presentation entitled "Value alignment" at 1st Japan-Spain symposium: Avatar Symbiotic Society FME (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya), Barcelona, November 3rd, 2023.
- Lightning talk entitled "Can a Chatbot Foster Participation at Decidim?" at Decidim Fest 2023 at Canòdrom, Barcelona, October 18th-20th, 2023.
- Opening Lecture on Ethical Value Engineering at the Facultat de Matemàtiques i Informàtica, September 27th, 2023, video (Catalan, min 12-60).
- Round table on AI and teaching Jornada sobre intel·ligència artificial en la docència a la UB at Universitat de Barcelona (Aula Magna), July 7th, 2023
- Panel "AI Value alignment: reasoning or learning?" Being human in the digital society: on technology, norms and us at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), November 21st, 2022.
- Participation -as zero row- on the 17th session of the LAB metadecidim about deliberative democracy at Canòdrom, Barcelona, on June the 3rd 2022. video (Maite's intervention at 1:18:16).
- Video Intel·ligència Artificial i guerra: i ara qui dispara?" for the Centre Civic La Sagrera (announcement) 9/2/2022.
- Presentation (by Jesús Cerquides and Maite Lopez-Sanchez) entitled "Decidim4CS" at the Decidim and participatory citizen science session in Decidim Fest 2021: Democracia, Tecnologíay Justicia Social.Tweet. Barcelona, 20-22nd Oct, 2021.video (Maite's presentation from 13:38 to 16:25).
- Participation on the event Ciutats de futur: intel·ligents i dinàmiques (Future cities: smart and dynamic) organized by the University of Barcelona in the context of the 2021 European Researchers' Night September 23rd/24th, 2021. Event announcement and video.
- Participation on the event Inteligencia Artificial y Ética organized by Casa America on September the 7th 2021. Watch video.
- Round table about "The values at Artificial Intelligence" (Els valors en la intel·ligència Artificial). Barcelona (within the Biennal de Ciutat i Ciència). June 13th, 2021.
- Article entitled ¿La inteligencia artificial es la solución a nuestro modelo democrático? (Is artificial intelligence the solution to our democratic model?). Published at the Palau Macaya within the Ciclo de pensamiento La Gobernanza de la Inteligencia Artificial en el Mundo pos-COVID-19 from Nov 12th 2020 to April 7th 2021.
- Presentation entitled "Ètica i tecnologia" (Ethics and technology) in the XII jornada de programació i robòtica educatives. Virtual event due to the covid-19 pandemic on May, 22nd, 2020 Video (in Catalan).
- Discussion about "Reptes davant la Intel·ligència Artificial" (Artificial Intelligence challenges) within the pannel on "Diseñando el mañana" organized by Auren. Barcelona. January 30th, 2020.
- "Cities and AI to foster collective intelligence" Dialogue of David Puentes and Maite Lopez-Sanchez moderated by Soledad Guilera within the "Artificial Intelligence: challenges and opportunities" session of the Digital Transformation track at Smart City Expo World Congress, SCEWC'19. November 19th 2019.
- Invited talk "Intel·ligència Artificial: present, oportunitats i reptes de futur" (Artificial Intelligence: present, opportunities and challenges for the future) organised by the Institut d'Estudis Ilerdencs Lleida. November 13th, 2019.
- Presentation entitled "Decidim y la Inteligencia Artificial en el proyecto "¿Podemos hacer Decidim inteligente?""(Decidim and Artificial Intelligence in the project "Can we do Decidim smart?") within the panel "Fronteras de la investigación democrática: deliberación, inteligencia artificial, ránkings, crowdvocacy" at the DecidimFest 2019 (Barcelona) October 29th-31st video.
- Invited talk "Intel·ligència Artificial" for the Tech-MAT, Clúster de materials avançats de Catalunya. Barcelona, October 1st, 2019.
- Round table entitled "Are we sowing fear of artificial intelligence?" organised at Sonar+D, Barcelona, 17th July 2019.
- Technical session entitled "Ethics and the limits of Artificial Intelligence" organised by Enginyers Industrials de Catalunya (in Catalan: Jornades tècniques Ètica i límits en la Intel·ligència Artificial"). Auditori Pompeu Fabra Enyiners Industrials de Catalunya.video. March 21st 2019.
- Debate about "Robotics, Autonomy and decision making" (Robòtica, Autonomia i presa de decisions") Organised at the Science Museum: Cosmocaixa. Barcelona, October 17th 2018.
- "AI and Ethics" talk in the ICANN-IBEI AutumnSchool 2018. UPF, Barcelona, October 16th 2018.
- Round table about "Ethics in AI" (program) Organised within the Catalan Conference of Artificial Intelligence 2018. Roses, October 9th 2018.
- Round table about "Ethical aspects of the artificial intelligence" (Aspectes ètics de la Intel.ligència artificial). Organised at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Barcelona, September 19th 2018.
- Round table about "Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: visions and contradictions of the future (Ètica i Intel.ligència artificial: visions i contradiccions del futur)". Organised within the Mobile Week Barcelona, an event of Mobile World Capital. Barcelona, Febr 22th 2018.
- Participatory deliberation on norms. "Decentralised moderation: bringing democracy to the Internet" Short presentation at Initiatives for open democracy and a decentralised Internet. Democratic cities, at MediaLab Prado May 26th 2016. Prototype of norm crowdsourcing (Code available to download here: code).
- Collective Intelligence at MediaLab Prado Consen.su.ar project: Citizen Participation for norm consensus.
- Parcitipation. Presentation of "The Science of Participation" at Civiciti stand at the SCEWC 2016 (Smart City Expo World Congress, which included 600 cities). 15-17 October 2016. promo video and presentation video.
- Technical session moderator at "Sense and scope of Autonomy in Emerging Military and Security Technologies". Academic event centered on the principles and rules of applicable International Law, in particular International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. Barcelona, February 27th, 2017. Brochure .
- Attendee to the workshop of the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons of the United Nations held in Geneve on November 13-17th, 2017.
- Attendee of the B-debate: Artificial Intelligence: Dreams, Risks, and Reality" Barcelona. March 8th, 2017.
- Participation at the Open debate about Ontologies and participation in the context of "LAB Metadecidim". June 30th, 2017.video.

Gender issues:
- Listed as Catalan female Computer Science researcher in the future train initiative (in Catalan) explained by TV3 (see twit to video).
- Within the #100tifiques initiative, presentation of my career as a female scientist to 33 6th grade students (11-years-old) from the IE Carles Capdevila, February 10th, 2023.
- Listed as female Computer Engineer from UAB at the local exposition.
- Sanja Bauk (chapters by 16 researchers, including Maite Lopez-Sanchez). Book entitled "Life Stories of Women in Academia". Ed.Tracy Buenk, Durban, South Africa. ISBN: 978-0-620-97267-3. Dec. 2021.
- This video: Maternitat i Ciència, són incompatibles? (Maternity and Science: are they compatible?) by UB was launched for February the 11th, 2022 (International Day of Women and Girls in Science) as a follow up of the video from 2021.
- Within the #100tifiques initiative, presentation of my career as a female scientist to about 100 11-12-years-old students from the Sagrat Cor school, February 11th, 2022.
- 8M 2021: I fully share this view from my colleages in donesIA (Valencia).
- Participation in this video by UB entitled "De nenes a científiques" (From girls to scientists) related to the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 11 February 2021. Many schools worked on this, and this is my thank you video (agraïment).
- Participation in this video by IIIA-CSIC entitled "Si poguessis, què li diries a la nena de deu anys que vas ser? " (If you could, what would you say to the ten-year-old girl you were?) related to the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 11 February 2021.
- Invited talk entitled "La Intel·ligència Artificial. Eina de transformació social amb perspectiva de gènere?" (Artificial Intelligence. A tool for social transformation with a gender perspective?) orginised by the Centre d'Atenció a la Dona from the l'Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council. March 5th, 2020. (video in Catalan).
- Round table entitled "Women in Tech. Créixer professionalment sense renunciar a una vida" within the Mobile Week at Begues (Barcelona), February 9th, 2020.
- Round table entitled "El impacto de la mujer en la revolución teconológica" (The impact of women in the technological revolution) organised by TechBloom at Fnac Triangle (Barcelona), 12th September 2019.

Positions:

- Representative/contact of the WAI research group at Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe CLAIRE.

- Listed at Ranking (top) investigadoras.

- Researcher responsible for the Associated Unit "Virtual Worlds, Visualization and Artificial Intelligence Group" from the UB at the Institut d'Investigació en Intel·ligència Artificial (IIIA) of the CSIC

- Member of the elected coordination comitte of the Decidim comunity.

- Emeritus board director of the EURAMAS (European Association for Multi-Agent Systems).

- Former board member of the ACIA: Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligence / Associació Catalana d'Intel.ligència Artificial.

- 1999-2003 Research Manager at iSOCO (intelligent Sofware Components, SL.)

Research Projects:
- Involved in the project "VAE: Value-Awareness Engineering" code TED2021-131295B-C31 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación: Proyectos de Transición Ecológica y Transición Digital 2021). IP: Nardine Osman. From 1/12/2022 to 30/11/24.
- Involved in the project "ACISUD: Advanced Computational Intelligence Techniques Used for the Benefit of Sustainable Development" código: PID2022-136787NB-I00, (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación: Proyectos de Generación del Conocimiento 2022) IP: Christian Blum and Juan Antonio Rodríguez-Aguilar (from 01/Sept/23 to 31/Aug/2026).
- Involved in the project "AUTODEMO: The stealth side of participatory democracy: process preferences towards automated decision-making" code SR21-00329. Funded by the Fundación La Caixa under the program 2021 Social Research. IP: José Luís Fernández Martínez (Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos IPP- CSIC). From 26/01/2022 to 31/12/2023.
- Involved in the project "Fairtrans NLP-Language: Analysing Toxicity and Stereotypes in Language for Unbiased, Fair and Transparent Systems", code PID2021-124361OB-C33 (Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento 2021, area TIC). IPs: Maria Taule Delor and Maria Salamo Llorente (UB) (from 01/09/2022 to 31/08/2025).
- Involved, as IP, in the project "assist-Decidim: disseny d'un assistent virtual per al Decidim (assist-Decidim: design of a virtual assistant for Decidim) from 1/4/2023 to 31/12/2023 (code 23S02974-001). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.
Maite Lopez-Sanchez belongs to the WAI research group (University of Barcelona) an associated unit to CSIC through the IIIA.

Previous Research Activities:
- Involved (part time) in the European project Crowd4SDG "Citizen Science for Monitoring Climate Impacts and Achieving Climate Resilience", code H2020-872944. Funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 872944 (Call: H2020-SwafS-2018-2020, Topic: SwafS-15-2018-2019, Type of action: RIA, Proposal number: 872944). IP: François Grey (Université de Genève, UNIGE). Member of the IIIA-CSIC partner link. From 05/2020 to 04/2023.
- Involved (part time) in the European project COREDEM (The Influence of Complex Reward Computation and Working Memory Load onto Decision-Making: A combined theoretical, human and non-human primate approach). code H2020-785907. Project Number: 785907 within the Human Brain Project SGA2. IP: Ruben Moreno (UPF). Member of the UB partner. From 10/2020 to 9/2023
- Involved (invited) to the COST Action CA17132 - "APPLY: European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis". IP: Marcin Lewinski (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), from 19/10/2018 - 18/10/2022.
- Involved, as IP, in the project "Decidim-bot: bot conversacional per a donar suport a la participació" (Decidim-bot: conversational bot to support participation) from 1/4/2022 to 31/12/2022 (code 22S01386-001). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.
- Involved in the project "Nou format audiovisual amb funcionalitats tecnològiques avançades per a l'aprenentatge: nanomooc", code COMRDI18-1-0010-02 (RIS3CAT, FEDER program for Catalonia 2014-2020). IP: Anna Puig (UB) (from 01/04/2019 to 30/09/2021).
- Involved (part time) in the Spanish project "CI-SUSTAIN: Advanced Computational Intelligence Techniques for Reaching Sustainable Development Goals (Inteligencia Computacional Avanzada para Alcanzar Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible)", code PID2019-104156GB-I00. IP: Christian Blum / Jesus Cerquides (IIIA-CSIC) (from 1/6/2020 to 31/5/2023).
- Involved (part time) in the Spanish project "Desinformación y agresividad en Social Media: Analizando el lenguaje", code PGC2018-096212-B-C33. IP: M Taulé (UB) from 01/01/2019 to 31/12/2021.
- Involved, as IP, in the project "Intel.ligència Artificial aplicada als debats de Decidim Barcelona" (Artificial Intelligence applied to Decidim Barcelona debates) from 1/4/2021 to 31/12/2021 (code 21S01802-001). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.
- Involved, as IP, in the project "Inteligencia Artificial aplicada a la plataforma de participación ciudadana Decidim Barcelona" (Artificial Intelligence applied to the Decidim Barcelona citizen participation platform) from 1/4/2020 to 31/12/2020 (code 20S02623-0018.30). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.
- Involved, as IP, in the project "Desiciones inteligentes: Investigación de Inteligencia Artificial en debates y presupuestos participativos" (Smart decisions: Artificial Intelligence Research in debates and participatory budgets) from 1/4/2019 to 31/12/2019 (code 19S01329-001). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.link .
- Involved in the Spanish project "Collectiveware" (Tecnologias para potenciar colectivos humanos en la red eléctrica inteligente) code TIN2015-66863-C2-1-R (IIIA-CSIC) from 01/01/2016 to 31/12/2018.
- Involved in the project "Podem fer Decidim Barcelona intel·ligent? Estudi d'introducció de Tècniques d'IA" (Can we make Decidim Barcelona smart? an study of consideration of AI Techniques) from 3/4/2018 to 14/12/2018 (code 30558594-39). From Barcelona City Council through the Fundació Solidaritat de la UB.
- Participation at the research project "Sistema d'armes autònomes letals: els reptes d'adopció d'una regulació internacional sobre ús, control operatiu i disponibilitat per empreses privades" (code 2016 RICIP0007) from the Institut Català Internacional per a la Pau. Member of the DIAR (Dret, Intel.ligència Artificial i Robòtica) group.
- Involved in the Spanish project "Robust Virtual Collaborations" (COR) code TIN2012-38876-C02-02 (UB) from 01/01/2013 to 31/12/2015.
- Involved in the CONSOLIDER Project "Agreement Technologies" (CSD2007-0022 code), from 2008 to 2014.
- Involved in the Spanish project "Engineering self-* Virtually-Embedded systems" (EVE) codes:TIN2009-14702-C02-01 (IIIA) and TIN2009-14702-C02-02 (UB) from 01/01/2010 to 31/12/2013.
- Involved in the Spanish MEC Project "3D Reconstruction, classification and visualization of temporal sequences of bioimplant Micro-CT images" (MAT-2005-07244-C03-03).
- Involved in the IST European Project: SimWeb (IST-2001-34651), Exploring Innovative eBusiness Models using Multi-Agent Simulation.
- Involved in the Spanish MCYT Project "VAuctions: Secure ecommerce Applications: B2B auctions and B2G voting" (TIC2000-0232-P4-02) from 7/11/2001 to 7/11/2003.
- Involved in the IST European Project "Ibrow: An intelligent Brokering Service for Knowledge-Component Reuse on the World Wide Web" (ST-1999-19005, IST FP5) from 2000 to 2003.


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Also worked on...:
Education & Learning Analytics:
- Gamification and serious games
- On-line learning/training and incentivation mechanisms
- Adaptation of educational contents and teacher's feedback

Coordination mechanisms in Multi-agent systems (MAS):
- Automatic Norm Generation in MAS (wiki). Some videos: video IJCAI'11; video demo AAMAS'13; video demo AAMAS'14; video demo AAMAS'15.
- MAS adaptation (wiki) and Autonomic Electronic Institutions.
- Energy management
- Machine learning techniques (Case Based Reasoning: CBR) see a video about CBR from IIIA-CSIC
- Autonomous Robot Formation Maintenance. See a presentation and a demo
- Graphics & Artificial Intelligence: volume classification data (331M) and intelligent objects.

Arficial Intelligence techniques applied to e-commerce and e-goverment:
- Assisted Hybrid 3D Virtual Institutions (wiki). Some videos: video 3DEI 2012; video assisted 3DEI 2014; conversational 3DEI video.
- Fuzzy matching (fuzzy logic)
- Negotiation

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