Speakers

Ricardo Acosta
Research Professor

 

Ricardo Acosta Díaz is a computer science and education expert. He started his education at the Technological Institute of Colima. Later, he completed his master’s degree from the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada and earned a doctorate from the University of Baja California. He has been a Research Professor at the University of Colima since 2000. He is a member of the National Researchers System (SNI) and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He has made significant contributions to research with over 50 articles and seven books.

Karina Figueroa
Research Professor

  

Dr. Figueroa graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and completed her master’s in computer systems there with a CONACyT scholarship. She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Chile in 2007, also supported by CONACyT. Since 1999, she has been with the Faculty of Science in Physics and Mathematics at her alma mater, becoming a full professor in 2016 and a member of the Mexican System of Researchers. Dr. Figueroa has numerous publications with over 740 citations on Google Scholar as of 2021. She served as the president of the Mexican Society of Computer Science from 2013 to 2023. Currently, she continues in her role as the editor-in-chief of Komputer Sapiens magazine, collaborates with Amphora Health on data science, and leads in several professional computing societies. Her research focuses on information retrieval, databases, computer vision, and educational software. She has supervised numerous theses and coached teams in national programming competitions.

Manuel Garzón
Research Professor

 

Dr. Garzón, with over thirty years of experience as a university professor in master’s and doctoral programs in Administration, has been a visiting professor at universities in multiple Latin American countries. He has more than twenty years of experience as a business consultant and entrepreneur. He is a Senior Researcher at Minciencias and has delivered over 40,000 hours of corporate training.

He has held academic leadership positions such as Academic Vice-Rector, Dean, MBA Director, Director of the Master’s in Educational Innovation, and leader of research groups. He is a member of the Colombian Society of Business Consultants.

As a member of scientific committees and a reviewer for dozens of national and international scientific journals, he has supervised numerous master’s and doctoral theses and is part of examination boards. He has participated in 93 international conferences, published 100 articles in indexed journals, 13 books, and 24 book chapters. Additionally, he has evaluated research projects for entities in Panama, Spain, and Colombia. He has held leadership positions such as Academic Vice-Rector, MBA Director, Director of the Master’s in Educational Innovation, and leader of research groups. He is a member of the Colombian Society of Business Consultants, Director of the World Education Parliament Colombia, and a founding member of the Professional Community of Social Responsibility and Sustainability of Empresability.

Rafael Gutiérrez
Research Professor

 

He is a Research Professor at the University of Colima, responsible for the Distributed Computing Laboratory (dcomplab). He has served on international editorial committees such as Elsevier Computers and Geosciences, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IGI Global Publishing, Workshop on Self-Organizing Maps (WSOM), Advances in Computer Science and Technology (IASTED), Inderscience International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology, and Elsevier Neurocomputing.

He is a member of the Thematic Network on Information and Communication Technologies (RedTIC) of CONACYT and the CONACYT registry of accredited evaluators (RCEA). He is also a member of the National System of Researchers of CONACYT (SNI 1). He has been a PROMEP profile professor since 2004. He also contributes to the “State of the Art” column in the Komputer Sapiens magazine, edited by the Mexican Society of Artificial Intelligence (SMIA), since 2008.

He has written for indexed journals, conferences, and international publishers in the form of articles, book chapters, and books on topics such as Semantic Web, Artificial Learning of Ontologies, Data Mining, Knowledge Discovery, Self-Organizing Maps, Semantic Information Retrieval, Data Visualization, Education, Digital Libraries, and Seismic Volcanology. His other interests include software development for mobile devices, multivariable analysis, algorithm design, discrete mathematics, text processing, digital signal processing, pattern recognition, web intelligence, internet computing, reasoning, and complex data structures.

Román Herrera
Research Professor

 

Dr. Roman Herrera specializes in information management and knowledge extraction. He obtained his Ph.D. in Information Technologies from the University of Guadalajara in 2016. As a research professor, he has contributed to the development and support of SIABUC, a document management system that is widely used in over 1,000 institutions in Latin America. He has co-authored technical texts on SIABUC and developed software that is registered with the National Institute of Copyright (INDAUTOR). He has also served as the director of CENEDIC at the University of Colima, where he led the development of software and digital products. He has collaborated on projects with UNESCO and CONACULTA. His research interests include semantic information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and data mining.

Salma Jalife
Research Professor

 

Salma Jalife, a graduate in Computer Engineering from UNAM and with a master’s degree in Sciences specializing in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado, has 35 years of experience in consulting on information and communication technologies, covering Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Between 2018 and 2020, she served as the Undersecretary of Communications in Mexico, and from 2003 to 2006, she was a Commissioner at the Federal Telecommunications Commission. She stood out in international consultancy by assisting Colombia and Costa Rica in reforming their telecommunications regulatory frameworks in 2007.

She founded the Digital Mexico Center in 2021 to support the digitalization of SMEs. She was the coordinator of international affairs at CUDI for 12 years, promoting academic networks in health, education, and ICT. She began her career in 1985 at UNAM, where she set up the first scientific email and contributed to the installation of the internet in Mexico, in addition to designing UNAM’s Comprehensive Telecommunications Network in 1990.

Sally Johnstone
Research Professor

 

Sally M. Johnstone retired from the presidency of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) in January 2023. NCHEMS is known across the United States and internationally for turning data into useable information for policy makers. She also served as a vice president at the on-line Western Governors University, a provost at a public comprehensive university, as the founding director of WCET at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), an assistant dean, and as a faculty member. She also serves as the executive director of the Foundation for Student Success, a commissioner on the U.S. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Commission, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Open Learning (UK), as well as a consulting editor for Change magazine (USA). She was the founding editor of the Journal of Competency-Based Education. She also serves on the Boards of AI Advising, Quality Matters, and Antioch University

Dr. Johnstone has written dozens of articles, books, and reports on issues of integrating effective new practices into academics. She has managed workshops, served on study groups, and given speeches throughout North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim. She also managed design teams for two different on-line, higher education institutions, and consulted on their development. The oldest of which, WGU, now has over 100,000 full-time students throughout the U.S. Dr. Johnstone also served on the Board of the U.S. Open University, during the UK Open U’s failed attempt to establish a presence in the U.S. She earned her baccalaureate and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech and her Ph. D. in experimental psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Paul Kim
Educational Technology Entrepreneur

 

Paul Kim is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Southern California. He currently serves as the Director of Technology and Associate Dean at the Stanford University School of Education. As a Co-Founder of the Stanford Digital Learning Design Challenge Program, his expertise is in integrating technological development into organizations, especially within the context of education. His focus is on empowering mobile design and fostering entrepreneurship in educational systems. Currently, he is involved in an interdisciplinary project aimed at promoting innovation and competence through the construction of a Programmable and Open Mobile Internet (POMI 2020). The project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Walterio Mayol-Cuevas
Research Professor

 

Walterio Mayol-Cuevas is full professor at the Computer Science Department at the University of Bristol, UK and Sr Research Science Lead of Generative AI for Ads at Amazon US. Got his BSc at the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and his PhD from the University of Oxford. His work with students and collaborators developed some of the first methods and applications of visual localisation and mapping (SLAM) for Robotics and Augmented Reality. His recent work focuses on areas of visual skill understanding, new paradigms in human-robot interaction and commercial products in tele-presence and AI. Was General co-chair of BMVC 2013, General Chair for IEEE ISMAR 2016 and upcoming ISMAR 2024.

Christian Peñaloza
Research Professor

  

Dr. Christian Penaloza holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience Robotics from Osaka University and specializes in AI and Nerotechnology. Currently, he is the Managing Director of Mirai Innovation Research Institute Japan and strategic partner of Keisuugiken Corp. In 2016, the MIT Technology Review Magazine recognized Dr. Penaloza as “Innovator of the Year Mexico”. In 2018 and 2020, he received the “Excellence Research Award” from the president of the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Kyoto. In 2018, the Mexican government awarded Dr. Penaloza with the “Distinguished Mexican Citizen” award. In 2021, the Academy of Science of New York selected Dr. Penaloza as one of the 60 young researcher around the world with the most promising careers and assigned him to work in the Interstellar Initiative 2021-2022.

Marcela Quiroz
Research Professor

 

Dr. Marcela Quiroz is a distinguished scholar with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Technological Institute of Tijuana, and a Master’s degree in the same field from the Technological Institute of Ciudad Madero. She is notable for her affiliation with the National System of Researchers and her active participation in the Mexican Society of Computer Science. Moreover, she has played significant roles on the executive boards of the Mexican Academy of Computing and the Mexican Federation of Robotics, consolidating her leadership in these areas.

As a founding member of the outreach group Código IA, Marcela has made significant contributions to the promotion and education of artificial intelligence in Mexico. In her current role, she is the coordinator of the Ph.D. program in Artificial Intelligence and serves as a senior researcher at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research at the University of Veracruz. Her research focuses on Computational Learning and Intelligent Optimization, areas in which she has made valuable contributions and guided numerous Ph.D. students towards research excellence.

Raúl Rojas
Research Professor

 

Dr. Raúl Rojas González is an emeritus professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Free University of Berlin and currently a mathematics professor at the University of Nevada Reno. He has been a world robotics champion twice (2004 in Italy and 2005 in Japan), and his autonomous vehicles have been navigating the streets of Berlin guided by computers since 2011. In March 2015, Dr. Rojas received the Professor of the Year award, a distinction given by the Society of Professors of Germany. In addition to this recognition, Dr. Rojas has received awards for his academic career in several countries: three additional awards in Germany, one in Great Britain, one in Austria, one in Sweden, two in the United States, and three in Mexico. In December 2015, Dr. Rojas received the National Prize for Science and Arts in the Technology category. Dr. Rojas graduated from the Higher School of Physics and Mathematics of the IPN with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the Free University of Berlin, graduating with summa cum laude honors. There, he also obtained his Habilitation, an additional postdoctoral degree, in the field of Computer Science. In 2016, he received the title of Professor Honoris Causa from the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics, and Electronics. Besides peer-reviewed works (220), Dr. Rojas is the author of 12 printed books, eight electronic books, numerous outreach articles, and technical reports. He is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the National System of Researchers (Level III).

Osslan Vergara
Research Professor

 

Osslan Osiris Vergara Villegas was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, on July 3, 1977. He earned a B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico de Zacatepec, Mexico, in 2000; an M.Sc. in Computer Science at the Center of Research and Technological Development (CENIDET) in 2003; and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from CENIDET in 2006. He is a Professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, where he heads the Computer Vision and Augmented Reality laboratory.

Prof. Vergara is a level-one member of the Mexican National Research System. He serves several peer-reviewed international journals and conferences as an editorial board member and reviewer. He has co-authored over 100 book chapters, journals, and international conference papers. Vergara has directed over 50 B.S., M.Sc., and Ph.D. theses and has four patents. He is a senior member of the IEEE Computer Society and a member of the Mexican Computing Academy. His fields of interest include artificial intelligence, digital image processing, augmented reality, and mechatronics. Dr. Vergara is the director of the Navig8 company, which is dedicated to developing technology-based projects.

Coming soon
more info

 

Juan Humberto Sossa Azuela holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France. He serves as a full-time professor at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and is the Head of the Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory at the Computing Research Center. He is an Emeritus member of the National System of Researchers; he is affiliated with esteemed academic institutions such as the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering.

Coming soon
more info

 

Juan Humberto Sossa Azuela holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France. He serves as a full-time professor at the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico and is the Head of the Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory at the Computing Research Center. He is an Emeritus member of the National System of Researchers; he is affiliated with esteemed academic institutions such as the Mexican Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering.