Science and technology

The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony paid tribute to 20 leading figures in science and culture, recognized for their decisive contributions to the advancement of knowledge. Carlos Torres Vila, President of the BBVA Foundation, emphasized in his speech that we are living in complex times, marked by enormous challenges, but we also possess “extraordinary tools to confront them: science, technology and culture.”

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change and Environmental Sciences goes to US scientist Camille Parmesan for her pioneering studies showing that “wild species shift their geographical ranges in response to climate change,” moving toward the poles and higher elevations. This groundbreaking discovery laid “the foundations of climate change ecology,” according to the committee.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities category has gone in this seventeenth edition to the Anglo-American philosopher Philip Kitcher, described by the committee as a “humanistic intellectual” whose trailblazing work addresses a broad spectrum of the core questions of our time.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences has gone to Avelino Corma, John F. Hartwig and Helmut Schwarz for fundamental advances in the field of catalysis that have made it possible, in the words of the awards committee, to “control and accelerate chemical reactions” and obtain products across multiple industrial processes”, thus “improving efficiency and reducing energy consumption.” Their work has had a profound impact on sectors such as pharmaceuticals, energy and food.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Social Sciences has gone in this seventeenth edition to social psychologists Icek Ajzen (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Dolores Albarracín (University of Pennsylvania), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard University), Anthony Greenwald (University of Washington) and Richard Petty (Ohio State University) for their innovative contributions that have revolutionized the attitude theory and its practical applications.

The BBVA Foundation has granted its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies to Anil K. Jain (Michigan State University, United States) and Michael I. Jordan (University of California, Berkeley, United States) for their “core contributions” to machine learning, which have unlocked developments in biometrics and artificial intelligence.

The BBVA Foundation has honored four researchers with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for their groundbreaking work in establishing the biological foundations for a new class of drugs. These drugs are highly effective in treating type 2 diabetes, promoting significant weight loss in obese individuals, and reducing their risk of cardiovascular issues.

The President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, championed the power of knowledge during the ceremony for the 16th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards. Knowledge is the key to solving the problems we are experiencing as a society, at a moment when humanity is going through an unprecedented wave of disruption and faces the challenges of climate change, he said.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences category goes to American psychologist Elke Weber in recognition of her research into “environmental decision-making and human responses to climate change.” Weber was the first psychologist to join the IPCC, a group of experts to which she brought her knowledge of decision-making theory.

Sir George Benjamin (composer, conductor and Henry Purcell Professor of Composition at King's College London) has been awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Music and Opera for "his extraordinary contribution and impact in contemporary creation in the realms of symphonic music, opera and chamber music," according to the committee.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences has gone to Claire Voisin (National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS, France) and Yakov Eliashberg (Stanford University, United States) for driving forward mathematical thought by bridging the space between two key areas of geometry with special relevance to quantum physics.

BBVA has announced the roll-out of its BBVA Spark business unit in Colombia. The new unit will offer an end-to-end financial services proposition aimed at entrepreneurs and tech companies at different stages of development. This includes a full range of banking products and services, specialized support and access to the tech industry ecosystem.

Fighting the unconscious gender biases that most of us have is a complicated task. We are social beings and are raised to assume a series of gender-determined roles pretty much from birth. But unlearning to learn and teach with a new approach is the key to achieving a more egalitarian society. This is especially true in areas where there is a large gender gap, such as technology. At BBVA we believe that it is time to inspire new generations of talent in this field. That is why we are celebrating the International Day of Girls and Women in Science and Technology.

BBVA has chosen Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), to take the most sophisticated operations of the Corporate and Investment Banking area (BBVA CIB) to the cloud. Specifically, the new platform provides greater computing power to make calculations related to financial markets faster, more accurate and more efficient.

The three award-winning scientists “have expanded knowledge of the evolutionary importance of behavior as a driver of animal survival, reproduction and adaptation,” and have demonstrated the need to incorporate social interactions into species conservation plans, according to the committee of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology category.

The BBVA Foundation awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine in this fifteenth edition to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for their contributions to the use of artificial intelligence for the accurate prediction of the three-dimensional structure of proteins.” In the words of the committee, the winners achieved an advance with huge biomedical potential for the development of new treatments against multiple conditions.

In times of uncertainty, innovation has the potential to change the stakes in favour of humanity. From more sustainable solutions in nutrition or energy to revolutionary applications of neuroengineering, the technological trends that will shape 2023 are set to provide answers to major global challenges. With the help of futurists and experts, BBVA Spark, BBVA's unit focused on helping high-growth companies, selects five technologies that will have a decisive impact in the coming months.

Carlos Torres Vila emphasized the power of research, innovation and education to tackle the great challenges facing humanity, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the environmental deterioration, during his speech at the 14th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony.

The fourteenth BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences recognized the contributions of Charles Fefferman and Jean-François Le Gall to mathematical analysis and probability theory, two domains that have applications in multiple fields, from the behavior of fluids to quantum mechanics and the properties of graphene.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies has gone in this fourteenth edition to Judea Pearl for “bringing a modern foundation to artificial intelligence”. The Professor of Computer Science at the University of California (UCLA), has made contributions that enable AI programs to use two of the key resources we humans use to interpret the world and arrive at decisions: probability and causality.

Gerald Holton, who was unable to attend the awards ceremony in person, received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences from the President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, at his home in Cambridge (Massachusetts). "This award recognizes Holton's great contribution to the understanding of the cultural dimension of science," said Torres Vila.

The ceremony of the 12th and 13th editions of the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, which took place on September 21 at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao, highlighted the value of science and culture in tackling the great global challenges facing humanity beyond the pandemic, such as the environmental emergency, the profound technological transformation and the risk of new economic crises. The event recognized 35 world leaders in scientific research and artistic creation.

The BBVA Foundation has awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies to John Hennessy and David Patterson, founders of the new scientific area known as computer architecture, that designs the “brains” of computer systems. The awardees were the first to devise a conceptual framework that provides the field with a grounded approach to measuring performance, energy efficiency and the complexity of a computer.

Yesil Science was created with the objective of developing innovative solutions to healthcare, combining medicine, art, and technology. In addition, it is a company that has participated in the Garanti BBVA Partners program.

Sponsored by Garanti BBVA, the Turkish technology company Kodluyoruz has developed Alchemist, a series of 15 podcasts on technology and artificial intelligence.

Through a proof of concept, BBVA and Spanish startup Multiverse have tried out and benchmarked different quantum technology platforms to solve a classic problem of finance: The optimization of investment portfolios with real market data. Thanks to this analysis, published in a scientific paper, the authors have elucidated new formulas that could help speed up this type of calculation, maximizing profitability and minimizing risk.

Francisco Herrera, Computer Science Professor at the University of Granada, is leading research that aims to diagnose COVID-19 in less than a second using chest x-rays. The project, which is in advanced stages, uses artificial intelligence as a tool to interpret biomedical images more effectively than the human brain. This technique would greatly help health clinics that do not have sophisticated diagnostic imaging systems.

In the era of forced social distancing as a result of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, this technology has become one of biggest allies in the fight against the coronavirus.

Transactionality in databases is fundamental for critical systems, but the historical asymmetry between reads (massive) and writes (specific, but can impact in the middle of a read operation) could be solved with a new approach. Last year Databricks released to the community a new data persistence format built on Write-Once Read-Many (HDFS, S3, Blob storage) and based on Apache Parquet.

Smart crops, bacteria-detecting knives, and waste-reducing supply chains: These are some of the futurist scenarios that could become a reality if IBM’s predictions prove to be correct. As part of the bank’s Ninja Project — a program to cultivate BBVA’s internal digital talent and culture — IBM was invited to share its predictions with the bank’s employees.