“We have a powerful science, but when it comes to individual and, especially, public decision making processes, we fail to harness that power, because its validity is denied or put on an equal footing with baseless opinions.” With these words Francisco González summed up the spirit that presided over the BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ceremony.

He holds an undergraduate degree in physics. He’s the founder of Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, among other companies. He’s championed renewable energies, online payments and the space race. Elon Musk’s impressive resume brims with professional and economic success. What initiatives have made this entrepreneur one of top innovators of the 21st century?

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity forever changed the way we understand space and time. But the German genius who was the centerpiece of a conference organized by the BBVA Foundation, “Explore Einstein’s universe,” also left his mark on hundreds of technologies that we use daily: from Google Maps to solar panels, from self-lighting street lamps to laser beams. Our lives would be very different if Einstein hadn’t been born.

What happens when you choose a restaurant on the Internet? Or when you want to buy a book? Or find a song? Or get hooked on a new series?  BBVA Data & Analytics in a new item for dissemination explains how the different recommendation systems used by Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify work and how they will extend beyond the consumer and entertainment sectors.

Stephen Hawking, the famous British physicist and one of the world’s most brilliant scientific minds died at 76, as confirmed by a statement made by his family. The genius of astrophysics suffered from ALS, a degenerative disease, from the time he was 21 years old, thus exceeding life expectancy predictions. Since 2005 he was only able to communicate by means of a speech synthesizer.

The BBVA Foundation has granted Colombian epidemiologist Nubia Muñoz its Frontiers of Knowledge award in Development Cooperation, for her work in establishing that infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) is the principal cause of cervical cancer, one of the leading causes of death among women in developing countries. Muñoz has also been instrumental in the development of the first effective vaccine against this virus, capable of preventing 70% of all cervical cancers.

A report by Standard and Poor’s Global (S&P) analyzes the potential impact on the financial sector of the entry of tech giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Although no immediate changes to bank ratings is foreseen, the report points out that in the long term these companies are well placed to get a position  in segments of the chain such as payment systems.

Switzerland offers us a multitude of exciting destinations to visit. Unforgettable landscapes, international organizations and cities such as Geneva, Basel or Zurich make knowing the Swiss country a unique experience.

The head of the BBVA Data & Analytics’ Edge team, José Antonio Rodríguez-Serrano, who coordinates the innovation area in BBVA’s center of excellence in data science, shares his insights into five key questions to understand the implications of this exponential technology in different economical sectors and spheres of society.

Immunotherapies are treatments that aim to stimulate the immune system to fight cancer. The strategy has proven quite effective against some tumors – including melanoma or lung cancer – but inefficient against many others. A team headed by ICREA researcher Eduard Batlle and funded by the BBVA Foundation has discovered why and proven that it can also be used against colon cancer.

As we have seen in previous articles, the intelligent use of data, with the right talent and the pertinent business strategies for applying creative solutions, can provide insights that help solve a whole gamut of problems and take on board new opportunities. Data places within our grasp an enhanced decision-making ability and a deeper understanding of our clients and what they need. But as in the case of any other tool, these new skills can be put to positive or not so positive use, whether intentionally or not.

The BBVA Foundation´s Frontiers of Knowledge Award was won by four mathematicians – Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir – for their outstanding contributions to cryptology, a science that has proven crucial to ensuring security in the online world.

For a while after science-fiction was first coined as a term, it seemed like the only thing the genre would be capable of producing would be just that: purely fictional works with no connection to reality. Today, we can already enjoy some of the futuristic innovations featured in some movies a while back, such as virtual reality or artificial intelligence. Which sci-fi movies predicted the future digital era and got it right?

UN Global Pulse, a United Nations agency that seeks to use big data for the public good, has announced the winners of Data for Climate Action – an open innovation initiative to find solutions for climate change.  BBVA Data & Analytics collaborated with the initiative by providing statistics on credit and debit card transactions in Spain.

When technologists and scientists work together on a corporate goal, the result is deep tech.

One of the things about huge conferences like Money 20/20 in Las Vegas is that you get to see the ideas that will shape the future of the banking sector.

What is bitcoin? What do the terms node, mining and hash mean? Following are the 10 key terms from the world of blockchain technology that you need to master.

BBVA’s Group Executive Chairman is convinced that technological advances will be accompanied by greater progress and well-being, but he is also calling for policies and structural reforms that are capable of mitigating the costs of the transition to the new digital society. Supporting research and education, promoting competition and transparency in the markets and developing new employment policies and social protection systems were among the recommendations Francisco González shared at an event organized by El Periódico de Catalunya and BBVA in Barcelona.

Year 2049. Three decades have passed since Richard Deckard began hunting down and retiring Nexus 6 models. The Wallace Corporation has built an empire on the ruins of Tyrell Corp, designing a new generation of replicants, more obliging and integrated in society.  Through the implementation of memories, the new models have an emotional foundation that makes them more stable than their predecessors, much more similar to humans.

We know there are planets of a size similar to the Earth and at a distance from their sun that make them inhabitable. It´s also possible that there are vestiges of life on Mars, in the ice-covered oceans covered of Europa – a satellite of Jupiter – or on Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn. Sending spaceships manned by robots to study the solar system, recreating the conditions of life on Mars inside a mine, or trying to reproduce a living organism in a laboratory – as Dan Brown relates in his latest bestseller – are some of the scientific experiments that are now being performed to solve the enigma of the origin of life.

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González presided over the first edition of the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) – BBVA Foundation Research Awards. These accolades recognized the work of six young Ph.D. recipients who are conducting high-level research in Spain.

Futurist Jerome Glenn, CEO of Millennium Project, urges companies and governments to be proactive in the face of technological advances and outlines three different scenarios in which artificial intelligence can determine the course of society.

Getting to New York in 30 minutes or Hong Kong in just 22 minutes is not an impossible task for Elon Musk and his company SpaceX. The man who also created the superson train project that is capable of traveling at a speed of 1,200 km/hr just showed the world his latest project to reach Mars. The plan includes a preliminary phase that involves traveling across the planet in rockets.

Social bots are increasingly present online. They are often responsible for spreading fake or misleading news on platforms Facebook and Twitter and can influence the topics that are discussed on these social networks. According to a study by Indiana University (United States), covered by El País, between 9% and 15% of Twitter accounts are controlled by these programmed bots.

BBVA signs an agreement with the technology company to transform the Group’s data processing systems, which will accelerate its technology strategy

Madrid tourists spend more near monuments and museums than those in Barcelona. People living in Vila de Gràcia in Barcelona have the same lifestyle as those in the Madrid neighborhood of Malasaña. Sant Antoni and Poble Sec are places that are popular to go out to dinner and then for a drink, and in Madrid, the Lavapies neighborhood is undergoing a transformation toward more cultural activity.

Advances in mechanics, manufacturing techniques and artificial intelligence are giving way to increasingly sophisticated and specialized robots. These are some examples of the next generation of robotics that are being developed in MIT laboratories.

New companies are using in-car technologies to offer tailored insurance policies based on actual driver behavior. In addition, AI-enhanced automobiles enable new way to assess possible damages in the event of an accident, automating insurance claim processes.

At the cl@b 2017, the region’s leading experts will analyze how to apply innovation in the Latin American financial sector given the challenges of digitization, the need for new regulation, and the intensive use of technology in present and future banking services.

Machines started by offering us recommendations on what to read, and now they’re capable of writing poetry, stories and even screenplays. Computers have gone from tools to help human creators to becoming creative entities themselves, explains Ramón López de Mántaras in the book “The Next Step: Exponential Life”, which can be downloaded at no charge on BBVA OpenMind’s website.

Under 30, entrepreneurs and digital. This are the common traits that define the young Europeans chosen by Forbes magazine in its ’30 Under 30′ list. A mobile navigation aide for the visually impaired, a meal kit delivery platform, a t-shirt that allows users to peek inside the human body, a nightlife finder in London… Many tech-related projects that deserve special attention.  Here we take a look at a few of them.

The Global Fintech Report 2017’, published by the consulting firm PwC, forsees a new era in which financial institutions and fintech firms cooperate more closely, in order to overcome their respective weaknesses.

Many big data experts share valuable insights on Twitter.  These are the ten essential names that must be followed to state up to date on this technology.

Below a mountain of ‘big data’ lie simple laws that allow you to define patterns. ‘Machine learning’ uses them to improve the lives of human beings.

The Financial Times’ The Banker magazine has awarded BBVA Data & Analytics with their Technology Project of the Year award in the category of Risk Management.

Technology is changing the way we make our payments, with new applications for carrying out transfers or payments, which require nothing more than a smartphone.

BBVA and Google today announced the launch of Android Pay in Spain. This payment system will allow BBVA customers to use their Visa and MasterCard cards, in order to pay with their mobile phones. Android Pay will be operational in the more than one million businesses in Spain with contactless technology. BBVA is the first bank to give its customers the possibility of paying with Android Pay in Spain.

Blockchain has allowed the creation of a new business concept with automated management, in which benefits are distributed in a systematized manner among partners, who don’t even have to know each other.  Cristina Carrascosa reveals the advantages of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization in this new installment of #RevolucionBlockchain.

A hyperconnected generation, with new habits of consumption of products and services, that approaches the technology in a different way.  They are the millennials.  The relationship of these new consumers with banks is morphing towards a new model, but, what are their financial habits?

Thanks to blockchain, ten-thousand Syrian refugees in Jordan were able to receive humanitarian help faster and more efficiently. The technology’s humanitarian applications will yield advantages that far exceed those of current protocols.

We live in the age of cities. One in two people live in cities and two in three  will live in cities by 2050. What are people doing in 21st Century cities? What is a collaborative city?

Artificial intelligence and blockchain became the hottest topics in this year’s edition of Money 20/20 Europe that just concluded in Copenhagen.

One of the characteristics that distinguishes blockchain is it immutability. But many people wonder if this is actually true. Is blockchain really an unchangeable record of data? Óscar Lage explains in this new chapter of #BlockchainRevolution how this technology works so that it cannot be maliciously modified.

After months of searching for the best artificial intelligence fintech solution from around the world BBVA today announced  Change  is its overall winner.

BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila said that BBVA “wants to give its customers and clients the best service by using innovation to transform and disrupt its business as it works to bring the age of opportunity to everyone.” This was the core message the BBVA CEO delivered in a keynote speech to a packed audience at the Money 20/20 event in Copenhagen – the leading fintech event in Europe.

Carlos Torres Vila, CEO of BBVA, along with other Group executives, will take part in the encounter, which brings together more than 4,000 experts from around the world.

That’s the mission of Rob Brown, head of Marketing, Design and Responsible Business at BBVA. He shared it with the attendees at the IV Edition of Experience Fighters, one of the most important User Experience (UX) & Innovation meetings in Spain.

It´s still too early to measure the implications of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. The fusion of technologies has begun to erase the lines dividing the physical, digital and biological worlds. Elena Alfaro of BBVA explains how the success of digital companies is based on how they use data to create and improve services.

Blockchain has the potential to transform the way business is conducted, whether in transactions between private individuals or relations between government agencies and citizens. With this column about e-commerce, Adolfo Contreras Ruiz de Alda, co-author of Blockchain: the Industrial Revolution of Internet, begins a series of articles that will describe the impact of the new decentralized technologies on different areas and activities.

In his speech at the presentation of the 2017 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González argued that science should be at the heart of culture and decision-making, in order to curb fanaticism and exclusionary ideologies.