Science and technology
11 Feb 2021
Frontiers of knowledge
Frontiers Award to the authors of the bible for computer architecture and design
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.
Although male stereotypes dominate science and technology, the reality is that these areas are becoming increasingly diverse and more women are gradually landing technical jobs. Today, February 11, on the occasion of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, four professionals from BBVA’s Engineering and Organization unit share their views on how to tear down barriers and get young girls more interested in tech jobs.
18 Jan 2021
This year, the Davos Forum will be celebrating its most special and challenging edition, in the midst of the ongoing COVID pandemic. For this reason, the 51st edition of the World Economic Forum (World Economic Forum, WEF) will be held in two phases: An virtual one in January and another one, face-to-face, in August. The summit will convene politicians, businessmen and representatives of social and cultural organizations at a crucial time for the world, under the tagline ‘The Great Reset‘.
05 Jan 2021
Artificial Intelligence
Yesil Science, a company participating in Garanti BBVA Partners, presents a health app supported by AI
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.
26 Oct 2020
Sponsored by Garanti BBVA, the Turkish technology company Kodluyoruz has developed Alchemist, a series of 15 podcasts on technology and artificial intelligence.
25 Aug 2020
Science and technology
BBVA and Multiverse showcase how quantum computing could help optimize investment portfolio management
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.
11 Jun 2020
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.
16 Apr 2020
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.
06 Apr 2020
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.
09 Mar 2020
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.
03 Mar 2020
Frontiers of knowledge
The pioneers of quantum cryptography, recognized with the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards
The BBVA Foundation has honored Charles Bennett, Gilles Brassard, and Peter Shor with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for their respective roles in the development of quantum computing and cryptography.
19 Feb 2020
Frontiers of knowledge
The Frontiers of Knowledge Awards recognize Guyon, Schölkopt and Vapnik for teaching machines how to classify data
The BBVA Foundation has awarded Isabelle Guyon, Bernhard Schölkopf and Vladimir Vapnik with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category, for helping advance the field of artificial intelligence with their seminal contributions to machine learning. Their work has been applied to fields as diverse as medical diagnosis, computer vision, natural language processing and the monitoring of climate change.
04 Feb 2020
Frontiers of knowledge
Ecologists Duarte, Hughes, and Pauly receive the Frontiers of Knowledge Award for their contributions to marine conservation
The BBVA Foundation has recognized three marine biologists — Carlos Duarte, Terence Hughes, and Daniel Pauly — with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Ecology and Conservation Biology. Their research has expanded our knowledge about the Earth’s oceans and has contributed to the protection and conservation of marine biodiversity and ocean ecosystem services.
22 Jan 2020
Science and technology
Frontiers of Knowledge Award for those who discovered the mechanism that regulates cellular growth
The BBVA Foundation presented Michael Hall and David Sabatini the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biology and Biomedicine category for discovering the main regulator of growth in animal cells. This mechanism, a molecular pathway called mTOR, opens the door to new treatment options for cancer, diabetes and aging.
10 Dec 2019
Computer studies, sciences and development
Quantum Computing: How it differs from classical computing?
The race to make good on quantum computing is well underway. Millions of dollars have been allocated to developing machines that could cause current computers to become obsolete. But, what is the difference between quantum and classical computing? This is a puzzle that is beginning to be unraveled.
06 Nov 2019
IT (computer sciences)
The BBVA Foundation rewards creativity, originality and excellence in the computer science world
The President of the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, presented the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) – BBVA Foundation Research Awards in recognition of creativity, originality and excellence in cutting-edge research in the computer science field.
29 Oct 2019
Frontiers of knowledge
BBVA Foundation President Carlos Torres Vila presents Noam Chomsky the Frontiers of Knowledge Award
Noam Chomsky received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Humanities and Social Sciences in a ceremony at his home in Tucson, Arizona. BBVA Foundation President Carlos Torres Vila made the special trip to present him the award, as the U.S. linguist was unable to attend the award ceremony in Bilbao last June. “This is a recognition to your unparalleled contributions to the understanding of human language, which have had a tremendous influence in so many fields,” said Torres Vila.
22 Oct 2019
Audio
Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist and string theory expert, is one of the most well known scientific commentators in the world. He received his doctorate from the University of California in 1972, and for three decades has held the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.
11 Oct 2019
Science and technology
Roger Launius: "Going to the Moon was the result of a great collective effort"
Roger Launius, former chief historian at NASA was at BBVA headquarters to deliver one of the featured speeches for Values Day: “Getting to the Moon: the value of the most important idea in human history.” Launius used the history of the Apollo program and man’s landing on the Moon as examples of two of BBVA’s corporate values: ‘We are one team,’ and ‘We think big.’
22 Jul 2019
For Professor Kevin Warwick, a cybernetics expert and Emeritus Professor at Coventry and Reading Universities, the future of humans is literally tied to artificial intelligence, with technologies that will allow us to link our brains to machines to augment our physical and mental abilities. He recently sat down for an interview with OpenMind, BBVA’s knowledge community, to share some of his insights into this fascinating topic.
19 Jul 2019
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” was Neil Armstrong’s famous phrase when he first stepped on the surface of the Moon. The phrase served to crown one of the greatest feats carried out by the human species whose 50th anniversary is celebrated this year.
30 May 2019
Sixty candidates worked non-stop to develop an analytical model and come up with a business solution based on datasets provided by BBVA. The competition, hosted last week at Ciudad BBVA, was the last phase of a selection process aimed at recruiting new members to enroll in the ‘Young Data Professionals’ program, a BBVA initiative aimed at developing young advanced analytics talent.
27 May 2019
Artificial Intelligence
Carlos Torres Vila: "Sharing knowledge improves and enhances opportunities for everyone"
BBVA Executive Chairman Carlos Torres Vila today unveiled the book ‘Towards a New Enlightenment? A Transcendent Decade’ in Madrid. The book is the eleventh in a collection sponsored by OpenMind, the non-profit knowledge community created by BBVA. More than 20 authors contributed to this year’s edition, which fosters a broad based discussion about the new philosophical and ethical foundations that need to be established in order to sustain an economy, a society, a culture – and the corresponding regulation – as they adapt to the new scientific and technological contexts.
16 Apr 2019
Frontiers of knowledge
Noam Chomsky recognized by Frontiers of Knowledge award for his contributions to the study of human language
The BBVA Foundation has recognized the U.S. linguist with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences Category, a new category included in this year’s edition for the first time ever. Chomsky’s research opened up new paths in multiple fields of humanities, especially in the study of the human mind and the cognitive systems that comprise it.
28 Mar 2019
Cuisine
Jordi Roca and BBVA launch El sentido del cacao (“The Sense of Cocoa”), a project to raise awareness of conditions affecting the sense of taste
BBVA and Jordi Roca, pastry chef at El Celler de Can Roca, have together launched the project ‘El sentido del cacao’ (The Sense of Cocoa), an initiative that aims to raise awareness of the series of conditions affecting the sense of taste and which affect up to 17% of the world’s population. This project comes in light of a pioneering investigation based on neuroscience and sensorial management supported by, among other institutions, the Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid and IOB Institute of Oncology.
26 Mar 2019
NASA’s Space Apps Challenge, one of the world’s most popular hackathons, has, once again, awarded a group of Spaniards, in this case the time behind ‘Galaxy Quest.’ The project helps processing real data collected by the Hubble telescope through a ‘gamification’ process. But not only that: It is the first step in developing an artificial neural network using these data, and a new communications channel between NASA and users. José Luis Martín-Oar, service designer at BBVA and one of the team’s members, tells us everything about the project.
05 Mar 2019
Frontiers of knowledge
The physicists who discovered topological insulators receive the Frontiers of Knowledge Award
The BBVA Foundation presented physicists Charles Kane and Eugene Mele the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category for discovering materials that act as both insulators and conductors at the same time. The so-called topological insulators are a new kind of material with extraordinary electronic properties that will open new scientific avenues. They could serve to develop faster, more efficient electronic devices and even advance the advent of quantum computers.
01 Mar 2019
Leaning against the trunk of an apple tree in 1666, Isaac Newton asked himself, “Why do apples fall?” Perhaps some of the neighboring farmers would have thought: “Well, that’s a waste of time.” And maybe they would have added, “What’s the use of thinking about such obvious occurrences? Apples fall because they fall.” Behind this possible recrimination there might have been some noteworthy ideas about the importance of productivity and the food chain: what is important about apples is how to harvest them and capitalize on them.
20 Feb 2019
BBVA and OpenMind, in collaboration with Professor Rafael Yuste, held a conference in Brussels to discuss the potential legal implications stemming from the rapid development of Neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence. Under the title “Do we need new human rights?” scientists, politicians and regulatory authorities described the current situation and pointed to problems that need to be addressed, offering possible solutions to an issue that is not without controversy.
19 Feb 2019
The BBVA Foundation has recognized the computer engineer Ivan Sutherland with the Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Information and Communication Technologies. Over the course of his 60-year career, the American computer scientist has led the transition from text-based to graphical computer displays. He pioneered the use of graphical icons and virtual reality, and anyone who uses a computer or smartphone today benefits from the output of his research.