Excellent results of ITAKA in the SemEval-2018 competition
The system Emotion Intensity (EiTAKA), developed by the PhD student Mohammed Jabreel, has obtained excellent results in the SemEval 2018 task devoted to the analysis of emotions (and their intensities) in tweets. This system is based on convolutional networks and XGboost regressors. In the analysis of emotions in tweets written in Arabic the system obtained the first or second position –out of 14 participants- in four subtasks (numerical/categorical emotion intensity and numerical/categorical valence). In the analysis of English tweets the system was ranked between the fifth and the eleventh position –out of 39 participants- in the same tasks.
The results may be seen here: Results
SiTAKA (Sentiment Analysis-ITAKA) system has obtained excellent results in the international competition on semantic text analysis.
This system is based on Mohammed Jabreel PhD theses, under Dr. Antonio supervision, which aims to establish whether a tweet is positive, negative or neutral.
AgentCities: Finalists in Descartes Prize (November 2003)
AgentCities Agent Technology Competition (February 2003)
Agent-based Knowledge Management Platform
Special Prize (Best Innovation/Effort Ratio) in CIA 2005 System Innovation Award
The Entrepreneuship Talent Award of the Fundació Gresol recognized ExplainUp, a project that uses Artificial Intelligence to transform complex information into easy-to-read text. SRBLab and Inserlab from URV design and validate the tool, while the ITAKA group is involved in its implementation.
Jordi Pascual has been awarded the Extraordinary PhD Prize by the Universitat Rovira i Virgili. This distinction is in recognition of doctoral theses of the highest quality.
La professora Aïda Valls rep el Premi DonaTIC 2023 de la Generalitat com a referent en l'àmbit tecnològic.
ITAKA was awarded the best paper. The name of the paper is "Fuzzy-lore: a method for extracting local and counterfactual explanations using fuzzy decision trees". The authors were Najlaa Maarouf, Mohammed Jabreel, Aida Valls and Antonio Moreno.
During the CCIA conference, the voting procedure selected 4 posters as best (ex-aequo). Prizes were given at the end of the conference. ITAKA received the prize for the work "Iterative update of a Random Forest classifier for Diabetic Retinopathy.". Authors of the paper were: Jordi Pascual Fontanilles, Aïda Valls, Antonio Moreno and Pedro Romero Aroca.
Dr. Emran Saleh Ali Ali was awarded with the prize to the best doctoral thesis given by the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligence (ACIA). The title of the doctoral thesis is "Use of machine learning tools to determine the risk of developing diabetic retinopathy". During the CCIA conference, he made a presentation online from England. His supervisors, Dr. Aïda Valls and Dr. Antonio Moreno received the diploma from the ACIA president, on his behalf.
ITAKA has been awarded the URV 2018 Social Impact of Research award
The prize has been given to the work “Design, construction and evaluation of a clinical decision support system for the personalised screening and follow-up of diabetic retinopathy patients”. ITAKA has develop, in collaboration with Hospital Sant Joan and the Health Research Institute Pere Virgili, a computerised system that assists primary care doctors in the correct screening of diabetic patients that have risk of developing diabetic retinopathy. Presentation (in Catalan) of Dr. Antonio Moreno
The directors of the ITAKA research group, Dr. Antonio Moreno and Dr. Aida Valls, show the prize with the PhD student Emran Saleh, who is focusing his PhD study on the development of models to predict the risk of developing diabetic retinopathy.
Els membres de l'ITAKA van guanyar els premis ACIA 2017 a la millor tesi doctoral en AI
En el decurs del XX Congrés Internacional de l'Associació Catalana d'Intel·ligència Artificial, CCIA-2017, cel·lebrat a Deltebre del 25 al 27 d'octubre, el grup de recerca de la URV ITAKA (Intelligent Technologies for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition) ha rebut dos premis a la seva recerca. D'una banda, el Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Nasser ha rebut el premi Marc Esteva Vivanco 2017 a la Millor Tesis Doctoral en Intel·ligència Artificial per la seva tesi doctoral "Development of advanced computer methods for breast cancer image interpretation through texture and temporal evolution analysis". Aquest treball, defensat a la URV al juliol de 2016, va ser dirigit pel Dr. Domènec Puig i el Dr. Antonio Moreno. En aquesta tesi es van proposar nous mètodes de visió per computador per analitzar imatges de mamografies i ajudar a la detecció de tumors. Actualment el Dr. Abdel-Nasser treballa a la Universitat d'Aswan a Egipte.
El Dr. Abdel Nasser amb els directors de la seva tesi (Dr. Domènec Puig i Dr. Antonio Moreno)
ITAKA també va rebre el premi al millor article del congrés CCIA-17.
El treball premiat té com a títol “Integration of different fuzzy rule-induction methods to improve the classification of patients with diabetic retinopathy”. Els autors són el doctorand Emran Saleh i els supervisors de la seva tesi doctoral, els Drs. Aïda Valls, Antonio Moreno i Pere Romero. El Dr. Romero (Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili) és el cap del servei d'Oftalmologia de l'Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus, i està treballant de forma conjunta amb el grup ITAKA en un projecte de recerca espanyol en l'aplicació de tècniques d'anàlisi intel·ligent de dades i de visió per computador per ajudar a millorar la detecció precoç de la retinopatia diabètica.
El doctorand Emran Saleh amb la Dra. Aïda Valls i el Dr. Antonio Moreno, co-autors de l'article premiat i supervisors de la seva tesi doctoral.
Membres d'ITAKA guanyen els premis 2013 atorgats per l'Associació Catalana d'Intel·ligència Artificial a la millor Tesi Doctoral en IA i el millor Treball Fi de Màster en IA.
Del 23 al 25 d'octubre es va celebrar a la Universitat de Vic la setzena edició del Congrés Internacional de l'Associació Catalana d'Intel·ligència Artificial (ACIA). Durant aquest congrés es va atorgar el premi Marc Esteva Vivanco a la millor tesi doctoral en IA al Dr. Sergi Martínez Lluís, del grup de recerca ITAKA. La tesi es titula "Ontology-based semantic anonymisation of microdata" i va ser dirigida per la Dra. Aïda Valls i el Dr. David Sánchez. En aquest treball es proposen nous mètodes semàntics per anonimitzar conjunts de dades, de forma que es protegeixi la privacitat dels individus però es mantingui la màxima informació possible.
Un altre membre del grup ITAKA, Ferran Mata, va aconseguir el premi al millor Projecte Fi de Carrera/Treball Fi de Màster en Intel·ligència Artificial, pel treball "Obtaining general concepts that represent a set of objects using ontologies". Aquest treball, també dirigit per la Dra. Aïda Valls, va ser presentat al Màster en Seguretat Informàtica i Sistemes Intel·ligents de la URV. El treball es centra en el desenvolupament de mètodes de classificació automàtica d'objectes descrits amb atributs numèrics, categòrics i semàntics, que són aplicats en la construcció d'un prototipus de recomanador intel·ligent personalitzat de destinacions turístiques.
In the 2012 edition of the annual competition of best Artificial Intelligence student works sponsored by ACIA (Catalan Association for Artificial Intelligence) the ITAKA member Carlos Vicient has obtained an honorary mention for his Master Thesis "Ontology-based information extraction", directed by Dr Antonio Moreno and Dr David Sánchez in the Master on Artificial Intelligence URV-UPC-UB.
Sergio Martínez Lluís has obtained the first prize Best Final Degree Project of Artificial Intelligence with his work "Privacy preserving in categorical microdata using semantic knowledge", directed by Dr Aïda Valls.
This course, two ITAKA members have won two prizes of the Catalan Association of Artificial Intelligence (ACIA). Both prizes are honorable mentions (accèssits).
2nd place in the ACIA Competition of student work in AI-2008
José Miguel Millan Rosa has won one of the two accessits in the ACIA Competition of Final Year Projects in Artificial Intelligence, for his work "Agent-based execution of medical guidelines represented in the SDA* formalism" (under the supervision of Dr. Antonio Moreno Ribas).
First prize in ACIA Competition of Final Year Projects on Artificial Intelligence - 2007
Abstract (in Catalan):
En aquest treball s’ha dissenyat i construït una eina, Ninots, que serveix de base per poder desenvolupar una pràctica de l’assignatura d’Intel·ligència Artificial, que cobreix el temes del Sistemes Multiagent i Mineria de Dades.
S’ha creat un entorn que permet entendre l’estructura i la dinàmica d’un Sistema Multiagent sense que els estudiants hagin de programar-ho des de zero, cosa molt costosa en temps ja que s’ha de treballar a partir de llibreries de codi força complexes. Com que els Sistemes Multiagents són un conjunt d’Agents intel·ligents que es comuniquen i cooperen per resoldre un problema, Ninots aprofita aquest marc per a que els estudiants puguin comparar diversos algoritmes d’aprenentatge automàtic. Ninots permet incorporar dins d’un Agent un algoritme que aprèn regles de classificació de forma autònoma. Aquestes regles poden ser utilitzades des d’altres Agents i així el professor (o els mateixos estudiants) poden avaluar els resultats dels algoritmes.
Ninots s’ha dissenyat per facilitar tant la feina d’aprenentatge dels estudiants com la feina de confecció, avaluació i correcció de les pràctiques per part del professor.
Turist@: agents in mobile phones that offer services to the tourists
Accessit in 4th ACIA Competition of Final Studies Project
October 2006.
Turist@: a multi-agent system for recommending cultural activities
First prize in 3rd ACIA Competition of Final Studies Project
November 2005.
A multi-agent system for the automatic construction of ontologies
Accessit in 3rd ACIA Competition of Final Studies Project
November 2005.
"Study of the implementation of a Case-Based Reasoning system" by Manuel Gimenez Arjona under the supervision of Ivan Lopez and Dr. Aida Valls.
Award of the Catalan Government for Free Software Applications (2005)
Implementing agents in mobile devices
Accessit in 2nd ACIA Competition of Final Studies Project
October 2004.
Implantación de un software para la mejora del cribado de la retinopatía diabética
First PrizeNovember 2014.
iTAKA was present at IJCAI-ECAI 2026, the 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, one of the top conferences on AI. It was held in in Bremen, Germany, on 15-21 of August 2026. Dr. Valls and Dr. Moreno presented a work in the Qualitative Reasoning workshop. Dr. Valls also participated in the ECAI assembly as representative of the Catalan association on AI (ACIA).
The Entrepreneuship Talent Award of the Fundació Gresol recognized ExplainUp, a project that uses Artificial Intelligence to transform complex information into easy-to-read text. SRBLab and Inserlab from URV design and validate the tool, while the ITAKA group is involved in its implementation.
Our group has participated in the workshop. Pol Pujol has presented a poster about our work with the LSTM team about detection of cognitive impairment with sociodemographic and lifestyle variables, within the DEMDETECT project.
iTAKA was present at IJCAI-ECAI 2026, the 35th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, one of the top conferences on AI. It was held in in Bremen, Germany, on 15-21 of August 2026. Dr. Valls and Dr. Moreno presented a work in the Qualitative Reasoning workshop. Dr. Valls also participated in the ECAI assembly as representative of the Catalan association on AI (ACIA).
The Entrepreneuship Talent Award of the Fundació Gresol recognized ExplainUp, a project that uses Artificial Intelligence to transform complex information into easy-to-read text. SRBLab and Inserlab from URV design and validate the tool, while the ITAKA group is involved in its implementation.
Our group has participated in the workshop. Pol Pujol has presented a poster about our work with the LSTM team about detection of cognitive impairment with sociodemographic and lifestyle variables, within the DEMDETECT project.