AIR Institute opens its new headquarters in Salamanca
AIR Institute and the Salamanca Town Council have joined forces to promote Salamanca as a national benchmark in technological innovation. The International Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Foundation (AIR Institute) has begun a new journey in the municipal building of the Centre for Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, located on Avenida Santiago Madrigal. Its president, Juan Manuel Corchado, Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Salamanca, and the Mayor of Salamanca, Carlos García Carbayo, have presented the modern facilities together with the Rector Ricardo Rivero and the Deputy Minister of Economy and Competitiveness, Carlos Martín Tobalina, who have expressed the support of the University and the Junta de Castilla y León to this initiative that contributes to consolidate Salamanca as a Centre for Talent, Science and Innovation.
AIR Institute is a non-profit research centre whose objective is the promotion and development of scientific research in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. Recognised by the Junta de Castilla y León as one of the technological centres of the region, it is a great support for the BISITE Research Group of the University of Salamanca, which continues to grow sustainably with the help of this centre. Around ten teams specialising in blockchain, artificial intelligence, metaverse, industry 4.0 and IoT, among others, will work at the new facilities.
The centre's budget will exceed 3 million euros this year, which will enable the BISITE research group at the University of Salamanca, associated with the AIR Institute, to double its resources by more than this amount during the same period. Forty percent of the funding comes from European projects and the rest from national projects and contracts.
AIR Institute has already developed over twenty initiatives. Among them is DIGIS3, a project co-financed by the European Union and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism with 3.5 million euros. The aim of DIGIS3 is to ensure the intelligent, sustainable and cohesive digital transformation of SMEs and public administration bodies in the region by providing comprehensive support to users, facilitating their access to specialised technical knowledge and experimentation environments, in a one-stop service whose central core of knowledge and training is based on artificial intelligence and supercomputing, bearing in mind cybersecurity as a necessary layer in any digitalisation process. GILL, another of the European projects underway, aims to promote open innovation with a gender perspective. The AIR Institute is also coordinating the European FARMS4CLIMATE project on smart governance and operational models for agro-ecological carbon farming, and is also running LUCERNA, which focuses on researching and designing a technological framework for data availability, service optimisation and big data analytics. HyperLender, ALMATIC, FEDLAB and TETRAMAX are other initiatives under development. All project information is available on the website: https://air-institute.com/projects.
