Introduction
The Ph.D. Programme in Artificial Intelligence (Programa de Doctorado en Inteligencia Artificial, PDIA) at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), is organised and conducted by the Department of Artificial Intelligence (Departamento de Inteligencia Artificial, DIA) and is part of the postgraduate studies offered by the School of Computer Science at the UPM.
Generally, the PDIA aims to provide the students of disciplines related to Computer Science and Information Technology with a better knowledge in research techniques, in order to be able to deal with and solve new problems in science and technology through research in Artificial Intelligence. This process will conclude with the creation and defence of a Doctoral Thesis by the student.
The PDIA came from the adaptation to the European Higher Education Area of the former Ph.D. in “Artificial Intelligence”, organised according to the Royal Decree 778/1998, and conducted until 2009. This Ph.D., in turn, came from the adaptation of the Ph.D. Programme in “Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence”; which has been conducted at the School of Computer Science of the UPM since its creation. These programmes received the Mención de Calidad (Quality Award) by the Spanish Ministry for Education and Science (MCD2005-00352 y MCD2006-00520) during the academic years 1996/97, 2000/01, 2001/02, 2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08.
From the academic year 1985-86 to the present, the number of doctoral theses defended on the Ph.D. Programme in “Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence”, initially, and later on the Ph.D. Programme in “Artificial Intelligence”, was 140, 19 of which received the Extraordinary Ph.D. Award by the UPM and two the Research Award from the Spanish Royal Academy of Doctors (Real Academia de Doctores de España).
The teaching staff of PDIA is structured into several groups and research laboratories that develop the following lines of research:
- Machine Learning
- Biomolecular Computing and Synthetic Biology
- Evolutionary Computation
- Semantic Grid
- Biomedical Informatics
- Knowledge Engineering
- Language Engineering
- Ontology Engineering
- Human-Machine Interaction
- Internet of the Future
- High Level Languages and Parallel Processing
- Data Mining
- Models of Choice under Bounded Rationality
- Models of Rationality
- Logic Models
- Nanoinformatics
- Logic Programming and Constraint Logic Programming
- Information Retrieval
- Bayesian Networks
- Neural Networks
- Decision Support Systems
- Multi-attribute Utility Theory
- Group Decision Making
- Computer Vision and Robotics
- Semantic Web
At the same time, several professors of the Ph.D. Programme team up with the Instituto Madrileño de Estudios Avanzados del Software (IMDEA Software), which has as a main objective research excellence in software at the “pre-competitive” level, the transfer of this research and education and training.
Research at the Department of Artificial Intelligence
The Department of Artificial Intelligence belongs to the School of Computer Science of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). The School of Computer Science is considered to be the best centre of Higher Education studies in Computer Science, for the fourth consecutive year, according to the ranking of the newspaper El Mundo. The UPM is considered the third best University of Spain according to the same study, and is one of the most prestigious Schools of Management in the world according to the classification of MINES Paris Tech.
The Department of Artificial Intelligence is notable at national level for its productivity and research quality. The Department participates in research projects financed by EU funds (ACTION Grid, ACGT, IST, Movility DRIVE, HCM/TMR, etc.), national funds (INEM, CAM, CYCIT, DGICYT, ISCIII), and other Spanish organisations and companies. Special mention should be given to the coordination and participation in research projects integrated into the EC Framework Programmes VI and VII, and the collaboration with companies through the CENIT (España Virtual, Mio!) and AVANZA (Tratamiento 2.0) programmes.
According to the study elaborated in 2009 by the Institute of Documentary Studies on Science and Technology (Instituto de Estudios Documentales sobre Ciencia y Tecnología, IEDCYT), the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences (Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, CCHS) and the Spanish National Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) about the Scientific Production Indicators of the Community of Madrid during the period 2004-2008, the Department of Artificial Intelligence is mentioned as the UPM Department with the highest number of impact scientific publications in this period.
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