Nuria Oliver facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nuria Oliver
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| Nationality | Spanish |
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| Thesis | Towards Perceptual Computing: Statistical Modeling of Human Individual and Interactive Behaviors (2000) |
| Doctoral advisor | Alex Pentland |
Nuria Oliver is a famous computer scientist from Spain. She leads the ELLIS Alicante Foundation. She is also the Chief Data Scientist at DataPop Alliance and the president of the board of trustees for UNED, a university.
Before these roles, she worked at Bankia, helped the Valencia government with AI and COVID-19, and was a research director at Vodafone and Telefónica. She also worked as a researcher at Microsoft Research. Nuria Oliver earned her PhD from the Media Lab at MIT. She is recognized as an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow. She is also a permanent member of the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain. Nuria Oliver is one of the most recognized female computer scientists in Spain. Her work has been mentioned in over 24,000 publications. She is known for her research on how computers can understand human behavior, how people interact with computers, mobile technology, and using Big Data to help society.
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Biography of Nuria Oliver
Early Life and Education
Nuria Oliver finished her degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in 1994. She was awarded the Spanish First National Prize of Telecommunication Engineers in the same year. This was a big honor for her.
In 1995, she received a special scholarship called "La Caixa" to study at MIT in the USA. There, she earned her doctorate from the Media Lab. Her studies focused on "perceptual intelligence," which is about how computers can understand the world around them, similar to how humans do.
Career at Microsoft and Telefónica
In 2000, Nuria Oliver started working as a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, USA. She focused on how people interact with computers. She worked there until 2007.
In 2007, she moved back to Spain. She joined Telefónica R&D in Barcelona as the Director of Multimedia Research. At that time, she was the only female director hired in that department. Her work involved using mobile phones to understand human activities. She stayed at Telefónica until 2016.
Working with Data for Social Good
In 2017, Nuria Oliver joined Vodafone as the Director of Data Science Research. She also became the first Chief Data Scientist at DataPop Alliance. This is a non-profit group that uses Big Data to make the world better. It was started by important organizations like the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and MIT Media Lab. She worked as a Chief Scientific Adviser at the Vodafone Institute until 2024.
Nuria Oliver is also part of several important advisory boards. These include groups at Pompeu Fabra University, University of Lisbon, King's College London, and the Open University of Catalonia. She is a spokesperson and a member of a high-level committee that advises the Spanish Government on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. She also advises the Innovation Agency of Valencia.
In 2018, she was chosen as a permanent member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering.
Leading AI Research and COVID-19 Efforts
In 2019, Nuria Oliver successfully helped Alicante become a host city for a research unit of ELLIS. ELLIS is a network of top AI research labs across Europe.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, she was named Commissioner for AI and COVID-19 by the government of the Valencia. She led the data science team for the Valencian Government during this crisis until March 2022. She helped create and launch the covid19impactsurvey. This was one of the biggest citizen science surveys in Spain, with over 700,000 people taking part.
She also co-led the ValenciaIA4COVID team. This team won the $500,000 XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge. It was the first Spanish team to win an XPrize competition.
In 2024, the European Union chose her to lead a group working on transparency rules for general-purpose AI. This is part of putting the AI Act into action. She also won the 2024 Hypatia European Science Prize, awarded by the city of Barcelona and Academia Europaea.
Awards and Honors
Nuria Oliver has received many awards and honors for her important work:
- Spanish First National Prize of Telecommunication Engineers in 1994.
- Named one of the "Top 100 innovators under 35" by MIT Technology Review (TR100, now TR35). This was for her work on smart human-computer interfaces.
- Chosen as one of "100 future leaders who will design Spain in the next decades" by El Capital Magazine in 2009.
- Received the "Rising Talent" award from the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society.
- Profiled as one of nine female Spanish leaders in technology in 2012 by the Spanish newspaper El País.
- Awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She was the first Spanish female computer scientist to get this award.
- Named a Fellow of the European Association of Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI).
- Became an IEEE Fellow for her work on understanding human behavior using math models and designing smart interactive systems.
- Won the 2016 European Digital Woman of the Year Award.
- Named a Top 100 female leader in Spain by Mujeres&Cia.
- Received the "Salvà i Campillo" prize from the Catalan association of telecommunication engineers.
- Won the Ada Byron prize from the University of Deusto. This national Spanish award celebrates women who bring progress to new technology areas. It recognized her work in artificial intelligence, big data, human-machine interaction, and mobile computing.
- Received the 2016 Ángela Ruiz Robles Spanish National Computer Science Award.
- Given an Honorary doctorate by the Universidad Miguel Hernández of Elche.
- Received a special Distinction from the Government of the Valencian Community in 2017.
- Named an ACM Fellow in 2017 for her contributions to understanding human behavior using math models and using them in smart systems.
- Elected as an academic of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018.
- Elected to Academia Europaea in 2018.
- Won the European DatSci & AI 2019 Data Scientist of the Year award.
- Won the Esri Data Scientist of the Year 2020 award.
- Won the "Women to Follow" award in 2020 (technology section).
- Won the $500,000 XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge, sponsored by Cognizant.
- Won the 2021 Rey Jaime I award in New Technologies.
- Won the 2021 Technical Leadership Award by AnitaB.org.
Media Appearances
Nuria Oliver has often appeared in the media, sharing her knowledge and insights:
- 1998: Gave a presentation to the Spanish Senate.
- 2001: Interviewed by El País newspaper about Spain's role in high tech.
- 2004: Featured in an interview with El País: "A Spaniard at the digital peak."
- 2005: Appeared on the Spanish TV program "De cerca" (Close up) to talk about AI advances.
- 2008: Gave a speech in front of the King and Queen of Spain.
- 2012: Gave a TEDxRamblas Talk titled "The Invisible Army."
- 2013: Gave a TEDxBarcelona Talk titled "My cellphone, my partner."
- 2013: Spoke at WIRED 2013 about what big data and the Mexican pandemic taught us.
- 2014: Interviewed by BBC about how big data could help contain the Ebola spread.
- 2015: Interviewed by Glamour magazine for an article on "Women with success."
- 2015: Featured in an article for El País Sunday magazine.
- 2016: Interviewed on the RTVE 2 program "El cazador de cerebros" about mobile computing.
- 2020: Featured in Politico Europe discussing how AI helps fight a pandemic.
See also
European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems
