Last week we presented the new HiTZ Research Center.
Along with director Eneko Agirre in the presentation were present Rector Nekane Balluerka, Education Chancellor in the Basque Government Jokin Bildarratz, Deputy General of Gipuzkoa Markel Olano and Mayor of Saint Sebastian Eneko Goia.
We have created HiTZ Center by merging two research groups: IXA and Aholab. The research groups Ixa and Aholab, both from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), have been — since their creation in 1988 and 1998 respectively — the main tractors in the area of Language Technologies of the Basque Country. Both groups have been collaborating since 2002, when they promoted the formation of an Basque consortium in strategic research after contacting and attracting to the area the Elhuyar Foundation and the Vicomtech-IK4T and Tecnalia technology centers (named Robotiker at the time). Since then, the consortium has maintained an uninterrupted line of collaboration within the strategic projects of the Basque Government as well as local and state calls for proposals.
Now we are a total of 60 members (professors, researchers, technicians and PhD students), a broad team with interdisciplinary experts: computer scientists, linguists, engineers, translators and sociologists, among others.
By bringing together what the two groups separately did in training, research and technological transfer, this new research center aims to be an international reference in Language Technology.
The IXA Group has a history of 32 years in the treatment of written contents.
The Aholab Group has been working since 1998 in speech technology.
We have been collaborating since 2002
We are an important research and development center worldwide together with other agents related to artificial intelligence, and we currently work on 36 research projects, six of them in Europe and the United States. In the last year we published our research results in 78 scientific articles.
As for training, we offer the Erasmus Mundus International Master’s Degree, a doctoral programme in linguistic technologies and an international course on “Deep Learning” techniques. In the newly created Degree in Artificial Intelligence at the Faculty of Informatics of San Sebastian we also have an important role.
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