CITIC receives 1.7 million euros for green transition and innovation projects and smart technologies applied to ophthalmology

CITIC, the University of A Coruña’s Centre for Information and Communications Technology Research and part of the CIGUS Network, has obtained 1.7 million euros in funding through two calls for projects based on green and digital transition and innovation from the Spanish State’s Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2021-2023. A total of ten projects were selected, mostly in the field of Artificial Intelligence, for the delivery of technological solutions to improve the quality of life of carers, the diagnosis of diseases and the treatment of patients or green selection algorithms, among others.

Consequently, nine initiatives from CITIC, one of the centres whose research quality and impact has been accredited by the Galician Autonomous Government (Xunta de Galicia) with the CIGUS seal, were awarded tenders in the call for projects in the area of Green Transition and Digital Transition, aimed at promoting R&D&I activities that will drive scientific and technological competitiveness and international leadership by generating scientific knowledge through excellence in research. The selected projects are listed below:

• o Lakehouse Architecture in the Cloud as a Digitalisation Enabler. PIs: Touriño Domínguez and Guillermo López Taboada.
• o PLAGEMIS (PLAtform for the Generation of Mobility Information Systems). PIs Nieves R. Brisaboa and Miguel Rodríguez Luaces.
• o Blockchain High Security System for the Private Management of Patient Data in Digital Health Services. PI: Tiago Manuel Fernández Caramés.
• o Life quality for carers based on a person-centric technological solution. PIs: Betania Groba González and Laura Nieto Riveiro.
• o Integrated video and radar detection for the device-free indoor positioning of humans with privacy guarantees based on edge AI. PIs: Carlos J. Escudero Cascón and Luis Castedo Rivas.
• o Fast green selection algorithms. PI: Verónica Bolón Canedo.
• o Intelligent programming tutor using simulated robotics. PIs Francisco Bellas Bouza and Óscar Fontenla Romero.
• o Digital Diagnosis: Transforming the detection of neurovascular diseases and patients’ treatment. PIs Marcos Ortega Hortas and Jorge Novo.
• o Behaviour-Based Continuous Authentication Technology as a Service. PIs: Carlos Dafonte Vázquez and Francisco Javier Nova Manuel.

Smart technologies applied to ophthalmology

In turn, Marcos Ortega’s project “Improvements in diagnosis and clinical research through smart technologies applied to ophthalmological imaging” was selected in the call for “Concept Testing” projects, also included in the Spanish State’s Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation. This research project, a continuation of the results obtained from a previous R&D project (RTI2018-95894), developed and validated methodologies for the diagnosis and characterisation of macular pathologies, principally retinopathy screening, OCT and OCT-La. These same methods are now the object of the “Concept Testing” project, in order to pass them on to the market and society in an optimum format for use. Likewise, it will facilitate the integration into the Health Service of a computerised tool for the early diagnosis of ocular pathologies, improving patients’ quality of life and saving costs in their treatment and follow-up.