Jordi Aldo-Canals

Jordi Abo-Canals is deeply passionate about enhancing people's quality of life through technology and bridging the gap between academic applied research and industrial products. His key interests include embodied social agents, emotion artificial intelligence, cloud computing platforms, healthtech, and edtech. With a diverse background spanning academia in Spain, the Netherlands, and the US, as well as research experience across Latin America, Asia, and Oceania, and involvement in technology-based companies, including a role at NTT DATA, they have joined LIGHTHOUSE-DIG (Opportunity Builder). In this role, he aim to empower global institutions to disrupt their technology-driven business models through applied research, forging B2B alliances, and collaborating with cutting-edge tech startups. His dedicated focus is on CORP, a Collaborative Online Robotics Platform with the goal of democratizing global access to robotic systems.

Present: 

• Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, LIGHTHOUSE – Disruptive Innovation Group. (US)

• Senior Research Scientist Sant Joan de Deu Innovation and R&D department– Barcelona Children’s Hospital Foundation (ES)

• Collaborator at Massachusetts General Brigham – Harvard Medical School (US)

Former: 

• Affiliate Researcher, Tufts University US)

• Affiliate Researcher, Personal Robots Group, MIT Media (US) 

• Chief Scientific Officer at BXH at NTT DATA (US)

• Associate Professor, La Salle – Ramon Llull University (ES)

• Robotics Director, La Salle Almere (NL)

HONORS AND AWARDS 

• 2012  - He received the local Alan Turing award that recognizes an individual having an innovative and positive impact on society for developing a robot companion for children with traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

• 2015  - Best Paper Award at RO-MAN (International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication) : “Interaction between Vleo and Pleo, a virtual social character and a social robot”. 

• 2015  - The project FOLLOW ME received the La Caixa Social Innovation Award.

• 2022  - Best AI-Compliance Award by Expansion to Smart Camera PROSEGUR.