(last update of this page: May 2024)

Doctorate awards

• February 2011: Doctorate Extraordinary Award, awarded by Universidad Politecnica de Madrid to outstanding PhD Thesis 

• May 2010: Award COIT - BANESTO to the Best PhD Thesis on Information and Communication Technologies applied to Banking, awarded by the Spanish College of Telecommunication Engineers (COIT) 

• 2008: PhD Telecommunications Engineering (2008), “cum laude” with Doctor Europeus mention

Research and academic awards

• October 2023: Wiman Prize 2023 for the country's best degree project in higher education engineering from Engineers of Sweden (Sveriges Ingenjörer) to Bachelor students Fredrik Strand and Jonathan Karlsson for their BSc thesis published in a co-authored conference paper “Visual Detection of Personal Protective Equipment and Safety Gear on Industry Workers” at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods (ICPRAM 2023), in Lisbon 

• December 2022: Top Downloaded Article to paper “Facial masks and soft-biometrics: Leveraging face recognition CNNs for age and gender prediction on mobile ocular images” published in 2021 at IET Biometrics journal from Wiley (most downloads in the 12 months following online publication)

• December 2022: Best Degree Project Award from Sparbanksstiftelsen Kronan (First prize, 50,000 Swedish crowns) to co-supervised Bachelor students Joel Pålsson and Otto Zell for their thesis “Fire detection in industrial environments” . Results published in a conference paper at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods (ICPRAM 2023), in Lisbon

• February 2022: One of my students of the IT Forensics and Information Security program at Halmstad University (Nadia Benamer), who I personally nominated, was one of the ten nominees selected for Tech Girl of the Year 2022 by Microsoft Sweden

• November 2021: Best Presentation Award at the 8th International Conference on Soft Computing and Machine Intelligence (ISCMI), in Cairo, Egypt (online) to paper "A Cross-Platform Mobile Application for Ambulance CPR during Cardiac Arrests" co-written with supervised BSc students O. Alfakir and V. Larsson

• May 2021: Best Master’s Thesis Award from the Swedish Artificial Intelligence Society, SAIS (one unique prize for all nominations in Sweden) to co-supervised Master student Fredrik Svanström for his thesis “Drone detection and classification using sensor fusion and machine learning” . The results of the thesis have been also published in a conference paper at the International Conference of Pattern Recognition, ICPR 2020, further extended to a journal paper at Drones, and the database generated during the project has been also made public.

• May 2020: Paper Selected at the 8th IEEE International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics (IWBF) in Porto, Portugal (online conference), to paper “Forensic Authorship Analysis of Microblogging Texts Using N-Grams and Stylometric Features”, from BSc thesis of student Nicole Belvisi, invited to submit an extended version for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science journal

• September 2020: Paper Selected at the 19th International Conference of the Biometrics Special Interest Group, (BIOSIG) in Darmstadt, Germany (online conference), to paper “Soft-Biometrics Estimation in the Era of Facial Masks”, invited to submit an extended version for publication in the IET Biometrics journal, BIOSIG 2020 special issue on Trustworthiness of Person Authentication

• May 2019: Best Degree Project Award from Lektor Sten Fåhrés minnesfond (Third prize, 20,000 Swedish crowns) to supervised Bachelor student Felix Nilsson for his thesis “Image Analysis for Smart Manufacturing”. The results of the thesis have been also published in a conference paper at the International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Computer Vision, ISCV 2020

• May 2018: Best Degree Project Award of all engineering programs at Halmstad University from Lektor Sten Fåhrés minnesfond (First prize, 25,000 Swedish crowns) to supervised Bachelor students Adam Olsson and Frida Femling for their thesis “Fruit and Vegetable Identification Using Machine Learning”. The results of the thesis have been also published in a conference paper at the International Conference on Signal Image Technology & Internet Based Systems, SITIS 2018

• March 2016: Best Poster Award at the 8th Asian Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems (ACIIDS) in Da Nang, Vietnam, to paper “Hand Detection and Gesture Recognition Using Symmetric Patterns” co-written and presented by PhD students Hassan Nemati and Yuantao Fan

• March 2016: Best Reviewer Award at the IEEE International Conference on Identity, Security and Behavior Analysis (ISBA), in Sendai, Japan, Feb. 29- Mar. 2, 2016

• September 2015: Best Paper Award at the 14th International Conference of the Biometrics Special Interest Group (BIOSIG), in Darmstadt, Germany, to paper “Face Tracking Using Optical Flow: Development of a Real-Time AdaBoost Cascade Face Tracker” co-written and presented by supervised MSc student Andreas Ranftl. Paper further extended to a journal paper in the IET Biometrics Journal

• March 2014: Paper Selected at the 2nd COST IC1106/IEEE International Workshop on Biometrics and Forensics (IWBF) in Valletta, Malta, to paper “Eye Detection by Complex Filtering for Periocular Recognition”, invited to submit an extended version for publication in the IET Biometrics Journal

Grants awarded in competition

(as main applicant, see the full list of participated projects here)

• May 2022: Research Project on Advanced and innovative AI from the Sweden's Innovation Agency VINNOVA (2.6MSEK) for a duration of 3 years, granted 5 of 71 projects in the entire Sweden

• November 2021: Project Research Grant from the Swedish Research Council (3.6MSEK), 23% acceptance rate

• October 2018: Funding for Staff Exchange and Artificial Intelligence from the Sweden's Innovation Agency VINNOVA (188kSEK)

• March 2018: Project Research Grant on Feasibility Studies in Digital Security and Reliability from the Sweden's Innovation Agency VINNOVA (500kSEK)

• November 2016: Project Research Grant from the Swedish Research Council (3.7MSEK), 22% acceptance rate

• November 2012: Project Research Grant for junior researchers from the Swedish Research Council (3.3MSEK), 19.4% acceptance rate

• 2010: Post-doctoral Scholarship, Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (IEF) from the European Commission (~173k€) for a duration of 2 years, 23% acceptance rate

• 2010: Post-doctoral Scholarship, Grant for postdoctoral positions in Sweden from the Swedish Research Council - Vetenskapsrådet (~1.4MSEK) for a duration of 2 years, 8% acceptance rate

• 2008: Post-doctoral scholarship, Juan de la Cierva program from the Spanish Ministry of Innovation and Science (~100k€)

• 2006: Scholarship for a Research Internship of 4 months at University of Kent, by Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (~4,5k€)

• 2004: Ph.D. scholarship (FPI), Comunidad de Madrid / Regional Government of Madrid (co-funded by the EU, ~52k€), supporting the PhD studies in full (2004-2008)

• 2001: Undergraduate Research scholarship, Spanish Ministry of Education (~2k€), for initiation in research duties of young graduates within university departments (duration of 1 year)