PARTICIPANTS

Asunción Gómez Pérez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ES)

A prominent Spanish researcher in artificial intelligence and Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Following a postdoctoral research stay at Stanford University (USA), she now leads the Ontology Engineering Group, a pioneering group in Spain for ontological engineering and the semantic web. Her research focuses on the semantic web, linked data, natural language processing, and knowledge management—fields in which she has achieved significant international recognition, with over 300 publications and a high citation count.

She also boasts an illustrious institutional career: she is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (holding Seat 'q' since 2023), a Full Member of the Royal Academy of Engineering (Medal IX since 2024), and a Member of the European Academy of Sciences (since 2018). She has participated in major national and international AI initiatives, including advising the Government of Spain, and served as Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation, and Doctoral Studies at UPM from 2016 to 2024.

María Rosario González Férez (Universidad de Granada, ES)

Professor and Head of the Department of Atomic, Molecular, and Nuclear Physics at the University of Granada. Her research focuses on the quantum dynamics of atoms and molecules—particularly ultracold systems and Rydberg molecules—and on controlling their properties via electromagnetic fields, an area of vital importance for fundamental physics and quantum technologies. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), she joined the University of Granada in 2004, where she has built a consolidated career with numerous scientific publications and PhD supervisions.

Alongside her research, she has held key scientific management and leadership roles: she was the first Spanish woman to chair the European Group on Atomic Systems (a specialized section of the Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics Division of the European Physical Society) and the first woman elected Chair of the Commission on Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) from 2022 to 2024. Since February 2025, she is chair of the Physics Area at the Spanish State Research Agency (ANECA).

Rosa María Benito Zafrilla (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, ES)

Professor of Applied Physics and Director of the Complex Systems Group at UPM. Her research lies at the intersection of physics, mathematics, and data science, specializing in non-linear dynamical systems, chaos theory, molecular dynamics, and complex networks. In recent years, she has extended her work to the study of social networks, information dissemination, and complex systems modeling applied to social and technological phenomena.

She has an extensive scientific output, with over a hundred papers published in high-impact journals and a strong international profile, including research stays at prestigious US institutions such as Cornell, MIT, and Johns Hopkins University. She was the first woman to chair the Statistical and Non-Linear Physics Specialist Group of the Royal Spanish Society of Physics (RSEF). Under her leadership, thanks to a notable increase in membership, it was recently elevated to the Spanish Division of Statistical, Non-Linear, and Complex Systems Physics, becoming one of the four main divisions of the RSEF.