Scientist artist

With a passion for research and wide span of interests, Eva's area of expertise defies easy compartmentalisation, and the multidisciplinary approach she has developed sets her apart from her computer science peer group. Her natural inclination is to open new pathways rather than re-tread old ones. She has an acknowledged ability to build new areas of research from scratch, identify key problems and raise questions that have not been voiced before. She approaches the answers in an original way by transferring ideas from one field to another. Few computer scientists can credibly claim to have controlled robots, eliminated mechanical vibrations in oil fields, introduced formal methods of computer science into dynamical systems theory, and modelled important aspects of the human brain to create a new theory of neuroplasticity with the potential to radically change the study of the brain and neuromorphic computing.

Eva is a scientist of international standing in hybrid dynamical systems, cyber-physical systems, network science, mathematical modelling, simulation, automated verification and reasoning, formal methods of computer science, symbolic artificial intelligence (AI), automation, control engineering, robotics, stability of dynamical systems, evolution of complex systems, self-organisation, advanced algorithms, computational neuroscience, neuro-inspired computing, data science and collective intelligence.

Eva has developed her career in industry and academia in four different countries: México, the USA, the UK and Spain. She shadowed the footsteps of Alan Turing in Manchester, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal –the father of modern neuroscience– in Madrid. She is one of the world's experts in Turing's morphogenesis –having collaborated with Alan Turing’s last student. 

She is currently proposing new nature-inspired models of computation, learning and evolution for complex systems and modelling important aspects of the human brain as Director and founder of AiDAs, the Artificial intelligence and DAta science Research Lab. 

She is Full Professor in Computing in the School of Interactive Games and Media, and former Director of the School of Information (iSchool) within the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York. She is also affiliated to the Center for Human-aware AI (CHAI), the Personalize Healthcare Technology Research Centre, and is a member of the Internal Advisory Board for the AWARE-AI program. 

Before moving to the USA, she was a Reader in Data Science in the UK. A Reader is equivalent to a Full Professor without a Chair and is a research-oriented permanent tenured post for senior academics with an international reputation in research. Just as a reference, Alan Turing, the father of artificial intelligence and modern computer science, was a Reader.

Embedded within the nascent field of cyber-physical social systems, she is also a Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Spatial Policy Lab of the Manchester Urban Institute and the School of Environment, Education and Development at The University of Manchester, where she applies network and data science to analyse social and urban dynamics. Moreover, she is part of the core team of AI Mexico, which promotes AI education and its responsible adoption by industry, as part of the Coalition IA2030Mx. She is part of TechnoLatinas, a community to bring together technologists and scientists from Latin America and all around the world to support each other and advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion. She is an expert of the UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab, member of the Board of Trustees for the Swedish AI Fund Program at AI Center in Sweden, and member of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). She has been recently appointed as a member of the Science and Methodology Committee at IPIE and the Advisory Council of Gender Music Tech, and awarded the distinction of Distinguished Alumni Ambassador 2024 at University of Alicante.

Eva is a lover of philosophy, arts, music and poetry. Eva has an artistic conception of science and research, this is why she is a scientist artist: scientists are artists, because we challenge the existing order; we do not follow pathways, we build and open new pathways. Art is a vision, of the world and our inner selves, just like science. Scientists and artists are alike in that both attempt to understand the world better. At best, both scientists and artists manage to make the world a better place. More details at Eva's manifesto.