The Professional Association of Computer Engineering of Galicia (CPEIG) unanimously decided (at its General Assembly on May 21) to recognize Alejandro Pazos as an Honorary Member. The distinction will be awarded during the eighth edition of the CPEIG annual awards, which will take place on June 3 at the Hotel-Monumento San Francisco in Santiago de Compostela. This award is given in recognition of his contribution to advancing IT in our region, his commitment to the profession, and his extensive career as a researcher, educator, and manager.
As a reminder, Pazos Sierra was born in Padrón (A Coruña) in 1959. He studied Medicine at the University of Santiago de Compostela and completed a Master’s in Knowledge Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid in 1989. He received a pre-doctoral scholarship from IBM and obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the same university in 1990. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech in Atlanta from 1990 to 1991 and, in 1996, earned his second doctorate, this time in Medicine, from the Complutense University of Madrid.
Regarding his teaching experience, he returned to Galicia in the early 1990s to help establish the Faculty of Computer Science at the UDC, becoming the first Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Coruña university, where he secured a position as an interim Associate Professor in the Department of Computing. In 1992, he won a position as a Full Professor and, in 1999, became a Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at UDC, a position he still holds.
Since returning to Spain, Alejandro Pazos has held management roles both at the university and in the regional government. He was the Director of Support Services for Research at UDC in 1993; Vice-Rector for Faculty (1998-2001), Vice-Rector for Academic Planning (2001-2002), and Vice-Rector for Research (2002-2003) at UDC. He also directed the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Coruña from 2004 to 2008. He served as Vice-President and President of the Interuniversity Commission of Galicia (CiUG) from 1994 to 1997 and was also Secretary General and Deputy Director of the Galician R&D Plan at the Xunta de Galicia, a representative of the Xunta on the General Council of Science and Technology, and a member of the Scientific Policy Selection Committee of the Xunta de Galicia between 1997 and 1998. He was also an advisor to the Ministry of Defense for Technology Foresight studies and European programs TMR, ICT, and MOBILITY.
For the past 15 years, he has been responsible for the ICT training course for Navy chiefs and officers at the Antonio Escano School in Ferrol. In the past two years, he has also led the advanced Cyber Defense course at the same institution.
In his more than 25 years of professional experience at the University of Coruña, he has taught over 2,500 Computer Engineering students and more than 500 master’s and doctoral students. He has supervised over 200 undergraduate or master’s projects and 25 doctoral theses in Computer Engineering, with seven currently in progress.
Regarding his work in R&D and innovation, he founded the Biomedical Computing Group (GIB) in 1987 at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, which was pioneering in Spain in the field. In 1990, he established the GIB at UDC, also pioneering in Galicia. He also created the Laboratory of Artificial Neural Networks and Adaptive Systems (RNASA) and later the Medical Computing and Radiological Diagnosis Center (IMEDIR) at UDC. Over the years, more than 150 researchers have passed through the laboratories he directs, both in training and as project researchers.
He is the author of more than 50 articles published in prestigious international journals, over 100 publications in books and journals, and more than 75 publications in scientific conferences, both national and international. He has been cited over 2,300 times by other authors and is the second most cited author in the categories of medical computing and healthcare information systems.
Alejandro Pazos is a member of various scientific societies, including IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers), ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), INNS (International Neural Network Society), IAKE (International Association of Knowledge Engineers), among others, and is a founding member of the Internet Society (ISOC) in Spain.
In 2014, he was awarded the Naval Merit Medal with a white distinction for his training work in ICT and Cyber Defense, and in 2015, he was chosen by the editorial board of El Correo Galego as one of the Galicians of the Year. Also in 2015, he received the National Award for Health Informatics from the Spanish Society of Health Informatics.