• Dr. Gonzalo Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation at the Computational Intelligence Society, which is part of the world’s largest professional and technical association in this field. Also, professor Acuña became Chile’s representative at the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society.

An academic of Universidad de Santiago’s Department of Informatics Engineering, Dr. Gonzalo Acuña Leiva, will preside for two years the Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chile Chapter, which is part of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional and technical association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity.

Dr. Acuña was elected president of the Chilean representation of the IEEE-CIS, one of the world´s most renowned and traditional organizations, as it was the first organization founded in this field after the American chapters of computational intelligence and is made up of, at least, sixty academic members from different universities.

“Computational Intelligence relates to the ability developed by computers, for example, to imitate nature or biological processes,” Dr. Acuña says, pointing out that this field includes neural networks and genetic algorithms inspired by biological processes or the animal world, like the ants’ methods to solve problems or the flight of birds.

Although the IC concept seems to be related to Informatics, Dr. Acuña says that it has to do with dynamical systems and mathematical models and not necessarily with programming.

Computational Intelligence is not Artificial Intelligence

Dr. Acuña says that the concept of Computational Intelligence should not be taken for Artificial Intelligence, as the former refers to “mathematically modeled ideas that help to solve optimization problems and other engineering works. It refers to mathematical tools that are commonly used by computer programmers to solve different problems, as they can be applied to all imaginable fields.”

Dr. Acuña has been working in this field for several years and he has specialized in the study of neural networks, interconnection systems inspired by the animal nervous system functioning and SVM (Support Vector Machines), a group of supervised learning algorithms that can be applied to different areas.

At present, the academic is leading a Fondef project where he is applying this knowledge to mining industry.

“With this Computational Intelligence tools we are building predictive models for the availability of physical assets in mining industry, like shovels, large trucks or the enormous equipment required for mining operations that involve high maintenance costs. Therefore, if we are able to anticipate the equipment availability, mining industry can improve preventive maintenance and reduce costs,” Dr. Acuña explains.

Youngsters and Latin America

About his recent nomination as president of the IEEE-CIS Chile Chapter, Dr. Acuña says that the efforts are oriented to promote the Chapter and to motivate young people through CI Summer Schools, which are “the ideal opportunity for students preparing their dissertation work to participate, as leading figures in this field give presentations and many of our members offer tutorial sessions. It is the occasion when we meet as a community.”

Finally, there is also news about this field at a regional level, as two weeks ago, in a congress held at Bariloche, the Latin American Computational Intelligence Society was founded, where Dr. Acuña and an investigator from Universidad de la Frontera were appointed national representatives.


Translated by Marcela Contreras