Personal data

Pablo Jose Villacorta Iglesias
Born in Granada (Spain)
Currently living and working in Madrid, Spain

Have a look at my resume

Education

December 2011 - November 2015:
Ph.D. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Computer Science and AI of the University of Granada, under the supervision of Prof. Jose Luis Verdegay and Prof. David Pelta.
Ph.D. dissertation title: Adversarial decision and optimization-based models.
- Extraordinary Doctoral Award in Engineering, awarded by the Univ. of Granada in June 2019.

September 2010 - September 2012:
M.Sc. in Statistics at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada. GPA: 9.14 / 10.
- First Class Award (Univ. of Granada).
- 2nd place in the Spanish National Awards (Spanish Ministry of Education). November 2015.

October 2009 - September 2010:
Master in Soft computing and Intelligent Systems at University of Granada
Final project: Analysis and design of decision strategies in the presence of adversaries

October 2004 - September 2009:
M.Sc. in Computer Engineering at the ETS Ingenierias Informatica y de Telecomunicacion of the University of Granada. GPA: 9.08 / 10.
Final project: Design and implementation of a software tool for studying decision problems in adversarial domains

September 1994 - September 2009:
- Bachelor Degree in Music - Piano Performance (1994 - 2004) at the Conservatorio Profesional de Musica of Granada.
- Master Degree in Piano (2004 - 2009) at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Musica Victoria Eugenia of Granada, under the guidance of Prof. Francisco Alvarez
Final project:

  • Research work: Two outstanding icons of the Spanish piano in the 20th century: Ricardo Viñes and Alicia de Larrocha (PDF available in Spanish here[40 MB]: Dos figuras del piano español del siglo XX: Ricardo Viñes y Alicia de Larrocha), and
  • A solo recital where I performed works by Scarlatti, Beethoven, Schumann and Ravel.

October 2002 - May 2004:
High School Education in Sciences, Virgen de Gracia High School (First Class Award)
Average marks: 9.84 / 10

Currently:

  • Data Scientist at Stratio Big Data, Madrid, Spain. Using Apache Spark (Scala and PySpark) to build and productionize Machine Learning pipelines with Big Data.
  • Member of the Models of Decision and Optimization Research Group (MODO)
  • Accredited as Professor of Private University and Assistant Professor (Prof. Ayudante Doctor, Prof. Universidad Privada y Prof. Contratado Doctor) by ANECA (Spanish National Agency of Assessment, Quality and Accreditation)
  • Databricks Certified Developer - Apache Spark 2.x for Scala (October 2018)

Fellowships and grants

  • May 2017 - May 2020: Torres Quevedo Research Grant at Stratio Big Data Inc., for PhD's doing research in industry, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Topic: Spark-based distributed implementation of Behavioral Analytics algorithms for Stratio Data Centric platform.
  • October 2011 - 2015: FPU fellowship at the Department of Computer Science and AI, University of Granada, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education (MEC)
  • December 2008 - July 2009: Collaboration grant with the Dept. of Computer Science and AI at the Univ. of Granada, within the area Theory of Algorithms, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education (MEC)
  • April 2008 - May 2009: Research Initiation grant, awarded by the University of Granada
    Title: Decision strategies in the presence of adversaries

Attendance to doctoral formative meetings

  • SEMATICA 2011: First doctoral seminar on applications and transference of computational intelligence, organized by the Spanish ATICA Research Network and the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC). Main topic of 2011 edition: Machine Learning. Santiago de Compostela (Spain), 5-8 September 2011.
  • EASSS 2012: 14th European Agent Systems Summer School. Valencia (Spain), May 28 - June 1, 2012.