OGA

OGA CATEDRA Group

CÁTEDRA Group, OGA's Technological Advisory Board

OGA reinforces its excellence in Artificial Intelligence and Process Optimisation with a Technological Advisory Board comprising 14 professors and researchers at the highest international level in data-driven technology solutions.

Juan Carlos Rubio CEO OGA

At OGA we firmly believe in talent and investment in research and transfer as fundamental pillars of the economic and social change that new technologies must lead, and we are convinced of the absolutely leading role that academic institutions have in this challenge“.

“It is our objective with the constitution of the CÁTEDRA Group, the OGA‘s Technological Advisory Board, to build a collaborative scenario from which to share knowledge, experiences and visions with authentic references in the knowledge verticals that sustain our business activity, in a permanent search for inspiration and knowledge, and to do so from the construction of two-way relationships and opportunities that contribute to all of us”.

Juan Carlos Rubio Sánchez. OGA CEO

Juan Carlos Rubio CEO OGA

At OGA we firmly believe in talent and investment in research and transfer as fundamental pillars of the economic and social change that new technologies must lead, and we are convinced of the absolutely leading role that academic institutions have in this challenge“.

“It is our objective with the constitution of the CÁTEDRA Group, the OGA‘s Technological Advisory Board, to build a collaborative scenario from which to share knowledge, experiences and visions with authentic references in the knowledge verticals that sustain our business activity, in a permanent search for inspiration and knowledge, and to do so from the construction of two-way relationships and opportunities that contribute to all of us”.

Juan Carlos Rubio Sánchez. OGA CEO

Alfredo García CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Alfredo García Hernández-Díaz, PhD.

Coordinator of the CÁTEDRA Group, OGA‘s Technological Advisory Board.

Professor of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business at Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville. Head of the Data Science and Optimisation Area at OGA.

Scholar

Research expert in metaheuristic techniques applied to multi-objective optimisation and with applications for companies (vehicle routing optimisation problems, production, scheduling, assembly sequences, etc.). For example, one of his recent scientific papers is ‘Optimising a bi-objective vehicle routing problem that appears in industrial entreprises’.

He is the principal investigator of Imbipand, Study of the Impact of the Implementation of Public Bicycles in Spain. His research projects include ‘Searching for efficiency and sustainability of public decisions: a multi-criteria approach’. He directs the Master in Planning, Economics and Operation of Urban and Metropolitan Transport, of 90 ECTS and which is now in its 9th edition.

Amparo Alonso CÁTEDRA Group OGA

, PhD. Amparo Alonso Betanzos

Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Universidade da Coruña, she coordinates the LIDIA Research Group (Artificial Intelligence R&D Laboratory). She is a member of the Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council of the Spanish Government. She is also a corresponding member of the Real Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences.

Her outstanding career in this field began 40 years ago when she was introduced to computer technology through the application of data in biomedical engineering and clinical informatics. In her doctoral thesis she proposed a system for the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of foetal status.

Her research in Artificial Intelligence focuses on three main areas: the basic aspects of Artificial Intelligence, reasoning schemes and models, and knowledge engineering. Her numerous research projects, in fields as diverse as health, wind turbines or environmental conservation, include: ‘Scalable machine learning algorithms: Beyond classification and regression’ and ‘Locaw (Low-Carbon at Work: Modelling agents and organisations to achieve transition to a low-carbon Europe’. She has been president of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (Aepia).

Emilio Carrizosa CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Emilio Carrizosa Priego, PhD.

Professor of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Seville. Chairman of the Spanish Mathematics-Industry Network (Math-In), of researchers committed to the transfer of mathematical technology to industry and society.

His career includes the impetus he has given to numerous entities. He was previously director of the Institute of Mathematics of the University of Seville (IMUS), and was president of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research.

An expert in optimisation and operational research models, one of the main research projects in which he is involved is the European project NeEDS: ‘Research and Innovation Staff Exchange Network of European Data Scientists’, and he also stands out as director of the R&D&I project ‘Mathematical Optimization in Data Science: Towards Interpretability in Classification, Regression and Dimensionality Reduction’.

Óscar Cordón CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Óscar Cordón García, PhD.

Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada. Recipient of the National Computer Science Award, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Young Investigator Award, the IEEE and IFSA Fellowship, and the Spanish Artificial Intelligence Association (AEPIA) Recognition for his Promotion and Career in the area.
A leading expert in the fundamentals and applications of ‘soft computing’, he pioneered the hybridisation of fuzzy systems and evolutionary algorithms, thus developing the research field of ‘genetic fuzzy systems’. He was founding principal investigator and then distinguished research associate at the European Centre for Soft Computing. He has chaired the Online Training and Educational Technologies working group, promoted by the Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities. He was also a member of the Expert Group that developed the Spanish R&D&I Strategy on Artificial Intelligence.
As a researcher, he has provided solutions to problems such as the control of ventilation and air conditioning systems for large buildings, the analysis of DNA microarrays in bioinformatics, the modelling of electrical energy distribution, the balancing of assembly lines, or the design and mining of visual maps of science. He is also an expert in social network analysis and marketing modelling, as well as in the area of Artificial Intelligence for Forensic Anthropology and Human Identification, in which he has four patents in operation.
Abraham Duarte Muñoz, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Abraham Duarte Muñoz, PhD.

Professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, where he is also director of the School of Computer Engineering. He leads the Research Group on Algorithm Optimisation (GRAFO).

His lines of research are mainly devoted to the development of metaheuristic procedures for optimisation problems. Among the projects he is leading are ‘Cybersecurity, Network Analysis and Monitoring for the Next Generation Internet’.

He is also involved in the Teaching Innovation Group ‘Automatic Learning Environment Host for Obtaining Overpowered Programmers’ (Alehoop) to improve the teaching of programming at all levels: from Introduction to Programming to Algorithm Design and Analysis, including Data Structures.

Manuel Laguna, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Manuel Laguna, PhD.

Professor Emeritus at Leeds Business School, University of Colorado Boulder (U.S.A.).

He has a remarkable track record as a researcher in the convergence of computer science, artificial intelligence and operations research, carrying out projects for both private companies (IBM, Lilly, etc.) and public bodies in the United States such as the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, NASA and the Environmental Protection Agency.

He is the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal ‘Journal of Heuristics’, and co-founder of OptTek Systems, an optimisation software and consulting company for organisations using simulation models. His books on tabu search and sparse search are an important reference for students and researchers interested in combinatorial optimisation.

Rafael Martí Grupo CÁTEDRA OGA

Rafael Martí Cunquero, PhD.

Professor of the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of Valencia (Spain) and Permanent Visiting Professor at the University College of Dublin (Ireland), University of Colorado (USA) and University College of Molde (Norway).
Professor Martí has published around 200 scientific articles and 10 specialised books, the latest being the Handbook of Heuristics, a 3-volume encyclopaedia of reference in Optimisation. His publications place him in relevant positions in the rankings of researchers, such as the 2%-Top Researchers of Stanford University or the Best-Scientists of Research.com. He is also editor of numerous scientific journals, such as EJOR, Journal of Heuristics or Mathematical Programming Computation.
Martí has received several awards in his scientific career, starting with the extraordinary PhD prize. Notable awards include the Rómulo Garza prize from the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico) in 2010, the Test-of-Time Award from the INFORMS journal on computing in 2018 for the most cited article, and the research grant/prize from the Université de Bretagne-Sud (France).
Julián Molina Luque, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Julián Molina Luque, PhD.

Professor of Applied Economics and Mathematics at the University of Malaga. Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson Research Award from the General Foundation of the University of Malaga.
His main lines of research focus on the optimisation of economic-business processes, the design of optimisation algorithms based on artificial intelligence (metaheuristics), their computational implementation and their application to real problems in different fields, from industrial organisation (problems of facility location, space distribution, design of commercial territories, logistics, etc.) to the analysis of urban vulnerability, hydrological dynamics, climate change and its socio-economic effects or urban indicators.
He has extensive experience in the modelling, analysis and resolution of very different complex systems related to very diverse real problems, both from a socio-economic and environmental point of view. He teaches Numerical Methods in Static Optimisation and Numerical Methods in Economics and Finance.
Eva Onaindía de la Rivaherrera, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

, PhD. Eva Onaindía de la Rivaherrera

Professor in the Department of Computer Systems and Computing at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), and researcher at the Valencian Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence (VRAIN).
She leads the Planning and Scheduling Reasoning Research Group, which works in several areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) including Automatic Planning, Reinforcement Learning and Multi-Agent Systems.
Her recent research focuses on the design of hybrid models for planning problems, and personalised AI systems for decision making. She is currently involved in several research projects focused on learning human behaviour in different application domains.
Joaquín Pacheco Bonrostro, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Joaquín Pacheco Bonrostro, PhD.

Professor of Quantitative Methods for Economics and Business, and Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Burgos.

Expert in machine learning, computational intelligence, optimisation, operations management, algorithms, clustering, production planning, logistics, simulation. He has led the research ‘Selection of socially responsible investment portfolios: a multi-objective model and a tabu search method’. Among the projects he is currently leading is ‘Analysis of healthcare logistics problems: Multi-objective approach and use of metaheuristics’.

To address the logistical challenges in the exceptional health coverage in the face of the covid pandemic, he created the project ‘Systems for the Optimisation and Rationalisation of Health and Humanitarian Logistics Operations’ (Sorolsh), which was awarded in the call #Innovacionfrentealvirus by the Junta de Castilla y León.

Founder of GRINUBUMET on heuristic techniques.

Mauricio Resende, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Mauricio Resende, PhD.

Affiliate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Washington (Seattle) and Permanent Member of DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Prominent research scientist in the fields of operations research, computer science and applied mathematics. His main area of research is mathematical optimization, where he has made significant contributions. An international expert in heuristic search for combinatorial optimization, he is known for his contributions in the development of metaheuristics, including GRASP (Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedures), Path-Relinking and BRKGA (Biased Random-Key Genetic Algorithm) algorithms.

Dr. Resende is a regular speaker at international conferences, having published more than 180 papers and co-edited five books, including ‘Handbook of Applied Optimization’, ‘Handbook of Optimization in Telecommunications’, ‘Handbook of Heuristics’ or ‘Handbook of Massive Datasets’. In 2016, he published ‘Optimization by GRASP’.

José Cristóbal Riquelme Santos, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

José Cristóbal Riquelme Santos, PhD.

Professor of Computer Languages and Systems at the School of Computer Engineering of the University of Seville. Director of the Institute for Research in Computer Engineering (I3US).

Expert in Statistics and Operations Research. He has developed new transfer learning algorithms and frameworks based on machine learning for both tabular and image data. This includes homogeneous and heterogeneous transfer learning paradigms.

Recent research includes: ‘Object detection using depth completion and camera-Lidar fusion for autonomous driving’ and ‘Improving object detection for autonomous driving by optimising anchor generation and class imbalance steering’.

More information.

Jesús Sánchez-Oro Calvo, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Jesús Sánchez-Oro Calvo, PhD.

Professor of Computer Science at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, he is one of the senior researchers of the Group for Research in Algorithm Optimisation (GRAFO).

His research focuses on the application of metaheuristics to solve difficult real-life combinatorial optimisation problems. For example, the ‘Rated Power’ project, which developed an optimisation algorithm for the localisation of solar panels. And ‘Fotocaos’, creating new advanced computational methods for the simulation and optimisation of photochemical processes.

He teaches soft computing and introduction to computer vision research. He has been a reviewer of journals of impact in this field such as ‘Computers & Operations Research’ or ‘Journal of Metaheuristics’, among others.

Miguel Ángel Vega Rodríguez, PhD. CÁTEDRA Group OGA

Miguel Ángel Vega Rodríguez, PhD.

Professor of Computer Architecture in the Department of Computer Technology and Communications at Universidad de Extremadura.

The University of Extremadura has awarded him both the Excellence in Research Career Award (Senior Researchers category, 2023) and the Teaching Excellence Award (twice, 2019 and 2024). He is the coordinator of the ARCO Research Group of the University of Extremadura, registered in the Catalogue of Research Groups of Extremadura, as well as being the coordinator of the SEVA Teaching Innovation Group.

He is a member of the Institute for Research in Applied Information Technology of Extremadura (INTIA). He has been an evaluator of research projects in Spain (for the State Research Agency), France, the Netherlands, Poland, Chile and Uruguay. He has been an evaluator of university teaching positions in Spain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Pakistan. He has been an evaluator of Doctoral, Master’s and Bachelor’s Theses in Spain, India, Germany and Colombia.

His main research interests are metaheuristics, evolutionary and bio-inspired computing, multi-objective optimisation, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, bioinformatics and computational biology, and parallel and distributed computing.

V OGA CATEDRA Group Congress

January 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, 2026

The V CATEDRA Group Congress, an annual internal event promoting collaboration between OGA’s team and its Technology Advisory Board, the CATEDRA Group, took place on 21, 22 and 23 January 2026 at the Hotel Giralda Center in Seville.

The programme included a full schedule of sessions and debates, as well as two sector-specific panel discussions (Defence and Aerospace) with the participation of representatives from key companies in each sector.

The congress closed with the OGATHON 4.0, a team challenge featuring Artificial Intelligence, Operational Research and Cybersecurity challenges.

CÁTEDRA Group, OGA's Technological Advisory Board

The fourteen experts gathered by OGA make up an outstanding group of leaders of research groups whose projects and publications have a high impact index at international level in computer science, data structure, design and analysis of algorithms, optimisation of economic and business processes, bioinformatics, metaheuristic procedures, reliable artificial intelligence, simulation models, among other specialities and techniques.

CÁTEDRA Group OGA Knowledge transfer

They operate from 12 universities, those of University of Colorado Boulder (U.S.A.), Universidade da Coruña, Universidad de Sevilla, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid), Universitat de València, Universitat Politècnica de València, Universidad de Málaga, Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Extremadura, Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville), University of Washington and Universidad de Burgos. From all of them, they lead or co-lead R+D+i initiatives selected for support from national and European calls, in fields as important and diverse as biomedical engineering, environmental management, cybersecurity, autonomous driving or healthcare logistics.

Among the activities of the CÁTEDRA Group, Technological Advisory Board, it is worth highlighting the holding of annual conferences in Seville, OGA‘s headquarters, with presentations and working groups on innovative projects, new methodologies and techniques, and analysis of trends based on recent studies.

In the collaboration of the Advisory Board with OGA throughout the year, the exchange of information and references of interest is established on: studies, innovative projects, new developments to be taken into account as possible disruptive trends, opportunities for collaboration, talent spotting, and advice for the appropriate use of tools and methods in the development of technological solutions with predictive models that address problems of particular complexity.

Download the presentation dossier of the CÁTEDRA Group, OGA‘s Technological Advisory Board.