Alvaro Torralba has joined the Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University as Associate Professor in Distributed, Embedded and Intelligent Systems group.
Alvaro Torralba received his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Science from the University Carlos III de Madrid and completed his PhD studies at the same university in 2015. For the past six years, he has worked as a postdoc researcher at Saarland University in Germany.
Describe your area and research interests?
- I do research on artificial intelligence, with a focus on automated planning. As one of my former colleges said: "Planning is the art and practice of thinking before acting" (Patrik Haslum).
From the very beginning of the concept of artificial intelligence, the ambitious goal was to construct a general problem solver that could provide solutions to any given problem. Automated planning follows the same principle, for situations where the task is to "find a sequence of actions" (basically make a plan). The goal is to construct a planner that can provide us with efficient solutions in many applications, from helping logistic companies plan efficient routes to finding the best way to build a complex structure or locating vulnerabilities on a computer network.
Which current projects (if any) are you going to work on?
- I am not involved in any project in Aalborg just yet, but I have several international ongoing collaborations. One example is a project about construction-planning models in Minecraft.
Why did you choose to continue your career at Aalborg University?
- I have the opportunity to continue my career here, as Associate Professor, with the freedom of doing research in the topics I am interested in, and the chance to collaborate with researchers in other areas, e.g. Model Checking.
Any fun facts your new colleagues should know?
- I love my job. My wife always tells me that the best week of the year for me is the Annual Conference on Planning (called ICAPS), where I can speak about planning 24 hours a day. I will never admit it, but it indeed is one of the best moments of the year. But it is not all planning. I like travelling a lot (well now it is more a dream than a hobby), and I am a big fan of chess. During my years in Germany, I also practised a lot of table tennis. Before I arrived, someone told me there was a table tennis table in Cassiopeia, but no one knows where it is.
Contact Alvaro Torralba
- Email: alto@cs.aau.dk
- On Google Scholar