• Four students from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will carry out research stays at the UDC’s ICT center, in an initiative that is part of the center’s internationalization and academic excellence strategy.
• The young students will join strategic teams at CITIC, collaborating on cutting-edge projects ranging from algorithms for medical sleep analysis to advanced cybersecurity solutions.

A Coruña, June 5, 2025.– Four students from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will carry out research stays during 2025 at the CITIC of the Universidade da Coruña, a center that is part of the Xunta de Galicia’s CIGUS Network, which certifies the quality and impact of its research. This initiative is part of CITIC’s internationalization strategy and contributes to consolidating the Galician research community as an academic destination of excellence, as it is carried out in collaboration with the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Spain program. The arrival of this group in A Coruña marks a milestone in the capacity of the Galician ecosystem to attract highly qualified international talent and positions CITIC as a benchmark in research in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and technologies applied to health.

The welcome event took place on Wednesday, June 4, led by the CITIC management team, headed by its director, Manuel G. Penedo, who highlighted that “this collaboration with MIT strengthens our commitment to research excellence and projects us internationally as an attractive center for the most cutting-edge young talent”. The welcome day included an institutional presentation and a guided tour of the center’s facilities.
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Active participation in CITIC’s strategic projects

The four students, selected for their academic excellence and research experience, will be fully integrated into CITIC teams and will collaborate on cutting-edge projects aligned with the center’s strategic lines.

Juan Carlos Santiago, a student of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making at MIT, will join the LIDIA group, supervised by Eduardo Mosqueira Rey, to collaborate on the NEXT-GEN-SOMNUS project, focused on developing machine learning algorithms applied to the analysis of medical sleep records, in which he will work with Diego Álvarez Estévez, a Ramón y Cajal researcher at CITIC. He has experience in clinical machine learning, cloud computing, and research projects with Blue Origin.

Meanwhile, the other three MIT students will join the RNASA-IMEDIR group, supervised by Jose Vázquez Naya and Rubén Pérez Jove, and will work on the project Building AI-Driven Solutions based on LLMs for the Future of Cybersecurity, in which they will study the application of new AI models, similar to those used by ChatGPT or Gemini, to the field of cybersecurity. Specifically, they will study their application to network traffic monitoring and analysis, with the aim of detecting threats and attacks, thus making our networks more secure.

They are Ishanvi Kommula, a student of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, with research experience in differential privacy and language models (LLMs), focused on improving their usability without compromising data security.
Also joining this research group is Jaime Sebastian Punyed, a student of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a dual degree in General Mathematics at MIT, with a solid background in cybersecurity, computer architecture, and quantum computing. The third MIT student working on the project Building AI-Driven Solutions based on LLMs for the Future of Cybersecurity is Jace Lopez, who is studying Computer Science and Mathematics and has experience in programming, machine learning, and data processing, highlighting his work at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory.

About CITIC

CITIC is a research center that promotes progress and excellence in R&D&I applied to ICT, created in 2008 by the Universidade da Coruña. The center’s scientific activity is structured into four main research areas: Artificial Intelligence; Data Science and Engineering; High-Performance Computing; and Intelligent Networks and Services, and one cross-cutting research area: Cybersecurity.

CITIC is accredited as a Center of Excellence and a member of the CIGUS Network for the 2024–2027 period, which endorses the quality and impact of its research. CITIC’s accreditation, structuring and improvement are co-financed by the Xunta de Galicia and 60% by the European Union within the framework of the ERDF Galicia 2021–2027 Operational Program, with the thematic objective of promoting “a smarter Europe: innovative and smart economic transformation” (ED431G 2023/01).