For the first time, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) will have its own stand at Talent Arena. The event brings together higher education institutions, organisations and companies, both national and international, working in cybersecurity, cloud computing, management in digitalised environments, AI and emerging trends. 

At the UPC stand, located in the Networking Stands area in Hall 8 at Fira de Barcelona in Montjuïc (Av. Reina Maria Cristina, s/n), visitors will find information on the University’s bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, and also continuing education degrees, including postgraduate courses and microcredentials.

The latter will also feature training within the Connèxia UPC programme, such as microcredentials and a postgraduate course developed jointly with CaixaBank Tech and Schneider Electric, respectively.

The event runs from 9.00 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. General admission is free, subject to registration, except for the Pro zone, which requires a paid ticket.

Training talent, knowledge transfer and a technological ecosystem

The UPC stand will be complemented by two roundtables featuring experts from academia and industry. These sessions will address the digital talent needs of companies and the bridges between universities and businesses for knowledge transfer in AI. An interview with the UPC rector, Francesc Torres, will also take place.

Monday 2 March

• From 12.30 p.m. to 1.15 p.m., the roundtable “The Code of the Future: What Companies Look for in AI Talent?” will take place at the Hotspot Talks conference space. The discussion will explore the technical (hard skills) and transversal (soft skills) competences sought by companies in AI professionals, beyond coding knowledge, and how the UPC trains these profiles to meet global market challenges.
  
  Moderated by Maria José Jiménez, vice-rector for Teaching and Students at the UPC; will include Ernest Teniente, director of inLab FIB at the UPC’s Barcelona School of Informatics (FIB); Natalia Martínez, director of Culture and Talent at SEIDOR; Mercè Vila, UPC graduate and data science area manager at inLab FIB; and Karen Oliveros, data architect at Siemens Energy.
• From 4.15 p.m. to 4.30 p.m., the Rector Francesc Torres will be interviewed at The Nest (Streaming Zone), where he will discuss the role of the UPC in the global technological ecosystem.

Tuesday 3 March

• From 1.30 p.m. to 2.15 p.m., also at the Hotspot Talks conference space, the roundtable “AI Transfer: From the Lab to the Global Market” will examine key aspects of AI knowledge transfer between universities, industry and institutions that require digital talent. The session will look at successful public-private collaborations, the role of leading laboratories and how technology emerging from the UPC contributes to technological sovereignty.
  
  Moderated also by Maria José Jiménez, will include Jordi Berenguer, vice-rector for Transfer, Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the UPC; Karina Gibert, president of the Official College of Computer Engineers of Catalonia and member of the Executive Board of the Intelligent Data Science and Artificial Intelligence research centre (IDEAI-UPC); Aina Giral, HR business partner at Giesecke + Devrient (G+D); and Carla Gómez, UPC graduate and co-founder of Theker Robotics.

Talent Arena takes place in parallel with Mobile World Congress Barcelona and 4YFN, held from 2 to 5 March at Fira de Barcelona’s Gran Via venue—events in which the University also participates.