Valero Laparra Personal Information

Name: Valero Laparra Pérez-Muelas

From: Valencia (Spain)

Cell phone: +34 646 081 761

e-mail: valero.laparra.perez@gmail.com

Education 2001 - 2004 BCs Technical Engineering in Telecommunications

Universitat de València

2004 - 2006 BCs Electronic Engineering

Universitat de València

2002 - 2010 BCs Mathematics

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

2006 - 2011 PhD Computer Sciences and Computational Mathematics

Universitat de València

Languages: English, Spanish, and Catalan.

Job experience 2007 Grant for Research Collaboration

2007 - 2011 PhD at VISTA lab (Universitat de València)

2011 - 2015 Junior researcher at VISTA lab (Universitat de València)

2015 - 2016 Post Doc at CNS (New York University) in the lab of Eero Simoncelli

2017 - 2018 Associated professor (Universitat de València)

2017 - present Senior researcher at IPL lab (Universitat de València)

2018 - present Teaching Professional of artificial intelligence (MBIT School)

2018 - present Teaching Professional of artificial intelligence (BME Institute)

2018 - present Assistant professor (Electronic Enginyering Department, Universitat de València)

Research activity Research lines: machine learning, image processing, computational neuroscience, visual perception,

mathematical modelling, multidimensional statistics, learning from real data, big data processing.

Some numbers:

• Around 20 international peer-reviewed journal papers published in machine learning (JMLR, Plos ONE,

IEEE TNNLS, ...), image processing (JOSA, Neural Computation, Frontiers...) and remote sensing (ISPRS,

Remote Sensing of Environment, IEEE TGARS...).

• Around 50 international conference papers on machine learning (NIPS, ICLR, ECML...), image

processing (ICIP, DCC, SIAM...), vision science (CoSyNe, VSS, HVEI...) and remote sensing (IGARSS, EGU,

EUMETSAT...).

• 3 international book chapters.

• More than 800 citations, Hirsch’s h index h = 16 (Google Scholar).

Expertise. An important part of my research has focused on developing applications which have

become state-of-the-art in different fields:

• In manifold description, I developed several techniques which have obtained a good performance

on dimensionality reduction. In particular Principal Polynomial Analysis first, and some years later

Dimensionality Reduction via Regression became state-of-the-art methods.

• In image processing I have developed several methods, some of them became state-of-the-art in

the moment of publication, and some of them are still a reference work in the field. In particular in noise

removal, image quality assessment, image compression and image rendering.

• I proposed the Rotation Based Iterative Gaussianization method which is a reference in the density

estimation field. There are still many open directions and multiple people are developing methods based

on the proposed hypothesis.

Besides I have worked in applications that involved working on artificial intelligence related fields

like kernel methods (GPs, KRR, SVMs, KPCA...), reinforcement learning, deep learning, multidimensional

input-output regression, perceptually based vision models, computational neuroscience models,

invariant transforms, transfer learning, domain adaptation, information theory measures, fair learning,

and randomized versions of algoritms.

Valero Laparra

Projects:

Participation in more than 15 research projects from private companies, and public administrations at local,

national and European level, among them:

• ”Statistical Learning for Earth Observation Data Analysis” European Research Council consolidator grant, as

senior researcher.

• ”Improvement of the current Non-linear Regression Retrieval implemented within the MTG-IRS Prototype

Processor for Monitoring to generate whole globe profiles of temperature, water vapour and ozone” for

EUMETSAT, as senior researcher.

• ”Biologically inspired signal processing sensor” for Generalitat Valenciana, as principal investigator.

• ”Statistical learning advances for remote sensing big data analysis” for Economics, Industry and

Development ministry, as external support researcher.

Reviewer Activities:

• Reviewer for several international conferences: NIPS, ICLR, MLSP, ICIP, IGARSS, SPIE, among others.

• Reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals, among them: PLOS One, IEEE PAMI, IEEE TGRS,

IEEE GRSL, IEEE SPMag, IEEE JSTSP, IEEE TIP, IEEE TNNLS, Neural Computation, IEEEJSTARS, JOSA.

Fellowships:

• University grant for research, 2007-2008

• National PhD-FPU (formación personal universitario) grant, 2008-2011

• Post doc Vali+D grant, 2015-2016

Teaching activities:

• CAP teaching certificate, Universitat Politèctica de Catalunya, 2005.

• Formative action teaching, European FEDER founding, CETA, 2005.

• University advisor, UV, 2006.

• High school teaching, CETA, 2006.

• Support with PhD students formation, Universitat de València, 2011-2014.

• Accreditation of teaching skills at university level (ANECA), 2014.

• Teaching at the Electronic Engineering department, Universitat de València, 2016-present.

• PhD students advising, ISP group, isp.uv.es, 2016-present.

• Seminar on Convolutionals Neural Networks in Data Science Master (UV) 2017.

• Course on Reinforcement Learning in Executive Data Science Master (MBIT) 2018.

Short stays:

2008 Two months in the Max Plank Institute, CVN (Tübingen, Germany) with Matthias Bethge

2008 Two months in the Physics Institut, CSIC (Madrid, Spain) with Javier Portilla

2010 Two months in the Helsinki Instute for Information Technology, Neuroinformatics (Helsinki, Finland) with

Aapo Hyvärinen.

Invited Talks: Analog Devices design center (Spain, 2016), Redwood Center, Berkeley University (USA,

2016), Courant Institute, New York University (New York, USA, 2013), Center for Neural Science, New York

University (USA, 2013), Northwestern University (Chicago, USA, 2013), Redwood Center, Berkeley University

(USA, 2013), NASA's Ames Research Center (USA, 2013), Instituto de Neurociencia (Spain, 2011), Max Planck

Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Alemania, 2010), Telefónica R+D center (Spain, 2010), HIIT (Helsinki,

Finlandia, 2010).

Research activity details

all the publications in www.uv.es/lapeva

Food growing, gardening, beer collection (over 300 bottles), running, drawing, painting, DIY, reading

books, music in general, to play guitar, watching tv series, video games, wake surf, kite surf, wind

surf, surf, diving, snorkeling, cycling, roller blading, football, basketball, volleyball, climbing, hiking,

cooking, eating, acting, street theater, acting teacher, filming, skiing, snowboarding, snowblading,

babysitting, camp monitor...

Miscellaneous knowledge