HiTZ is a multidisciplinary research center on Language-centric Artificial Intelligence with members from seven departments of the University of the Basque Country. The objective of the center is to investigate language and speech technologies, with a significant effort towards the transfer of knowledge and technology to companies. It comprises two research groups Aholab and Ixa, both with extensive experience since 1993, performing basic research, creating linguistic resources and tools and  launching different commercial products on the market. HiTZ is also a founding member of CLARIN-K Center, member of CLAIRE and full member of BDVA and DAIRO. Through CLAIRE and BDVA, we also participate in the  European Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, Data and Robotics.

The members of the center are international referents in their scientific areas. At the moment, it is formed by more than 60 members, including computer scientists, linguists and 3 research technicians.  In the last five years, the researchers now in the center have published more than 200 scientific publications. The group is a leader in applying deep learning techniques to language processing and its recent work in the area has been cited more than 4,000 times in the last two years. The members of the center have been advisors in the creation of the National Plan for Spanish Language Technologies and are currently advising the Basque Government's equivalent counterpart.

Both IXA and Aholab have been evaluated as high-performance research groups in the last research evaluation exercise by the science agency of the Basque Government. During their history, the groups have participated in more than 200 research projects ranging from regional to European projects. It has also participated in more than 100 industrial contracts with the aim of transferring technology into the industry.

HiTZ is also a member of Erasmus Mundus+ European Masters Program in Language and Communication Technologies (LCT) program. It is designed to meet the demands of industry and research in the rapidly growing field of language technology. HiTZ also offers a Doctoral Programme in Language Analysis and Processing.

The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) is the leading teaching and research institution in the Basque Country, a prosperous region stretching along the Atlantic coast of northern Spain. The UPV/EHU is among the best 400 universities in the world according to the Shanghai ranking, and has been recognized as an International Excellence Campus by the Spanish Government. The University of the Basque Country, a vibrant 30-year-old institution with 45,000 students, 5,000 world-class academic staff and state-of-the-art facilities distributed throughout 20 centers in its three campuses.

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