Edge artificial intelligence (AI) is enabling real-time data processing and decision-making directly on devices, reducing latency and bandwidth usage while enhancing privacy by minimizing data transmission to the cloud. However, its widespread adoption has faced significant technical obstacles. The DIME project, led by a research team at IMDEA Networks and coordinated by Joerg Widmer, Research Director, and Jaya Champati, Research Assistant Professor, concluded this year, achieving a critical breakthrough in overcoming these challenges. Its outcomes pave the way for faster, safer, and more sustainable edge artificial intelligence applications, with significant impact in key sectors such as healthcare, transportation, and smart cities.

The Innovative Training Networks (ITN) project “BANYAN: Big Data Analytics for Radio Access Networks,” funded by the European Union through the H2020-ICT-2019 program, has come to an end this year, leaving behind a series of milestones that mark innovations in the field of telecommunications. Led by Marco Fiore, Research Professor at IMDEA Networks, BANYAN has developed innovative tools for data-driven 5G Radio Access Networks (RAN), while also successfully training new PhD candidates specialized in this field.

IMDEA Networks, in collaboration with various partners, has successfully completed the TRUST aWARE project, an innovative initiative that has addressed the growing challenges of privacy and security in consumer-oriented software. This project, which has counted with the outstanding contribution of the Internet Analytics Group (IAG) of the Institute, focused on the issues of access to and use of sensitive personal data by mobile applications, often without users being aware of how their data is used, shared, or protected.

Advertisers systematically pay more to show online ads to women than to men, especially in highly developed nations, according to research from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and IMDEA Networks. This gender-based price discrimination in digital marketing, known as the “pink tax,” contributes to increasing gender inequality, as women are charged more to access similar products and services.

Disinformation is a growing phenomenon on digital platforms, significantly impacting social, political, and economic events. It has long posed a threat to freedom and democracy. However, it is now even more pressing due to the speed at which campaigns spread through digital media. Researchers from IMDEA Networks, Cyprus University of Technology, and LSTECH ESPAÑA SL have developed the revolutionary HyperGraphDis algorithm, which enables the detection of disinformation on social media, helping to combat the proliferation of fake news.

The ORIGAMI (Optimized Resource Integration and Global Architecture for Mobile Infrastructure for 6G) project is now underway. The project, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe program, will spearhead architectural innovations for the next generation of 6G mobile networks, to enable innovative applications, new business models, and substantial reductions in energy consumption.

ENLIGHT’EM, an Innovative Training Networks project funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action, has ended in December 2023 marking a major milestone: contributing to design a new generation of wireless systems based on visible light communication (VLC) and on the low power consumption of light-emitting diodes (commonly known as LEDs) for challenging Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios.

An international team of researchers, led by IMDEA Networks and Northeastern University in collaboration with NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, IMDEA Software, University of Calgary, and the International Computer Science Institute, has unveiled groundbreaking findings on the security and privacy challenges posed by the ever-growing prevalence of opaque and technically complex Internet of Things (IoT) devices in smart homes.

IMDEA Networks and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) have presented SLICES-ES, a European infrastructure for experimenting with future information and communications technologies that will be based in Madrid, most likely at the Madrid university’s facilities. This scientific instrument, which will become operational during 2024 and with some initial services already underway since October 2023, will be made available to the research community to carry out complex experiments in the area of digital sciences.

New research conducted by IMDEA Networks Institute in collaboration with the University of Surrey, UPV, and King’s College London has shown that there is a general downward trend in the popular artificial intelligence (AI) platform ChatGPT to take direct stances on controversial topics. Whether providing agreement or disagreement, or an affirmative or negative response. Now, although the study results show a moderation on the part of ChatGPT when it comes to addressing controversial issues, they warn that in the socio-political arena, it maintains a certain libertarian bias. However, in economic matters, it doesn’t present a clear left or right-leaning bias.

Researchers Vahid Ghafouri and Guillermo Suárez de Tangil from IMDEA Networks Institute have collaborated on a research led by Waleed Iqbal, Gareth Tyson, and Ignacio Castro from Queen Mary University of London that analyzes how real-world inequalities manifest themselves in social networks. In the paper “Lady and the Tramp Nextdoor: Online Manifestations of Real-World Inequalities in the Nextdoor Social Network,” presented at the ICWSM 2023 conference, it has been revealed that a person’s income level influences the type of content they share online.

Technological innovations such as cloud computing, the internet of things, big data and WiFi networks have led to applications that were unimaginable a few decades ago and to an increase in the quality of life, an improvement in business decisions thanks to data analysis, etc. This has meant new computational paradigms, such as fog computing (‘fog computing’), edge computing (‘edge computing’), cloud computing and blockchain.

Data-driven decision-making driven by Machine Learning (ML) algorithms is changing the way society and the economy work, with a profound positive impact on our daily lives. For these solutions to be effective, data often has to be processed close to the end user and such data can be private and confidential.

IMDEA Software and IMDEA Networks Institutes participate together with six other partners (Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial, Centro Español de Metrología, Fundación Vithas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid) in the MADQuantum-CM project, funded by the Community of Madrid, the Spanish State through the Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience, and the European Union through the NextGeneration EU funds. The objective of the project is the expansion of MadQCI, the new quantum communications network of the Community of Madrid and the largest quantum network in Europe.

An IMDEA Networks research team has won first prize in the food category of the competitive European EIT Jumpstarter program for its business idea LiFi4Food, which seeks to provide solutions for digital and precision agriculture. The prize valued at €10,000 is earmarked for the creation of this revolutionary startup. The grand final took place in Krakow (Poland) on November 29, where PhD students Javier Talavante and Dayrene Frómeta attended on behalf of the group.