About me

Two privileged views of my hometown Barcelona
I was born in the beautiful Mediterranean city of Barcelona (Catalonia) in 1980, and have ever since lived there, except for occasional stays abroad.

I graduated in Computer Engineering (a 5-year-long course of study with a heavy Computer Science slant, but still many elements of IT) from Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 2003. After graduating, during the summer of 2003, I attended a two-month advanced German summer course at Goethe-Institut in Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Germany), a very beautiful medieval city near Nuremberg. I had obtained a grant from DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) for that stay. In 2004, I worked as a junior software developer (C/C++) for Infinity Comunicaciones, a Barcelona-based company specializing in call center technology.

From September 2004 to September 2005 I was living in Uxbridge, UK (a small town part of Greater London). There I obtained an MSc in Multimedia Computing from Brunel University of West London (Master's degree). I had received a scholarship for this stay, which was co-funded under a joint programme from "La Caixa" (a Spanish savings bank) and the British Council for postgraduate studies abroad.

Starting October 2005, I entered a Ph.D. program in Artificial Intelligence at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). From January 2006, I joined the Natural Language Processing Group of the LSI (Software) Department as a granted Ph.D. student; first (January 2006 - March 2006) with funding from Catalan government from the FI (Formació d'Investigadors - Training of Researchers) program, and currently (April 2006 - present time) with funding from the Spanish goverment from the FPU scholarship (Formación de Profesorado Universitario - Training of University Professors) program.

I speak Spanish and Catalan as native tongues. I can also speak and write fluent English, and more-or-less fluent German and French. I known some Greek words and phrases, and can read a text without understanding meaning (useless but funny). Languages that I'd eventually like to become more familiar with (learning them all fluently is a pipe dream, even in a lifetime) are Arabic, Greek, Chinese and Japanese, because they encompass paradigms so different from those of Roman languages in either writing system, grammar, or world view.

Some of the things I do as hobbies (see here) are: juggling, listening to music, watching movies, learning languages (improving the ones I'm familiar with, or introducing myself to the ones I'm not), and cooking recipes of foreign cuisine.

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CV / Resumé

My CV is available upon request. Mail me at jpoveda(at)lsi(dot)upc(dot)edu if you are interested.

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