David Gómez-Ullate named Vice Dean of Research

Prof. David Gómez-Ullate Oteiza has been appointed the new Vice Dean of Research at the IE School of Science & Technology, effective immediately. He will report to Dean Ikhlaq Sidhu.

Gómez-Ullate, a distinguished scholar in applied mathematics and data science, brings over two decades of research and leadership experience. In his new role, he will contribute to attract competitive research funds providing support for professors and researchers, develop a PhD program, collaborate with the Impact Xcelerator in knowledge transfer projects, and continue to lead faculty recruitment and guidance of our mathematics programs.

Gomez-Ullate has been a popular professor of Applied Mathematics at IE’s School of Science and Technology, where he has been the acting head of faculty and coordinator of the IE Research Datalab. Prior to joining IE University in 2022, he held full-time research positions at UCM Madrid, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, UPC Barcelona, Mc Gill University, CRM Montréal, and Università di Bologna. He is currently President of the Knowledge Transfer Commission of Real Sociedad Matemática Española, and a member of its governing board.

His own research has a high visibility and reputation. His early papers on the theory of exceptional orthogonal polynomials have received international prizes and belong to the 0.2% of most cited papers in mathematics. He has been a plenary speaker at the main conference in this field: Orthogonal Polynomials, Special Functions and Applications (OPSFA), presenting his work at seminars in Cambridge, Harvard, Rome, Stockholm, Mexico, Copenhagen, India, and Hong Kong, among others. The BBVA Foundation strongly supports his career thanks to the Leonardo Scholarship award (2015), Research Groups in Big Data (2020) and the current project he leads for optimization of maritime routes. – for which his teams have recently won prizes in competitions such as the Ocean Hackathon and the 2021 OpenCV Competition.

Additionally, Gomez-Ullate is strongly committed to the formation of younger scientists, with 20+ years of teaching. He has supervised more than 30 students towards PhD, MSc and BSc projects. Passionate about science dissemination, he has written a book on Big Data, delivered public lectures at numerous events, written articles for mainstream Spanish newspapers (El País, ABC), and participated in interviews and round tables for media.

IE School of Science and Technology is a rigorous, entrepreneurially driven polytechnic that breaks silos between research, industry and students through its Impact Xcelerator and a philosophy of breaking barriers.