Jesús Cerquides, new CSIC advisor on Artificial Intelligence, visits the ICMM: "AI is now present in every stage of the scientific process"

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The Madrid Institute of Materials Science (ICMM-CSIC) welcomed Jesús Cerquides, the newly appointed advisor to the CSIC Presidency on Artificial Intelligence, during a visit aimed at strengthening the institution’s strategic push in this field.

Cerquides’ visit served to highlight how the CSIC is advancing its AI agenda through the EstrategIA 2025–2030 roadmap and the recently launched CientIA.CSIC initiative. He also met with several ICMM research teams working with AI — including the AI-lab — to learn first-hand about their projects, challenges, and future needs.

During the visit, Cerquides stressed that the CSIC’s commitment to artificial intelligence stems from the central role the technology already plays in scientific research. "AI is now present in every stage of the scientific process," he noted, pointing to applications ranging from identifying gaps in the literature and generating hypotheses to designing experiments, analysing multimodal data, and automating repetitive tasks. In addition, he noted, "there is a global race" for AI that highlights the need to focus on this area.

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Cerquides, who joined the CSIC leadership team last February , also highlighted the institution’s newly published Decalogue and Guidelines on the Proper Use of Artificial Intelligence, which aims to promote responsible and ethical adoption of these technologies across the organisation.

The CSIC's new roadmap, approved in 2025, is aligned with the Spanish AI Strategy 2024, the State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2024–2027 and the European initiative RAISE —Research and Innovation for AI in Science and Engineering—. RAISE, a virtual institute created by the European Commission last November to develop and apply AI to drive scientific advances, offers great opportunities for research in materials science, as Cerquides has highlighted.