Welcome to my personal webpage!

Hi! my name is Ignacio Parra. I´m assistant professor at the Computer Engineering department of the University of Alcalá. After obtaining my MSc in Telecommunications in 2005 I started working for the Electronics Department at the University of Alcalá, following the line of work of my Final Degree Assignment which was awarded with the second prize to the best Master thesis in road safety awarded by Catedra ADA, Intituto de investigación del automóvil (INSIA) and UPM (University Politécnica).
In 2007 I got a 4 year grant (2 grant+ 2 contract) to get my PhD, funded by the University of Alcalá. While attending the PhD courses I continued researching for several companies in the field of vision-based ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems). These funding companies include international (FICOMIRRORS SA, IEE) and national (IMAGINA, EUROCONSULT) and the systems developed range from active (lane departure warning, smart high-low light beam switch, pedestrian detection) to passive infrastructure oriented systems (traffic signs recognition, road cracks detection, license plate recognition, free parking spots detection).
In 2008 our traffic signs and panels recognition and quality assessment project won a public contest by the Spanish Ministry to exploit the system in Spain. Based on a patent for this system, in which I am co-inventor, I was co-founder of a spin off (Vision Safety Technology) in 2009 for the exploitation of the invention. Nowadays the patent has been extended to USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. In 2009 our pedestrian detection system was awarded with 3M Awards to innovation (October 2009): First prize in the area of security to the work “Automatic collision mitigation and avoidance system using computer vision”.
After finishing my PhD courses, I started my PhD “Localization using visual odometry for intelligent vehicles”. This thesis presented a new approach for estimating the vehicle motion trajectory and global position in complex urban environments by means of visual odometry and a digital map. The final goal was to provide on-board driver assistance in navigation tasks or to provide a mean of autonomously navigating a vehicle. The method was tested in real traffic conditions without using prior knowledge about the scene of the vehicle motion. In July 2010 I got my PhD with the higher mark “CUM LAUDE”.
Then, in 2011 I joined the research centre "Centro de Innovación de Infraestructuras Inteligentes" (CI3), a foundation integrated by Ferrovial S.A., la Junta de Castilla la Mancha and Alcalá de Henares University as project manager. Among my responsibilities I managed 2 EC 7th Frame Program projects “OUTSMART” about smart cities and “FOTSIS” about intelligent highways and V2V & V2I communications and collaborated on several international and national proposals.
In 2014 I was awarded with a Juan de la Cierva post-doctoral contract in the Signals, Systems and Radiocommunications department of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.