VerbaNexAI is a research laboratory at the Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar (UTB), Cartagena, Colombia. We explore the convergence of Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and computational linguistics to solve real-world problems in multilingual and low-resource settings.
"Verba" (words) + "Nex" (connection) + "AI" — connecting language and intelligence.
| Line | Description |
|---|---|
| 🗣️ NLP & Computational Linguistics | Phonesthemes, affect analysis, hate speech, fake news detection |
| 🏆 Shared Tasks & Competitions | IberLEF, SemEval, CLEF — multilingual NLP benchmarks |
| 👁️ Computer Vision | YOLO models, bacteria classification, agricultural imaging |
| 📊 Applied AI | Tourism analytics, energy, smart links, STEM education |
| Year | Task | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | TBD | CLEF 2026 |
| 2026 | TBD | SemEval 2026 |
| 2025 | Multilingual NLP | IberLEF 2025 |
| 2025 | Shared Evaluation | CLEF 2025 |
| 2025 | Semantic Evaluation | SemEval 2025 |
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| PhoneticHateSpeech | Phonetic detection of hate speech spreaders on Twitter |
| FakeNewsDetector | Automated fake news detection pipeline |
| TextAnalysis | Reusable NLP text analysis toolkit |
| SmartlinkAnalytics | Analytics platform for smart links |
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| Bacteria-morphology-classification | Deep learning pipeline for Gram & morphology classification in microscopy |
| Comparative-Evaluation-of-YOLO-Models | YOLOv8/YOLO11 benchmarking with hyperparameter tuning |
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| TouristProfilesSucre | NLP analysis of tourist profiles in Sucre, Colombia |
| TPM | Tourist Profile Measurement model |
| EnergyAnalytics | AI-driven energy consumption analysis |
| AI-Powered-STEM | AI tools for STEM education |
| Name | Role | |
|---|---|---|
 |
Edwin Puertas, PhD | Lab Director · PhD & Master's Programs Director at UTB · AI Standards Committee |
 |
Juan Carlos Martinez Santos, PhD | Principal Investigator · Senior Researcher · Predictive Analytics · ML · NLP |
 |
Esteban Payares | Principal Investigator · Quantum Algorithm Engineer @ IQM · Quantum ML · MSc. Université Paris-Saclay |
 |
Jairo Enrique Serrano Castañeda | Principal Investigator · Neural Architectures · Computational Linguistics |
| Name | Focus | |
|---|---|---|
 |
Jeison Jimenez | Machine Learning · Deep Learning · NLP · Multi-Model LLM |
 |
Melissa Moreno Novoa | Semantic matching of multilingual job titles · Vocational guidance via ML |
 |
Andrea Carolina Menco Tovar | Vision Transformers · Multispecies identification · Food hazard detection |
 |
Anderson Morillo | Semantic relationship detection · Financial sentiment analysis |
 |
Daniel Peña | Biomedical entity linking · Entity-aware machine translation |
 |
Danileth Almanza | NLP · Sentiment Analysis · Tourist Profiling |
 |
Mervin Jesus Sosa Borrero | Scientific discourse detection · NLP |
 |
Diego Guevara | Control Engineering · Applied AI |
 |
Deygoms | Researcher |
 |
Carlos Agamez | Researcher |
| Name | Role | |
|---|---|---|
 |
Santiago Marmol | Software Developer · HTML · CSS · JS · PHP |
 |
Harold Styven Lagares De Voz | Contributor |
 |
Caleb Villalba | Contributor |
 |
Juan Lopez | Programmer |
 |
Harold Lagares | Junior Software Developer |
 |
oruz-123 | Contributor |
🌎 Building AI solutions for Spanish-speaking communities and beyond
