MULTICOM

MULTICOM results from the combined effort of leading institutions across multiple disciplines to design the first MA degree in multimodal data science, that is, the study of how the different modalities of communication (speech articulation, gesture, gaze, facial expression, prosody, and so forth) combine to make meaningful human interaction possible.

This emerging field is key to the next advances in the understanding of language and mind, the design of interactive technologies across multiple industries, including general AI and human-computer interaction, or the development of digital learning resources, among many other areas. 

To train the first generation of professionals who will model, explain, test, and replicate multimodal patterns in human communication, we will design an unprecedented combination of state-of-the-art methods. Alongside lab techniques, such as psycholinguistic responses, eye-tracking or motion capture, students will be trained to build and research large-scale audio-visual collections, thanks to the expertise developed by the Red Hen Lab, an international group that has long been mustering the capacities of many MULTICOM members to build digital resources, computational tools, and educational websites for multimodal data science. 

The resulting joint degree will also include the opportunity to develop problem-oriented projects and internships at companies of practically any suitable size and profile. 

MULTICOM graduates will also receive a comprehensive background in recent theories of communication, language, and cognition, developing the capacity to submit those paradigms to scrutiny, thanks to their unique skills for multi-source multimodal data analysis. Professional skills and foreign languages will provide added value to the first generation of experts in this emerging field.