Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar

Education

Experience

  • Speech Technology and Machine Learning Group (UPM)
    Research Scientist
    Sep. 2019 - Present
    Madrid, Spain
  • Center for Automation and Robotics (UPM-CSIC)
    Research Engineer
    Jun. 2019 - Present
    Madrid, Spain
  • Institute for Creative Technologies - Natural Language (USC)
    Visiting Research Scholar
    Sep. 2023 - Dec. 2023
    Los Angeles, California
  • Amazon Science (Alexa Prize)
    Research Assistant
    2020 - 2021 / 2022 - 2023
    Boston, Massachusetts
  • Johns Hopkins University (JHU)
    Research Fellow
    Jun. 2020 - Aug. 2020
    Baltimore, Maryland
  • Artificial Intelligence Lab (UPM)
    Research Intern
    May 2017 - Aug. 2017
    Madrid, Spain
  • Ingeniarius Lda.
    Robotics Research Intern
    Jun. 2016 - Sep. 2016
    Coimbra, Portugal

Publications

2026
  • Automatic Evaluation of Open-Domain Real Conversations: Combining Encoder-Based, Dialogue-Based Features and Large Language Models Ratings
    C. Conforto López, M. Estecha-Goritagoitia, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, R. Córdoba, L.F. D-THaro
    IWSDS 2026
    paper
2025
  • Commonsense Generation and Evaluation for Dialogue Systems using Large Language Models
    M. Estecha-Goritagoitia, C. Zhang, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, L.F. D'Haro
    IWSDS 2025
    paper
  • Personal Assistant with Emotional and Multilingual Capabilities for Social Robots
    M. Rodríguez-Cantelar
    PhD Dissertation, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), 2025
    paper
  • Cutting Through Overload: Efficient Token Dropping for Speech Emotion Recognition in Multimodal Large Language Models
    J. Bellver-Soler, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, R. Córdoba, L.F. D-THaro
    IWSDS 2025
    paper
2024
  • CVQA: Culturally-diverse Multilingual Visual Question Answering Benchmark
    D. Romero, C. Lyu, H.A. Wibowo, T. Lynn, I. Hamed, A.N. Kishore, ... Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, A.F. Aji
    NeurIPS 2024
    paper
  • Multilingual Speech Emotion Recognition combining Audio and Text using Small Language Models
    J. Bellver, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, M. Estecha Garitagoitia, R. De Córdoba Herralde, L.F. D-THaro
    IberSPEECH 2024
    paper
2023
  • Overview of Robust and Multilingual Automatic Evaluation Metrics for Open-Domain Dialogue Systems at DSTC11 Track 4
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, C. Zhang, C. Tang, K. Shi, S. Ghazarian, J. Sedoc, ... A. Rudnicky
    DSTC11 Track 4 - SIGDIAL-INLG
    paper
  • Automatic Detection of Inconsistencies and Hierarchical Topic Classification for Open-Domain Chatbots
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, M. Estecha-Goritagoitia, L.F. D-THaro, F. Matía, R. Córdoba
    Applied Sciences
    paper
  • THAURUS: An Innovative Multimodal Chatbot Based on the Next Generation of Conversational AI
    M. Estecha-Goritagoitia, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, A.G. Ruiz, C.G.F. García, S.E. Romero, C. Conforto, ... L.F. D-THaro
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 5
    paper
  • An Emotional Model Based on Fuzzy Logic and Social Psychology for a Personal Assistant Robot
    G. Fernández-Blanco Martín, F. Matía, L. García Gómez-Escalonilla, D. Galán, M.G. Sánchez-Escribano, P. de la Puente, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar
    Applied Sciences
    paper
2022
  • Automatic Detection of Inconsistencies in Open-Domain Chatbots
    J.M. Prats, M. Estecha-Goritagoitia, Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, L. Fernando
    IberSPEECH 2022
    paper
2021
  • Genuine2: An Open Domain Chatbot Based on Generative Models
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, D. de la Cal, M. Estecha, A.G. Gutiérrez, D. Martin, N.R.N. Milara, ... L.F. D-THaro
    Alexa Prize SocialBot Grand Challenge 4
    paper
2020
  • Automatic Evaluation of Non-Task Oriented Dialog Systems Using Sentence Embedding Projections
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, L.F. D'Haro and F. Matía
    IWSDS 2020
    paper YouTube slides
2019
  • An Assistant Robot Prototype with Social Capabilities
    Gema Fernández-Blanco, Lucía García, Patricia Sánchez, Mario Rodríguez, Paloma de la Puente, Mª Guadalupe Sánchez-Escribano, Daniel Galán and Fernando Matía
    Robocity 2030 Workshop
  • Driving Assistance System based on Detection of Driver Behaviour
    Gema Fernández-Blanco, Álvaro Belloso, Mario Rodríguez, Paloma de la Puente, Mª Guadalupe Sánchez-Escribano, Daniel Galán and Fernando Matía
    Robocity 2030 Workshop
  • Neural Model Applied to a Conversational Agent in a Closed Domain
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar, Fernando Matía and Pablo San Segundo
    XV CEA Intelligent Control Symposium and EUROSIM 2019
    paper
  • Analysis of the Dialogue Management of a Generative Neuronal Conversational Agent
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar
    Master-Ts Thesis
    paper
2018
  • Analysis of the Neural Networks Architecture Applied to Conversational Agents
    Mario Rodríguez-Cantelar
    Bachelor-Ts Thesis
    paper

Corpora

  • CHANEL@JSALT2020: Extended Corpora Metadata using Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services
    GitHub
  • AI Feedback Emotional Alignment
    HuggingFace
  • DSTC11: Dialogue System Technology Challenge 11
    HuggingFace

Interests

  • Machine Learning
    Natural Language Processing
    Dialogue Systems

Intellectual Property & Software Registries

Territorial Intellectual Property Registry, Community of Madrid

  • THAUMOD: Training Hub for Advanced and Unified MultiODal training and evaluation
    Registry: 16/2025/3810
    Application: M-001498/2025
    Author: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
    Granted: 11 Jun 2025
  • ORCHESTRA: mOdular aRCHitecture for multimodal and multilingual convErSaTional and Robust AI systems
    Registry: 16/2025/3812
    Application: M-001500/2025
    Author: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
    Granted: 11 Jun 2025

Research Stays

2023
  • ICT Natural Language
    Topic: Develop an emotional guided Conversational Agent (chatbot)
    Center: USC Institute for Creative Technologies
    Place, Country: Los Angeles, California, U.S.
    Date: September 1 - November 30, 2023
2020

Awards

  • Full Scholarship for Ph.D Study
    Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities
  • Podium in the Cybertech Classic 2019 RESET - UPM Student Association
  • Ten best business ideas in the "XI UPM Business Creation Competition (ActúaUPM)"
    RoSa (Robot for Social Assistance), and also appeared on the television show "El Hormiguero" on Antena 3 TV channel and RTVE.
  • 1st Robotics Craftsmanship International Academy 2016
    Ingeniarius, Lda. (Coimbra University)

Supervision

I have supervised Bachelor's and Master's students, all of whom have achieved the highest academic distinction.

Reviewer

  • ICASSP 2025 (Hyderabad, India)
    LREC-COLING 2024 (Turin, Italy)
    ICASSP 2024 (Seoul, Korea)
    DSTC 11 Workshop - SIGDIAL x INLG 2023 (Prague, Czech Republic)
    EMNLP 2022 (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)
    DSTC 10 Workshop - AAAI-2022 (Vancouver, Canada)
    ICSR 2021 (Singapore, Singapore)

Teaching Collaboration

Course: Data Acquisition Systems
Degree Program: Engineering and Data Systems
Institution: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)
Academic Years: 2022/2023 and 2023/2024

MENU