TICEC 2026 Opens Today in Ambato: Talks, Workshops and Times Students Shouldn't Miss

TICEC 2026, the Ecuadorian Conference on Information and Communication Technologies organized by CEDIA with Universidad Indoamérica, opens today, Thursday, October 15, in Ambato and continues tomorrow, Friday the 16th. Earlier this month we included it in our resource guide for students; now that the official agenda is out, here is what's worth seeing, where and when, and how to get there.

The Four Keynotes

All take place in the main auditorium of the university's Technology Park for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, according to the keynotes page:

• Thursday, 9:30: Ernestina Menasalvas (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), Artificial Intelligence in Health: From Promise to Evidence.
• Thursday, 14:00: Carlos Tavares Calafate (Universitat Politècnica de València), Security in IoT Environments.
• Friday, 9:30: Tayana Conte (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil), on how human behavior and judgment shape software development teams.
• Friday, 14:00: Francisco García Peñalvo (University of Salamanca), Designing Hybrid Learning.

Workshops to Learn by Doing

The workshops are in person and hands-on:

• Thursday, 10:50-12:30, Room 3: Building the Future with AI (CEDIA), from the fundamentals of language models to multi-agent systems; according to its description, you finish by building your own agent.
• Thursday, 15:30-17:30, Room 3: a sandbox to understand SQL injection (UIDE): scan, visualize and fix a vulnerable application using Docker, prepared statements and ModSecurity rules.
• Friday, 10:50-12:30, Room 4: Innovating with AI, prototypes by students of UTPL's master's program in applied AI.
• Friday, 10:50-12:30, Room 3: CIARA, a University of Cuenca app that monitors phone use to help prevent cyber-addiction.

Ecuadorian Research Worth Hearing

Teams from universities across the country present in the parallel sessions. Some examples from the agenda: on Thursday at 11:30 (Room 2), a controlled phishing campaign that tests traditional multi-factor authentication in Ecuador (UIDE); at 15:50 (Room 1), an AI-ready Ecuadorian Sign Language corpus; and at 16:30 (Room 2), a storm and flood alert app for Loja (UNL). On Friday at 11:30 (Room 2), an academic chatbot built on local language models is presented. In addition, on both days between 10:30 and 11:30 there are demos at stands, ideal for talking with the authors.

Logistics: Cost, Times and Buses

• Check-in: from 8:00 on Thursday in the lobby of the Technology Park, in Santa Rosa (Parque Industrial area).
• Cost: according to the registration page, USD 250 in person and USD 190 online (USD 220 and 160 for CEDIA members). You must register with your institutional email, since the booking and certificate are sent there.
• Free buses from the Simón Bolívar campus (Miraflores roundabout): on Thursday they leave at 7:30 and 8:00 and return at 18:30 and 19:00; on Friday they leave at 8:00 and 8:30 and return at 18:00.
• Extras: a cultural night on Thursday at 18:00 and an optional 5 km social run on Friday from 7:00 to 8:00, with separate sign-up.

How to Make the Most of It as a Student

1. Plan your route before you arrive. There are three rooms in parallel; for each block, pick what is closest to your thesis or to what you want to learn.
2. Prioritize one workshop. That's where you learn the most; bring your laptop and phone charged.
3. Visit the demos. Ask what tools they used and what didn't work; that doesn't always make it into the paper.
4. Write down titles and authors. The papers are published in Springer's CCIS series, so you can read and cite them later.
5. If you can't make it to Ambato, check the online option on the registration page.

How We Approach It at SimCodec

At SimCodec we work every day with AI, cybersecurity, networks and IoT, the same topics that fill this agenda, and we believe events like TICEC bring research from Ecuadorian universities closer to the real problems of companies and institutions.

Follow us at @sim_codec, where we share resources for students and developers, and if you have questions about how to get started in these fields, write to us.