I am a Visiting Student at the MIT Media Lab (City Science) and a Civil Engineering Master’s student at the Technical University of Madrid. I operate at the intersection of urbanism, engineering, artificial intelligence and computer science. My work focuses on developing scalable computational frameworks to measure global accessibility and creating generative AI tools for participatory, bottom-up democratic planning. I aim to bridge the gap between rigorous urban analytics and the lived, human experience of cities.

Miguel Ureña Pliego
Projects & Publications
Curriculum Vitae

Contact & Skills

Technical Tools

Python PyTorch GeoPandas QGIS Docker Git Linux NetworkX Julia Matlab Supercomputing

Education

MEng Civil Engineering

2024–2026 | UPM (Madrid) & FUAS (Frankfurt)

BEng Civil Engineering

2020–2024 | UPM (Madrid) & TU Wien (Vienna)

Specialization in Transportation Engineering and Urban Planning.

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Awards

  • UPM-MIT Research Grant (2025)
  • 2nd Prize, III EELISA Scientific Competition (2025) 🔗
  • TYPSA Award for Best Academic Record (2025)
  • 1st Prize, II EELISA Scientific Competition (2024) 🔗

Languages

Spanish: Native
English: Fluent (C1) — TOEFL 107/120
German: Fluent (C1) — EOI Certificate

Experience

Visiting Student 🔗

MIT Media Lab (City Science) | Sep 2025 – Feb 2026
  • Developing "Synthetic Cityzens": AI agents for participatory urban planning. See Project
  • Created global accessibility frameworks using OpenStreetMap and GTFS. See Project

Research Internship (Planned) 🔗

Smart EFYL, Cameroon | Apr 2026
Pilot research project with UAS Frankfurt creating a new ZIP code system for Fotouni and Duala using computer vision and micromobility solutions. See Project

Internship 🔗

Detektia | Jun 2025 – Aug 2025
InSAR for cities. Integration of NASA's OPERA product into infrastructure monitoring pipelines. See Project

Consultant 🔗

Fundación UCR | Jan 2025 – Mar 2025
Seismic exposure analysis with remote sensing. Developed the SeismicBuildingExposure python package.

Research Assistant 🔗

UPM Advanced Geomatics Group | Feb 2022 – Jul 2026
Transport modeling with Climate Action Observatory (See Project). Developed computer vision models for urban imagery (See Project). LLMs for seismic risk assessment (See Project).