In October 2023, the Catholic University of Cuenca organized the 2nd International Scientific and Multidisciplinary Postgraduate Congress, in which topics such as heritage, earthquake-resistant structures, and project management were presented.

The Congress included the participation of Alex X. Jerves, president of the INSPIRE Foundation. His conference was about the implementation of a virtual laboratory for carrying out tests on granular materials. The objective of the virtual laboratory is to obtain the same results, or at least with a low margin of error, as the tests carried out in a real laboratory, thus characterizing the mechanics, physics, and morphology of the granular materials. The virtual laboratory has processes that range from: digitization of real samples of granular materials based on 3D level sets (3DLS) representations using 3DXR-CT scans technology and image processing, assistance to eliminate improperly processed grains using artificial intelligence algorithms and convolutional neural networks, morphological characterization based on computational geometry algorithms, and the application of the three-dimensional level-set discrete element method (3DLS-DEM) that can give insight into the physics and mechanics of granular materials, through simulations such as dilation of the grains with increasing temperature, interaction between electrostatically charged particles, and grain breakage when subjected to pressure.