All photographs in this article by Negar Rahnamae, ELLIS Unit Jena.
In late June 2024, 200 members of the ELISE and ELLIS community met in Helsinki for the ELISE Wrap Up Conference and ELLIS Community Event. Organised by ELISE, the event brought together top European researchers in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), outstanding PhD students, ELLIS and ELISE coordinators, and representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who are developing innovative applications supported by ELISE. The meeting was also joined by the Finnish Member of Parliament and former Minister of Transport and Communications, Timo Harakka, and leading Canadian computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, who gave the closing keynote address remotely.
Featured sessions
To open the conference, ELLIS President Bernhard Schölkopf’s keynote speech gave an overview of ELISE’s achievements, plans for ELLIS moving forward, as well as a fascinating scientific talk. Closing the first day, ELLIS Board Member, Professor Neil Lawrence gave a keynote to launch his new book, The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI. Many of the themes of the keynote addresses were expanded upon in a panel discussion, where Timo Harakka and Professors Schölkopf and Lawrence were joined by Jessica Montgomery and Professor Petri Myllymäki.
Streams of the three keynote addresses and the panel discussion can be found on Youtube.
Co-located workshops and working groups
ELISE’s work package leaders hosted workshops that shared their achievements with the wider ELLIS community, and discussed and planned ways forward after the ELISE project ends in August 2024. This included a workshop on the ELLIS PhD. Program, which has grown beyond expectations thanks, in large part, to the ELISE project.
ELISE co-organised four ELLIS Research Program Workshops at the event. These workshops hosted their own participants and guest speakers. The Robust Machine Learning, Semantic, Symbolic and Interpretable Machine Learning,Theory, Algorithms and Computations of Modern Learning Systems, and Human-centric Machine Learning Research Programs hosted workshops.
External links for the Research Program workshops:
Probabilistic Numerics and Physics-informed Learning
Semantic, Symbolic and Interpretable ML
Joint work with European NoEs
The event was also an opportunity for ELISE and ELLIS to extend their collaborative work with other European Networks of Excellence Centres (NoEs) in AI/ML. ELISE collaborated with the NoE, ELIAS, to organise a workshop for ELLIS’s Human-centric Machine Learning Research Program.
The congregation in Helsinki also joined the 4th VISION Community Workshop in Thessaloniki for three remote sessions. The aim of these sessions was to plan how to sustain the work of the NoEs after the ICT-48 projects end.
“This successful event was, in some ways, the first of its kind”, says Christopher Murray, the Project Coordinator of ELISE. “It was a unique opportunity for diverse groups within ELISE and ELLIS to come together, share their achievements, and make lasting connections. The speakers we had at the event are world-leading, and the Research Programs, companies, and coordinators who participated are advancing the field in remarkable ways.”
More information
Learn more about the event and take a look at the detailed program here.
Find more impressions of the event on the social media channels of ELISE and ELLIS:
- ELISE on X
- ELLIS on X, LinkedIn, Facebook and Mastodon
About ELISE
ELISE is a network of artificial intelligence research hubs. Based on the highest level research, it spreads its knowledge and methods in academia, industry and society. The network invites all ways of reasoning, considering all types of data applicable for almost all sectors of science and industry. We do this while being aware of data safety and security, and striving to explainable and trustworthy outcomes. ELISE works in cooperation with ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems). ELISE is part of the EU Horizon 2020 ICT-48 portfolio, and is coordinated by Aalto University.
