ELLIS Unit Helsinki, the local node of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, has had an active year of activities, from hosting the ELLIS Doctoral Symposium to launching a series of ELLIS Distinguished Lectures. The Unit has also welcomed new members from around Finland. Our plans for growing the Unit into an ELLIS Institute have gathered support from over 20 top companies, the Technology Industries of Finland, the Confederation of Finnish Industries, and all the current Research Council of Finland Flagship projects. The Technology Industries and its Centennial Foundation recently announced a big push to recruit top international experts in AI, launch the House of AI at Aalto University, and establish the AI Finland network to further academia-industry collaboration. We look forward to further productive collaboration, starting with jointrecruitments in this area!
We encourage all qualified FCAI people to apply to become ELLIS members, which requires demonstrating regular, top-tier publication in machine learning. An alternative, even easier step is to become an ELLIS supporter. For ways to get involved, see fcai.fi/ellis-unit-helsinki#join
Read more about ELLIS Institute Finland: fcai.fi/ellis-institute-finland
On an international policy level, we are thrilled that our colleague Professor Petri Myllymäki, vice-director of FCAI, was invited to be part of the UN’s High-level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence. As one of only two members from the Nordics, Petri is in a unique position to advise the UN Secretary-General on AI during 2024. Congratulations Petri!
Through the Ministry of Education’s initiative to educate 1000 new PhDs in Finland, the Finnish Doctoral Program Network in Artificial Intelligence is anticipated tolaunch in 2024. This is an excellent chance to not only attract and retain the best and brightest in Finland but also to apply AI widely to new fields and industries through multidisciplinary collaboration. The national doctoral consortium of ten universities will emphasize mobility, enhanced supervision and transferring and scaling up of AI competence.
Cross-cutting teams of postdocs, PhD researchers and PIs are interfacing between FCAI’s Research Programs in developing new AI and demonstrating its power in Highlight applications. Currently, 10 FCAI Teams each contribute one important piece to this big picture through either methods development or Virtual Laboratory applications. One example is the Amortized Inference Team, which put together a successful NeurIPS paper this year. New Teams are on the horizon for launch in 2024.
To learn more and get involved, see fcai.fi/fcai-teams
Best regards and Happy New Year,
Director, Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI
The Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI is a research hub initiated by Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and the Technical Research Centre of Finland VTT. The goal of FCAI is to develop new types of artificial intelligence that can work with humans in complex environments, and help modernize Finnish industry. FCAI is one of the national flagships of the Academy of Finland.
Newly appointed Aalto University visiting professor and member of ELLIS Unit Helsinki, Guoying Zhao, on emotion AI, face analysis and visual intelligence.
Donation will be used to establish a multidisciplinary AI research cluster at Aalto University.
