The basis for all research capacity building activities of the GAIN project was the Twinning Research and Innovation Programme (TRIP). The programme was concentrated around 3 research topics: AI Methods for Deep Speech Analysis in Health, AI Technologies for Human Behaviour Understanding, Pilot Research Project at MICM, based on the INRIA-DFKI large-scale project MEPHESTO. Georgian researchers were assigned to the specific research topics, sub-tasks supervised by INRIA and DFKI.
To lay the groundwork for the successful implementation of the project, the first step was the recruitment of young researchers. Among 27 Georgian researchers of the GAIN-MICM team, incorporated in the “MICM AI Lab”, 18 were PhD, Master and Bachelor students from MICM, GTU, other universities, institutions and 2 AI start-ups. From DFKI and INRIA, 6 researchers and 5 PhD students were involved in the joint research. 4 students from MICM held the Tenure-track Positions who leaded 4 research groups and participated in the Staff Exchange Scheme to visit DFKI and INRIA for about 3 months. MICM created 5 new employee positions which are held by the GAIN students. The “Joint Virtual Laboratory” was composed to continue cooperation beyond the GAIN project.
During the project implementation, 27 joint research papers were published in peer reviewed, open access journals, 2 papers were accepted for publication, 1 is submitted and 1 prepared for submission. 39 conference talks were delivered.
Research collaboration resulted as well in open-source software products: 4 datasets, 5 software and 3 models.
The project organized 23 research and training events: two GAIN Summer Schools; 3 GAIN Workshops at ACII 2024, IPAS25 and RANLP-2025; the Final Conference SCCAI2025, where 5 keynote speakers were invited from Armenia, Azerbaijan, France and Germany, and 3 Georgian students were the co-chairs of the conference tracks.
The trainings for researchers, administrators and managers were delivered on topics such as Personnel Management and Motivation, Scientific Fundraising, etc. Thus, the project has supported the organizational changes in MICM. As such, in the end of 2025, MICM AI Lab will be transformed to the research unit “MICM AI Department”.
During the project’s lifetime, 7 research project proposals involving MICM were submitted, of which 4 (2 international) were funded. MICM coordinates one of the largest HORIZON EUROPE AI projects in Georgia, FORGE-AI (GA #101216703). MICM is invited as a partner in the HE proposal WARIE (Proposal number: 101311127) demonstrating the institute’s growing recognition.
