Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ELISE (European Learning and Intelligent Systems Excellence)
Période du rapport: 2022-03-01 au 2023-08-31
To bring and keep Europe at the forefront of the AI and machine learning revolution, the ELISE consortium works in close collaboration with the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) to make it possible for the best basic research to be performed in Europe and create impact and jobs. A growing network of 70 partners including 23 organizing nodes implements activities to attract and enable top-level researchers, create regional ecosystems around leading AI research, and bring Europe's leading AI lighthouses together, leveraging excellence and diversity to make Europe a natural choice for world’s best researchers in the field.
To achieve this, ELISE aims to:
- Establish a network of excellent researchers and laboratories that act as local anchors across Europe and represent the community, provide experts within society, and coordinate a joint effort across the continent.
- Build an attractive training network for junior scientists that keeps them in Europe, by offering the highest quality training for Academic Excellence in Machine Learning.
- Make the industry involved with elite academic research so that participating companies’ competencies will rival those of large industry laboratories
- Establish a sustainable ecosystem of machine learning stakeholders covering the value network to facilitate and accelerate a broad integration of machine learning technologies.
To achieve this, ELISE aims to:
- Establish a network of excellent researchers and laboratories that act as local anchors across Europe and represent the community, provide experts within society, and coordinate a joint effort across the continent.
- Build an attractive training network for junior scientists that keeps them in Europe, by offering the highest quality training for Academic Excellence in Machine Learning.
- Make the industry involved with elite academic research so that participating companies’ competencies will rival those of large industry laboratories
- Establish a sustainable ecosystem of machine learning stakeholders covering the value network to facilitate and accelerate a broad integration of machine learning technologies.
ELISE has produced a Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), outlining the consortium’s vision for the next generation of AI for Europe. The SRA set out ELISE’s roadmap for creating trustworthy AI technologies that can boost economic growth while effectively serving the diverse European society. The document also outlines how technological advances can contribute to European policy ambitions for AI, as well as the support needed to maintain European leadership in AI. The SRA is available on the ELISE website. According to the vision of the SRA, we support the work of fourteen Research programs that serve to connect the research of ELISE scientists to wider scientific and social issues through the intersection with five key research themes set out in the SRA. In addition, a mechanism for adding new research programs has been set up. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Research program workshops were held online bringing together a vibrant community of top-tier researchers to jointly work on a wide range of contemporary topics. One such example is the International COVID-Data Challenge that took place in April 2021, building on a series of workshops held in 2020 on this topic. During the challenge, participants worked with an international team of excellent researchers to explore how their AI could help doctors in fighting the pandemic. In-person workshops are foreseen from the spring of 2022.
The growth of the ELISE network is ensured through an excellence-driven program for onboarding senior researchers as well as the implementation of the ELLIS PhD Program to recruit top junior scientists to Europe. Since the start of ELISE, 145 new Fellows have joined the network, following a rigorous selection process. Two ELLIS PhD program calls took place, attracting over 1300 and 1700 applications respectively, with a selection rate below 5% in the first call. The selection process in the second call will be finalized in late spring 2022. To boost collaboration and innovation across the network, ELISE implements mobility programs in the form of travel grants for experienced scientists, PhD and postdoc students.
To ensure ELISE members have access to computational resources and infrastructure necessary to be internationally competitive, we developed and installed a concept of a storage cluster. It is hosted by JKU Linz and has a dedicated showcase GPU cluster set-up linked to it. Benchmark datasets have been made available and best-practice ready-to-use ML models are provided on the storage cluster. As part of the guidelines on the joint use of resources, interviews with HPCs teams and practitioners showed challenges across the machine learning community in utilizing HPCs. In the next months, ELISE will offer workshops and tutorials to address the obstacles. Produced materials will be open-sourced.
ELISE has established active collaboration with the industry, building on collaborations among ELLIS/ELISE scientists and the industry. ELLIS PhD program offers industry-track specialization for young researchers and has industry representatives actively involved in its activities. ELISE partners have created the first commercial Certificate for AI systems (supervised ML) which is now on the market. The certificate is accompanied by a white paper on “Trusted Artificial Intelligence: Towards Certification of Machine Learning Applications”. Use cases are being implemented, with an aim to support benchmarking and certification of AI algorithms relevant to the EU industry. The first ELISE Open call offering funding to SMEs and start-ups developing novel AI solutions and applications was implemented in the fall of 2021. We received close to 400 applications, and 16 projects were selected for funding. The selected projects underwent a mandatory ethics self-assessment and received coaching services from ethics experts. The ELISE Industry Advisory Board was set up in September 2020. The Board contributes to the project activities and provides valuable input.
The growth of the ELISE network is ensured through an excellence-driven program for onboarding senior researchers as well as the implementation of the ELLIS PhD Program to recruit top junior scientists to Europe. Since the start of ELISE, 145 new Fellows have joined the network, following a rigorous selection process. Two ELLIS PhD program calls took place, attracting over 1300 and 1700 applications respectively, with a selection rate below 5% in the first call. The selection process in the second call will be finalized in late spring 2022. To boost collaboration and innovation across the network, ELISE implements mobility programs in the form of travel grants for experienced scientists, PhD and postdoc students.
To ensure ELISE members have access to computational resources and infrastructure necessary to be internationally competitive, we developed and installed a concept of a storage cluster. It is hosted by JKU Linz and has a dedicated showcase GPU cluster set-up linked to it. Benchmark datasets have been made available and best-practice ready-to-use ML models are provided on the storage cluster. As part of the guidelines on the joint use of resources, interviews with HPCs teams and practitioners showed challenges across the machine learning community in utilizing HPCs. In the next months, ELISE will offer workshops and tutorials to address the obstacles. Produced materials will be open-sourced.
ELISE has established active collaboration with the industry, building on collaborations among ELLIS/ELISE scientists and the industry. ELLIS PhD program offers industry-track specialization for young researchers and has industry representatives actively involved in its activities. ELISE partners have created the first commercial Certificate for AI systems (supervised ML) which is now on the market. The certificate is accompanied by a white paper on “Trusted Artificial Intelligence: Towards Certification of Machine Learning Applications”. Use cases are being implemented, with an aim to support benchmarking and certification of AI algorithms relevant to the EU industry. The first ELISE Open call offering funding to SMEs and start-ups developing novel AI solutions and applications was implemented in the fall of 2021. We received close to 400 applications, and 16 projects were selected for funding. The selected projects underwent a mandatory ethics self-assessment and received coaching services from ethics experts. The ELISE Industry Advisory Board was set up in September 2020. The Board contributes to the project activities and provides valuable input.
AI already has and will have even more profound and deep economic and societal impacts on the global scale. ELISE plays an important role in this revolution, bringing scientific and industrial players together to enhance Europe’s innovation capacity in AI, creating new market opportunities, and strengthening the competitiveness and growth of the European industry. Europe called the AI and machine learning community to develop AI that “contributes to Europe’s sustainability, growth and competitiveness, and inclusion, leading to individual and societal wellbeing” (AI HLEG, 2019, pg. 21). ELISE contributes to developing technologies needed to solve global challenges while serving European society, ensuring Europe plays a major role in the scientific and societal revolution that is underway. Through its set-up and activities, ELISE will increase Europe's attractiveness for future generations of scientists and breakthroughs in AI.
The alumni of the ELLIS PhD programme will form the next generation of leading AI researchers in Europe and well-trained AI professionals in European SMEs and large companies. They will be at the forefront of creating new spin-offs and start-ups with a significant impact on the economy and society in Europe, developing trustworthy AI solutions.
In addition, ELISE activities aim to enrich the education offered for non-AI professionals and equip them with the necessary AI skills, as well as to make the best of this technology by educating the general public. ELISE recognises that we need trusted AI that corresponds to European ethical values, and citizens’ aspirations. This is why ELISE directly studies ethical, trustworthy and robust AI, as both research topics of individual programmes and key common themes of the research programmes.
References: Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy AI by High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG), 2019, available at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/policy-and-investment-recommendations-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence
The alumni of the ELLIS PhD programme will form the next generation of leading AI researchers in Europe and well-trained AI professionals in European SMEs and large companies. They will be at the forefront of creating new spin-offs and start-ups with a significant impact on the economy and society in Europe, developing trustworthy AI solutions.
In addition, ELISE activities aim to enrich the education offered for non-AI professionals and equip them with the necessary AI skills, as well as to make the best of this technology by educating the general public. ELISE recognises that we need trusted AI that corresponds to European ethical values, and citizens’ aspirations. This is why ELISE directly studies ethical, trustworthy and robust AI, as both research topics of individual programmes and key common themes of the research programmes.
References: Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy AI by High-Level Expert Group on AI (AI HLEG), 2019, available at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/policy-and-investment-recommendations-trustworthy-artificial-intelligence