News

Helsinki and FCAI will host a new ELLIS unit for top AI research

Finnish artificial intelligence research received a significant acknowledgement. Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI will host one of the new European units of top AI research, as the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems will establish one of its first units in Finland.
ELLIS assembly
The first ELLIS units were announced at the ELLIS assembly on 10 December. From left to right: Yoshua Bengio, Bernhard Schoelkopf, Nuria Olivier, Matthias Bethge, Max Welling, FCAI Director Samuel Kaski, Sepp Hochreiter, and Yann LeCun.

ELLIS is a pan-European effort initiated in 2018 to secure the excellence of European machine learning research. It aims to ensure that Europe continues to be competitive with big economies, such as the US and China, and benefit from the newest findings of AI research. 

With the units, ELLIS wants to strengthen European AI research and collaboration between European researchers.

The unit will be founded in Aalto University and the University of Helsinki and hosted by the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI. Samuel Kaski, the Director of FCAI and Academy Professor at Aalto University, sees this as an excellent opportunity to boost basic AI research, which is the basis of all AI-related applications and impact. “Finland is very strong in AI research, and this new status is one indication of that.”

Professor Kaski believes that the ELLIS unit helps Finland to maintain its position as an attractive destination for top-level international researchers. It also gives current AI researchers in Finland more reasons to stay.

ELLIS aims to offer European researchers outstanding opportunities to carry out their research in Europe, and to nurture the next generation of young researchers in the important field of AI. All ELLIS units will arrange visits and events as well as provide funding for doctoral students in the ELLIS PhD programme.

The other cities selected to host a unit are Alicante, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Darmstadt, Delft, Freiburg, Linz, Lausanne, Leuven, Oxford, Prague, Saarbrücken, Tel Aviv, Tübingen, Vienna, and Zürich.

Read more
Press release at the ELLIS Society homepage

Further information
Samuel Kaski
Professor, Aalto University
Director, FCAI
Phone +358 50 3058 694
[email protected]

  • Published:
  • Updated:

Read more news

Nikos Makris in Helsinki, photo by Tiina Aulanko-Jokirinne
Research & Art Published:

Nikos Makris: Our common scientific goal is to understand how the brain works using multi-modal neuroimaging

'I feel extremely comfortable. I don’t see anybody judging and I have total freedom of speech.'
“I did not have a particular interest in nutrients to begin with, I just wanted to do something 
sustainable for the environment, but technical at the same time,” says Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen, 
winner of the award for the best doctoral thesis of the year. Photo: Jari Härkönen
Awards and Recognition Published:

Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen receives TEK’s and TFiF’s best dissertation award

The doctoral thesis written by Doctor of Science in Technology Juho Uzkurt Kaljunen improves the recovery of nutrients from wastewater and bringing them to market.
talvinen kuva Otarannasta kaisloineen
Research & Art, Studies Published:

Yearly follow-up of doctoral students open until 16.12.2024

What is the status of your doctoral studies and research? Answer the survey for un update.
Corinna Coupette
Appointments Published:

A front-row view on today’s major challenges: Corinna Coupette bridges law and technology

Coupette was appointed assistant professor of computer science this autumn