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European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems

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European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems
Formation6 December 2018; 5 years ago (2018-12-06)
Websiteellis.eu

ELLIS - the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems - is a pan-European AI network of excellence which focuses on fundamental science, technical innovation and societal impact. Founded in 2018, ELLIS builds upon machine learning as the driver for modern AI and aims to secure Europe’s sovereignty in this competitive field by creating a multi-centric AI research laboratory. ELLIS wants to ensure that the highest level of AI research is performed in the open societies of Europe and consists of 43 sites, 16 research programs and a pan-European PhD & Postdoc Program.

History

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The organization was inspired by the Learning in Machines and Brains program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. ELLIS was first proposed in an open letter to European governments in April 2018, which stated that Europe was not keeping up with the US and China. It urged that European governments act to provide opportunities and funding for world-class AI research in Europe.[1][2][3]

It was founded on 6 December 2018 at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).[4]

Board

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The members of the board are: [5]

ELLIS sites

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ELLIS is creating a network of research sites distributed across Europe and Israel. Currently, there are 43 sites in 17 countries. The long-term goal is to establish a set of world-class ELLIS institutes, each acting as the core of a local AI ecosystem.

ELLIS units
Name Location Director(s) Ref(s).
ELLIS unit Alicante Alicante, Spain Nuria Oliver [6][7][8]
ELLIS unit Amsterdam Amsterdam, Netherlands Cees Snoek [9][10][11][12]
ELLIS unit Barcelona Barcelona, Spain Carme Torras, Dimosthenis Karatzas
ELLIS unit Berlin Berlin, Germany Klaus-Robert Müller [13][14]
ELLIS unit Cambridge Cambridge, United Kingdom Carl Edward Rasmussen, José Miguel Hernández-Lobato
ELLIS unit Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark Ole Winther [15]
ELLIS unit Darmstadt Darmstadt, Germany Stefan Roth [16]
ELLIS unit Delft Delft, Netherlands Frans Oliehoek [17][11]
ELLIS unit Edinburgh Edinburgh, United Kingdom Ivan Titov [18]
ELLIS unit Freiburg Freiburg, Germany Frank Hutter [19]
ELLIS unit Genoa Genoa, Italy Lorenzo Rosasco, Massimiliano Pontil [18]
ELLIS unit Graz Graz, Austria Wolfgang Maass
ELLIS unit Haifa (Technion) Haifa, Israel Shie Mannor [18]
ELLIS unit Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany Oliver Stegle [20]
ELLIS unit Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Samuel Kaski [21]
ELLIS unit Jena Jena, Germany Markus Reichstein, Joachim Denzler
ELLIS unit Lausanne (EPFL) Lausanne, Switzerland Pascal Frossard
ELLIS unit Leuven Leuven, Belgium Matthew Blaschko [22]
ELLIS unit Linz Linz, Austria Sepp Hochreiter [23][24][25]
ELLIS unit Lisbon Lisbon, Portugal Mario A. T. Figueiredo [26]
ELLIS unit London (UCL) London, United Kingdom Arthur Gretton [18]
ELLIS associate unit Lviv Lviv, Ukraine Rostyslav Hryniv
ELLIS unit Madrid Madrid, Spain Pedro Larrañaga
ELLIS unit Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom Magnus Rattray
ELLIS unit Milan Milan, Italy Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi
ELLIS unit Modena (Unimore) Modena, Italy Rita Cucchiara
ELLIS unit Munich Munich, Germany Daniel Cremers, Fabian Theis
ELLIS unit Nijmegen Nijmegen, Netherlands Marcel van Gerven [27]
ELLIS unit Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom Michael Wooldridge, Stephen Roberts, Yee Whye Teh [28]
ELLIS unit Paris Paris, France Gabriel Peyré [23]
ELLIS unit Prague Prague, Czech Republic Josef Sivic
ELLIS unit Potsdam Potsdam, Germany Ralf Herbrich, Sebastian Reich, Katharina Ladewig
ELLIS unit Saarbrücken Saarbrücken, Germany Bernt Schiele
ELLIS unit Sofia Sofia, Bulgaria Luc Van Gool
ELLIS unit Stuttgart Stuttgart, Germany Andreas Bulling [29]
ELLIS unit Tel Aviv Tel Aviv, Israel Amir Globerson
ELLIS unit Trento Trento, Italy Nicu Sebe, Bruno Lepri
ELLIS unit Tübingen Tübingen, Germany Bernhard Schölkopf, Matthias Bethge [30]
ELLIS Institute Tübingen Tübingen, Germany Bernhard Schölkopf
ELLIS unit Turin Turin, Italy Tatiana Tommasi
ELLIS unit Vienna (IST Austria) Vienna, Austria Christoph Lampert [23][24]
ELLIS unit Warsaw Warsaw, Poland Tomasz Trzciński
ELLIS unit Zürich (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland Andreas Krause

Research programs

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In addition to ELLIS units, a European network of top researchers working at locations throughout Europe is being established, organized into 14 ELLIS Programs. These Programs, directed by outstanding European researchers and including leading researchers as Program Fellows, focus on high-impact problem areas that have the potential to move the needle in modern AI.

The ELLIS Programs are inspired by the CIFAR Program model, and closely collaborate with the CIFAR LMB (Learning in Machines and Brains) Program. Each Program has a budget for 2-3 workshops/year to enable meetings of 10-15 Fellows plus guests for intensive scientific exchange. Workshops can be co-located with academic meetings (usually) held in Europe, or organised as stand-alone events, usually at (and with the support of) ELLIS unit sites.

ELLIS research programs
Name Director(s)
ELLIS Health Gunnar Rätsch, Oliver Stegle, Mihaela van der Schaar
ELLIS Robot Learning: Closing the Reality Gap! Tamim Asfour, Aude Billard, Jan Peters
Geometric Deep Learning Michael Bronstein, Taco Cohen, Max Welling
Human-centric Machine Learning Plamen P. Angelov, Nuria Oliver, Adrian Weller
Interactive Learning and Interventional Representations Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi, Andreas Krause, Bernhard Schölkopf
Machine Learning and Computer Vision Bernt Schiele, Cordelia Schmid, Yair Weiss
Machine Learning for Earth and Climate Sciences Gustau Camps-Valls, Markus Reichstein
Multimodal Learning Systems Cees Snoek, Nicu Sebe
Natural Intelligence Matthias Bethge, Y-Lan Boureau, Peter Dayan
Natural Language Processing André Martins, Iryna Gurevych, Ivan Titov
Quantum and Physics Based Machine Learning Hilbert Johan Kappen, Riccardo Zecchina
Robust Machine Learning Chris Holmes, Samuel Kaski, Yee Whye Teh
Semantic, Symbolic and Interpretable Machine Learning Volker Tresp, Kristian Kersting, Paolo Frasconi
Theory, Algorithms and Computations of Modern Learning Systems Francis Bach, Philipp Hennig, Lorenzo Rosasco

PhD & Postdoc Program

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The ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program supports excellent young researchers by connecting them to leading researchers across Europe and offering a variety of networking and training activities, including summer schools and workshops. ELLIS PhDs and postdocs conduct cutting-edge curiosity-driven research in machine learning or a related research area with the goal of publishing in top-tier conferences in the field.

There are two tracks within the ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program: the academic track and the industry track. These tracks have separate requirements for admission and criteria for activity during the appointment, but otherwise offer the same benefits, network and resources to the applicant.


Academic track

PhD students and postdocs in the academic track strive for international collaboration as they partner with two European academic institutions in their research. These candidates are supervised by two advisors from different European countries: one of the advisors must be an ELLIS fellow/scholar or unit faculty; the other advisor should be an ELLIS fellow, scholar, unit faculty or member. PhDs and postdocs in the program visit the exchange institution for min. 6 months (the partitioning of this time is flexible). Normally, the exchange is partially sponsored by the exchange institution; students can also apply for the ELISE mobility grant to support their exchange.


Industry track

The industry track is open to PhD and postdoc candidates that will be part of a collaboration between an academic institution and an industry partner, and will spend time conducting research at the industry partner during their PhD or postdoc. The candidate will spend a minimum of 50% of their time at the academic institution, and at least 6 months (cumulative) with the industry partner.

For this track, both advisors may be located in the same country. One advisor will represent the academic institution and the other the industry partner. One advisor must be an ELLIS fellow/scholar or unit faculty. The second advisor can be an ELLIS fellow, scholar, member, unit faculty OR it is also possible for the second advisor to join if they have co-authored a paper with the applying student as a result of their collaboration, in a top-tier venue in machine learning or related sub-fields (details here).


Calls and admissions: There is a yearly central call for applications in fall, which will be announced on the ELLIS website. Admission to the program is competitive. For reference, about 5-10% of eligible applicants are accepted via the central call. The next chance to apply via the central recruiting is in fall 2023. Nomination to the program (for students who already started their PhD with ELLIS faculty) is possible year-round.

Timeline for the central recruitment:

  • October 2023: application portal opens
  • November 15 2023 (23:59 CET): application deadline
  • November/December 2023: review phase
  • January/February 2024: interviews
  • Late February/March 2024: decisions
  • Program start: there is no common start for the PhD (depends on the advisor/institution)

References

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  1. ^ Sample, Ian (23 April 2018). "Scientists plan huge European AI hub to compete with US". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  2. ^ Shead, Sam. "European Scientists Call For AI Institute As US and China Pull Away". Forbes. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  3. ^ "With €1.5 billion for artificial intelligence research, Europe pins hopes on ethics". Science | AAAS. 25 April 2018. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  4. ^ Else, Holly (10 December 2018). "Europe's AI researchers launch professional body over fears of falling behind". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07730-1. S2CID 158889816.
  5. ^ "Board". European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  6. ^ "Alicante será la sede española del centro europeo de investigación en inteligencia artificial". El País (in Spanish). 11 December 2019. ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  7. ^ "Alicante albergará uno de los 17 centros del laboratorio europeo de Inteligencia Artifical [sic]". Expansión (in Spanish). 10 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  8. ^ "Alicante, primera ciudad española de la red europea de Inteligencia Artificial". www.diarioinformacion.com (in Spanish). 10 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  9. ^ "Netwerk van wetenschappers investeert €200 mln in 'menselijke' AI". FD.nl. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  10. ^ "Amsterdam selected as excellence center to retain AI talent". University of Amsterdam. 12 October 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  11. ^ a b "Amsterdam en Delft krijgen ELLIS Units voor behoud AI-talent". AG Connect (in Dutch). 11 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  12. ^ "Amsterdam selected as excellence center to retain AI talent". www.uva.nl. 12 October 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  13. ^ "Berlin AI research presented at ELLIS inauguration". TU Berlin. Retrieved 10 November 2022.
  14. ^ "KI-Forschung: TU Berlin stärkt ihr Netzwerk" (in German). TU Berlin. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  15. ^ "Copenhagen is in the Champions League of Machine Learning - DTU Compute". DTU Compute. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
  16. ^ "Im europäischen Netzwerk für KI-Spitzenforschung". Technische Universität Darmstadt (in German). 10 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  17. ^ "TU Delft selected as ELLIS unit for AI and machine learning". TU Delft. 12 December 2019. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  18. ^ a b c d "ELLIS public position paper" (PDF). ELLIS.eu. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  19. ^ "Erfolg für Experten des maschinellen Lernens — Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit". www.pr.uni-freiburg.de. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  20. ^ "Bridging artificial intelligence and the life sciences – launch of ELLIS Heidelberg". embl.org (in German). 6 August 2020. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  21. ^ "Helsinki and FCAI will host a new ELLIS unit for top AI research | Aalto University". www.aalto.fi. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
  22. ^ "KU Leuven selected as one of the 30 ELLIS units under the lead of Matthew Blaschko". KU Leuven. 18 September 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2021.
  23. ^ a b c "The JKU and IST Austria Thrilled to Join the ELLIS Network". JKU - Johannes Kepler Universität Linz. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  24. ^ a b "Europäisches KI-Netzwerk etabliert zwei Standorte in Österreich". news.ORF.at (in German). 10 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  25. ^ "JKU Linz ist bei Netzwerk für "Kunsthirne" dabei". www.krone.a (in German). 11 December 2019. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  26. ^ https://lumlis.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/
  27. ^ "Radboud University opening ELLIS-unit to expand AI- and Machine learning research". www.ru.nl. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  28. ^ "AI experts from across Europe assembled in new units | University of Oxford". www.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
  29. ^ "Machine learning: Stuttgart at the forefront of European research". www.uni-stuttgart.de. Retrieved 8 March 2022.
  30. ^ Williams, Jon. "Tübingen becomes an ELLIS unit | Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems". is.tuebingen.mpg.de. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
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