European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems


The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems is a pan-European nonprofit organization for the promotion of artificial intelligence with a focus on machine learning. The organization's goal is to establish top AI research institutes, strengthen basic research and create a European PhD programme for AI.

History

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.
It was founded on 6 December 2018 at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

Board

The members of the board are:
ELLIS has set up so-called ELLIS units, research groups, at 19 locations. In an open competition, the research groups were selected by an international commission of scientists according to their scientific excellence in the field.
These institutions will invest 200 million euros in artificial intelligence research over the next 5 years.
CityCountryInstitutionLeaderReferences
AlicanteSpainUniversity of AlicanteNuria Oliver
AmsterdamNetherlandsUniversity of AmsterdamMax Welling
CambridgeUKUniversity of Cambridge, Carl Edward Rasmussen and José Miguel Hernández-Lobato
CopenhagenDenmarkDTU, ITU, KUOle Winther
DarmstadtGermanyTU DarmstadtStefan Roth
DelftNetherlandsTU DelftWiro J Niessen
FreiburgGermanyUniversity of Freiburg
HelsinkiFinlandFinnish Center for Artificial IntelligenceSamuel Kaski
LinzAustriaLIT AI LabSepp Hochreiter
LausanneSwitzerlandÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
LeuvenBelgiumKU LeuvenMatthew Blaschko
MunichGermanyHMGU, TUMDaniel Cremers, Massimo Fornasier and Fabian Theis
OxfordUKUniversity of OxfordStephen Roberts, Yee Whye Teh and Michael Woolridge
PragueCzech RepublicCzech Technical University
SaarbrückenGermanyMax Planck Institute for Informatics
TübingenGermanyMax Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Tel AvivIsraelTel Aviv University
ViennaAustriaIST AustriaChristoph Lampert
ZürichSwitzerlandETH ZürichThomas Hofmann

Research programmes

ELLIS set up 11 research programmes. The research programmes have been selected by an international commission.