ELLIS awarded with the German AI prize
Nuria Oliver, Co-Founder of ELLIS and of the ELLIS Alicante Unit (second from the left), holding the German AI Award. Copyright: Christian Hahn, WELT
The German AI Award (Deutscher KI-Preis), which is sponsored by the German daily ‘Die Welt’, honors outstanding contributions in the field of AI. With prize money totaling 100,000 euros, the 2021 AI Innovation Prize went to the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE).
The ELLIS mission is to create a diverse European network that promotes research excellence and advances breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), as well as a pan-European PhD program to educate the next generation of AI researchers. ELLIS also aims to boost economic growth in Europe by leveraging AI technologies. For this purpose, it aims to create agile research institutions inspired by the Vector institute and EMBL. “We are honored to receive the shared German AI Prize for ELLIS,” said Nuria Oliver, co-founder and vice-president of ELLIS, in accepting the award. Nuria Oliver is a multiple award-winning scientist and co-founded the ELLIS Unit in Alicante, which focuses on research in the area of human-centric artificial intelligence. “From the moment we founded ELLIS in April 2018, our goal was to establish the best possible conditions for research and innovation in European AI. Our grassroots initiative aims to attract and retain the world’s best talent, intensify cross-border collaboration between Europe’s best research institutions, and build partnerships between academia and the private sector. We’ve made great progress in the last three years, and this prize is an important acknowledgement and recognition of our contributions,” said Oliver. Established in 2018, the annual German AI Prize honors outstanding contributions in research and development, as well as achievements and progress in the application and commercialization of AI. The prize winners are selected by an international jury comprising prominent personalities from science, research, and the private sector. In 2020, the AI Innovation Prize was awarded to Bernhard Schölkopf, ELLIS President and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen.
