ELLIS Pre-NeurIPS Fest 2025: A Europe-Wide Research Showcase
Taking place between November 17 and December 18, 2025, this year’s edition spanned 19 participating ELLIS Sites and Institutes, each hosting a local event that showcased cutting-edge research in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
A decentralised celebration of AI research
The ELLIS Pre-NeurIPS Fest is designed as a series of locally organised poster sessions and research gatherings hosted by individual ELLIS Sites. These events provide a valuable opportunity for ELLIS members, students, and the broader academic and industrial community to engage directly with recent research results in an informal and collaborative environment.
Across all locations, hundreds of researchers presented accepted NeurIPS papers, workshop contributions, and work appearing at other leading AI and ML conferences in 2025.
Participating Sites in 2025
The following ELLIS Sites and Institutes hosted Pre-NeurIPS Fest events in 2025:
Each Site shaped its programme to reflect local research strengths while contributing to the shared goal of highlighting ELLIS research excellence ahead of NeurIPS.
Sites with a particular thematic focus
While all events covered a broad range of machine learning and AI topics, several Sites placed a particular emphasis on specific research areas:
Unit Modena focused on Multimodal AI, Safety and Trustworthy AI, and Theoretical Machine Learning, highlighting both foundational work and applied perspectives.
Unit Barcelona showcased a wide spectrum of deep learning research, including computer vision, natural language processing, audio and speech processing, and multimodal methods.
Unit Lausanne highlighted EPFL’s NeurIPS 2025 accepted papers alongside research talks and poster-style presentations, with a strong emphasis on cross-lab exchange and structured networking designed to foster new collaborations within the ML and AI community.
Strengthening the ELLIS community ahead of NeurIPS
The 2025 edition of the ELLIS Pre-NeurIPS Fest once again demonstrated the value of a decentralised, community-driven format. By enabling researchers to connect locally while contributing to a Europe-wide initiative, the Fest continues to play an important role in strengthening scientific exchange, visibility, and collaboration across ELLIS.
We thank all participating Sites, organisers, presenters, and attendees for making the ELLIS Pre-NeurIPS Fest 2025 another successful milestone in the lead-up to NeurIPS.
