ELLIS welcomes ELLIS Unit Sofia—its new stronghold in Eastern Europe

Units are local representations of the ELLIS network which aims to secure Europe’s leadership in modern AI by enabling free basic machine learning research. They bring together the best AI researchers at a certain location and fulfill a set of strict criteria to ensure excellence and a maximum level of competitiveness at international level. They foster technical innovation, economic impact and training for the next generation of scientific leaders.

New ELLIS Unit in Sofia is the first one in Eastern Europe

The Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology (INSAIT) is the host of the new ELLIS Unit in Eastern Europe. The core mission of the new unit is to bring world-class machine learning research, education, and deep tech entrepreneurship to the region of Eastern Europe. INSAIT, a special unit of Sofia University, was launched in April 2022 in partnership with ETH Zurich and EPFL in Switzerland, is the first centre of its kind in the region and is strongly supported by the Bulgarian government. Given its strategic partnership with ETH Zurich and EPFL, INSAIT has strong ties with the ELLIS Units in Zurich and Lausanne. It’s supported by several big-tech companies such as AWS, VMware, SiteGround Google, and DeepMind.

The unit’s research areas cover both applied and fundamental aspects: computer vision, optimization and theory of machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and fair, robust, secure and reliable machine learning.

“Without exaggeration, today we are witnessing an event of European importance”, said Prof. Nikolai Denkov, Bulgarian Prime Minister and renowned scientist in Chemistry. In his speech at INSAIT, he noted the strength of INSAIT, and the contributions of Prof. Martin Vechev towards creating a world-class institute in the field of artificial intelligence in Bulgaria.

“It is amazing to see INSAIT take off so rapidly. We are extremely excited to be joining the ELLIS society and as a director of the ELLIS unit, I look forward to many future collaborations with all members of ELLIS.”, highlights Prof. Luc Van Gool, Director of the ELLIS Unit Sofia.

“We are very pleased to welcome INSAIT as the new ELLIS unit in Eastern Europe to our network. It offers an excellent working environment for outstanding researchers and will thus make an important contribution to the core mission of ELLIS: securing Europe’s leadership in modern AI. We are looking forward to seeing many successful collaborations and research projects emerge from it.” stated Serge Belongie on behalf of the ELLIS Board.

The new unit in Sofia is the 40th unit in the ELLIS network which is now represented in 15 countries. The long term goal of ELLIS is to establish a set of world-class ELLIS Institutes across Europe and Israel, each being the core of a local AI ecosystem.

More information

ELLIS Unit Sofia: ellis.eu/units/sofia

INSAIT: insait.ai