Inauguration of the new ELLIS Unit Barcelona: A key initiative to boost AI research excellence in Catalonia

The ELLIS Unit Barcelona, essential for establishing Catalonia as a leading hub for AI research and innovation in Europe, was officially presented at an event held at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans in Barcelona. As part of the network of 43 local sites of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), the new unit brings together 23 top-tier AI researchers from 9 Catalan research institutions. This initiative aims to attract talent and foster economic and technological development in Catalonia.

The official launch was inaugurated by Gina Tost Faus, Secretary of Digital Policies, and Laia Arnal Arasa, General Director of Transfer and Knowledge Society of the Government of Catalonia.

Key future initiatives for the Catalan unit include organizing seminar series with international experts, events to highlight AI research in Catalonia, and the ELLIS program for doctoral and postdoctoral students. Additionally, the event featured ELLIS Board member and University of Milan professor, Dr Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi, and telecommunications engineer and AI expert Dr Oriol Vinyals, Vice President of Research at Google DeepMind, who co-led the development of Google’s multimodal AI model, Gemini.

The ELLIS Unit Barcelona addresses the need to drive interdisciplinary AI research, foster collaborations among experts from different institutions at both Catalan and European levels, maintain industry connections, and facilitate the attraction and retention of talent in this field. Supported by the Government of Catalonia and coordinated with the country's research and knowledge system agents, the ELLIS Unit Barcelona contributes to the Catalonia.AI Strategy to establish the region as a leader in technological innovation and development in Europe.

The Catalan unit will contribute pioneering work in autonomous driving, including the CARLA simulator and imitation learning techniques for safe and reliable model training and evaluation; unique expertise in assistive robotics and advanced technology for versatile cloth manipulation; crucial advancements in multimodal learning systems, including methods that enable machines to understand written information through vision and generate synthetic data; and numerous other areas such as health, interactive learning, continuous learning, natural language processing, AI for education, and reliable AI.

A Network for Excellence, Interdisciplinarity, and Ethical AI

The ELLIS Unit Barcelona promotes interdisciplinary and cross-cutting research in artificial intelligence. Its scope covers fundamental and applied research in machine learning and related fields, such as computer vision, robotics, and natural language processing. The unit's areas of expertise include human-robot interaction, understanding human behaviour, safe and secure AI, bioinformatics, medical imaging, and open innovation.

The ELLIS Unit Barcelona consists of 23 leading researchers from five universities and four research centers within Catalonia's AI ecosystem: the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the University of Barcelona (UB), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), the Computer Vision Center (CVC), the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC), the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI/CSIC-UPC), and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS).

ELLIS Barcelona prioritizes maintaining significant ties with both local and international industry, collaborating with a shared focus on creating AI systems that promote well-being in fair, egalitarian, and sustainable societies. In the current landscape of accelerated AI research and deployment, being part of the ELLIS network positions Catalonia as a key node in this research field and offers an exceptional opportunity to advance machine learning ethically and beneficially for humanity. The Barcelona unit is committed to research, innovation, and influencing policy-making to support these goals.

The unit is supported by the Government of Catalonia, coordinated with the country's research and knowledge system agents, within the framework of the Catalonia.AI Strategy led by the Department of Business and Labor. The Barcelona Unit is co-directed by Dr Carme Torras, research professor at the Institute of Robotics and Industrial Informatics (IRI/CSIC-UPC), and Dr Dimosthenis Karatzas, associate director of the Computer Vision Center and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
 

Catalonia: A Hub of AI Innovation, Leadership, and Talent

Catalonia stands out as a hub of innovation in artificial intelligence due to its excellent capabilities in this field. According to the 2024 report "Artificial Intelligence in Catalonia," carried out by ACCIÓ in collaboration with the Secretary of Digital Policies and CIDAI, the region boasts an internationally renowned scientific and academic community, with over 72 intensive AI research groups and top-tier scientific infrastructures. Additionally, Catalonia ranks as the third region for AI-related project funding within the Horizon Europe program. It also has a robust ICT sector, with 488 companies specializing in AI, generating a revenue of €2.155 billion and employing 14,525 professionals.

To enhance Catalonia as a hub of innovation, leadership, and a magnet for talent and companies in the AI field, the Government of Catalonia launched the Catalonia.AI Strategy in 2020. The creation of the ELLIS Unit Barcelona is one of the lines of work of the Artificial Intelligence Research Alliance of Catalonia (AIRA), which, along with the Center of Innovation for Data Tech and Artificial Intelligence (CIDAI), the Observatory of Ethics in Artificial Intelligence (OEIAC), and the Digital Catalonia Alliance's AI Community (DCA-IA), is one of the four pillars of the Catalonia.AI strategy, dedicated specifically to advancing AI research and attracting and retaining talent in this field.
Through the ELLIS Unit Barcelona, Catalonia becomes an integral part of ELLIS's coordinated European efforts to establish the best conditions in Europe for conducting AI research aligned with European values. The ELLIS Unit connects Catalonia's rich AI ecosystem with the pan-European ELLIS network, enabling better collaboration and significant coordination of actions at the European level.

Replay
Watch the replay of the inauguration event here.

Find the link to the original release on the website of ELLIS Barcelona here.

Website and social media:
•    Web: www.ellisbarcelona.eu
•    X | @ELLISBarcelona
•    LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/102263317
•    YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@ELLISBarcelona