“Being a PhD student in Europe is one of the best experiences of my life.”
The ELLIS PhD Program is rich with inspiring stories of young AI scientists and their impressive research journeys, and this is one of them: Zhijing Jin, an ELLIS PhD student nearing the end of her dissertation phase, is about to embrace a new challenge. She will soon begin her career as an Assistant Professor in Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the University of Toronto in Canada, where she will hold a CIFAR AI Chair and be a faculty member at the Vector Institute. Originally from Shanghai, she studied in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the USA before joining the ELLIS network, benefiting from joint supervision at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Germany and ETH Zurich in Switzerland. In this interview, she shares her experiences as a young researcher in Europe, her future plans, and her reflections on the ELLIS PhD Program.
ELLISPhD ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS
Open Call for Proposals – ELIAS Nodes
The European Lighthouse of AI for Sustainability (ELIAS) calls for a 1st round of proposals for the creation of ELIAS nodes fostering European Leadership in Innovation with AI and Science with close ties to ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. ELIAS nodes will recognize and accelerate locally developed AI and science-based innovation while serving as local nodes of the ELIAS Alliance, a pan-European AI-preneurial network that aims at boosting academic education around the open source development of foundation models with a network of incubators and startups for European value creation.
ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS
Major European AI/ML Conference organised by ELISE held in Helsinki
In late June, 200 members of the ELISE and ELLIS community met in Helsinki for the ELISE Wrap Up Conference and ELLIS Community Event. Organised by ELISE, the event brought together top European researchers in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), outstanding PhD students, ELLIS and ELISE coordinators, and representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who are developing innovative applications supported by ELISE. The meeting was also joined by the Finnish Member of Parliament and former Minister of Transport and Communications, Timo Harakka, and leading Canadian computer scientist, Yoshua Bengio, who gave the closing keynote address remotely.
ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS Press Release
"You meet top researchers and build up a network"
For early-career researchers, exchanging ideas with top scientists in their research field is crucial. It allows them to benefit from senior researchers’ experience, understand current research trends and deepen their own knowledge through dialogue. The ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program connects PhD students and postdocs from all over Europe with top experts in all areas of machine learning - both in research and industry. The program also enables its participants to spend six months at a partner institution abroad. PhD student Tobias Lorenz is currently enjoying the benefits of the ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program in Oxford. Tobias usually works at the CISPA Helmholtz Centre for Information Security, in the research group of Professor Dr. Mario Fritz, who also coordinates the ELSA Network of Excellence. ELSA researchers like Fritz support and expand the PhD & Postdoc Program of ELLIS.
ELLISPhD ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS
ELIAS: Forging a Path Towards Sustainable and Trustworthy AI Innovation
The ELIAS Project, a groundbreaking initiative building upon ELLIS and dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence (AI) innovation and sustainability, held its official kick-off meeting in Trento, Italy, in September.
ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS
10 million euros of funding for the development of the virtual center of excellence ELSA
A large network of top European experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is to promote the development and deployment of cutting-edge AI solutions in the future and make Europe the world's lighthouse of secure and safe AI. The EU is funding the project with around 7.5 million euros, with a further 2.5 million euros coming from the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
ProjectsBuildingOnELLIS
ELIZA selected as ‘Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence‘
The graduate school ‘Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELIZA)‘, a network of 14 partners led by the Technical University of Darmstadt, has been awarded a grant by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to establish a ‘Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence‘. ELIZA was founded by seven ELLIS Units in Germany to provide the highest level of academic training to the next generation of AI researchers.
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