News – AI Lab
News
Weekly news from the AI-world
You can catch up with "Ukens Aiki" (Norwegian), hosted by our Associate Professor Inga Strümke, right here on our website.
Find all "Ukens Aiki" clips here!
AI on the agenda for the OAG Improvement Conference 2024
On November 28, our Associated Professor Inga Strümke partook in “Forbedringskonferansen 2024” by The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) [Rikrevisjonen], with a talk on the prossibilties and challenges of AI. The main question of the event was how to increase collaborations across sectors, and a suggested answer from Strümke is to establish a reception system for new technological solutions with disruptive potential, and to put in place our own infrastructure to make us less vulnerable to the big tech companies that are gaining more and more power internationally. Collaboration across silos is also one of the key goals of the Norwegian Open AI Lab – to try and solve the big challenges of our time.
Conference on French-Norwegian AI collaboration
On Tuesday November 26, we hosted a French Delegation here at NTNU in Trondheim for a high-level bilateral conference on AI. The French Norwegian Chamber of Commerce, together with the French Ambassy to Norway, led by Ambassador H.E. Florence Robine, got to visit the Norwegian Tech capital to gain insights into the AI collaborations between the two countries. The event was co-organised with NTNU, SINTEF Ocean and the Mid-Norway Chamber of Commerce and Industry. After the inspiring day we had learnt a lot and have also found new possible synergies to boost our collaborations even more. We look forward to more opportunities like this in the future!
World Patient Safety Day 2024 - Artificial Intelligence in Diagnostics
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the way we practice medicine. The possibilities for efficiency range from automating administrative tasks to advanced imaging diagnostics and personalized treatment.
Helse Møre og Romsdal provides some examples of how they use AI to free up capacity concerning patient development. Many of these exciting projects are in collaboration with NTNU and NAIL partner Helse Midt-Norge IT (HEMIT). On the occasion of World Patient Safety Day 2024 (WPSD) on September 17, Helse Møre og Romsdal focused on the use of AI in diagnostics.
Watch Helse Møre og Romsdal's video here now and read more on how to suggest your own ideas for AI in medical imagining.
SVT program "AI – a matter of life and death"
In the program "AI – a matter of life and death" [AI på liv och död] Swedish television SVT has followed NAIL Associate Professor Inga Strümke into the world of AI, behind the scenes with the military, and to Facebook/Meta's robot lab.
– When I truly think about the dangers of AI, I am glad I don't have children. All technology can be used for both good and bad, but we have created systems that sometimes understand us better than we understand ourselves, says Strümke. At the same time, AI can save lives in healthcare and on the subway, but researchers like Strümke now want to set limits on how IT giants use the new technology and explain what is hidden in the black AI boxes.
The program is now streaming worldwide, watch "AI på liv och död" in SVT Play or "Inga Strümke – KI på liv og død" on NRK TV now!
Sparebank1 SMN collaboration with NTNU and NAIL – 40MNOK investment
“Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Constitution Day all at once”, was the description of the launch of SpareBank 1 SMN’s new collaboration with the Norwegian Open AI Lab. The bank is investing 40 million NOK over the next five years, and the funds will support research on responsible AI, combating financial crime, and developing expertise for businesses in Central Norway. We look forward to this exciting collaboration!
Winner of the FINA Prize 2024
Former IDI student Elise Klæbo Vonstad was named one of the laureates of the FINA Prize 2024 – the French Institute Nordic Award. The French Institutes of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have selected the winners, with this year’s theme being Digital Health.
Vonstad is now a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her research focuses on innovative technology solutions for rehabilitation and elderly care, utilising machine learning and advanced motion capture techniques to enhance e-health solutions. Her PhD project investigated how machine learning could improve exergames (exercise games) for the elderly.
Master Safari 2024
Thanks to the super talented students from BRAIN NTNU, this year's Master Safari was a smashing success! The safari-element is the creative students' spin on our yearly master's thesis pitch event with partners of NorwAI and NAIL. A big thanks goes out to our partners who participated and told the students about the opportunity to work together with their company in next year’s master’s project. In the mingling area, students could meet representatives from our partners Aneo, NINA - Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Kartverket, SpareBank 1 SMN, Mia Health, Trondheim University Hospital and DNB.
We hope that all participants - both students, supervisors, and companies - had a fun and informative day with us in Gruva! We hope to see the projects come to fruition this fall!
AI and Health at the NTNU European Conference in Brussels
During the 8th annual NTNU European Conference in Brussels, Prof. Kerstin Bach participated with a talk about AI and health. We are so happy to see this important topic be put on the agenda, not only by NTNU here in Trondheim, but also in their international branches. You can now watch the stream recording from the Health parallel session at the NTNU Brussels Office Youtube-channel.
Finance and Industry – NAIL Partner forum and Annual meeting 2024
In the first week of April we held our Annual meeting and Partner forum, this time in Oslo and kindly hosted by our partner DNB in their headquarters. Topics discussed was AI and finance, Industrial AI and the potential for cross partner collaborations going forward. Thank you so much to all participants, both on, off and behind the stage. We look forward to many more fruitful discussions and collaborations in the future!
Afterwork event with NCE Aquatech Cluster
On Tuesday April 9th, we hosted an afterwork event here at NTNU together with the NCE Aquatech Cluster, where several of our partners are members. The theme was AI and aquatech, and several of our researchers and PhD-students presented how they work within this field. We hope the day was inspiring to all participants and wish the cluster good luck on their next event!
NTNU University Library AI Day
On January 26th The NTNU University Library hosted an exciting themed day about artificial intelligence, where many of the researchers affiliated with both NAIL, SFI NorwAI, and SFU Excited were participating. The keynote for the day, "From Toys to Tools to Terror(ist?) in a decade" was held by our own Keith Downing.
The event was held at at the Natural Science Library (Realfagsbiblioteket, Gløshaugen) in Trondheim, drawing approximately 90 attendees in person as weel as well over 400 unique viewers online! The program included talks about the Norwegian language model with Lemei Zhang from NorwAI, AI and ethical challenges, and AI in student projects from Cogito NTNU. Among the speakers were NAIL core team members Gunnar Tufte, Torbjørn Svendsen, and John Krogstie, both speaking on AI and sustainability. The day was fantastically led by Daniel Rosmæl Skauge from our student organisation BRAIN NTNU.
The recording of the event is now available online for you to watch back!
Applications open for ProbAI 2024
ProbAI is coming to Copenhagen this summer! You can now apply to the Nordic Probabilistic AI School 2024 in Copenhagen, 17-21 June. This is the 5th annual ProbAI summer school. Read more about ProbAI and apply before the deadline March 1st here.
Inga Strümke is Communicator of the year
Our own Inga Strümke is awarded the Research Council's Award for Excellence in Communication of Science 2023 for her work in communicating about artificial intelligence. This is the first time a researcher from NTNU has received this prestigious award. Congratulations! You can read the jury's justification here and watch Inga's speech here.
1 billion AI investment: First note from the expert group
Two of our core team members, Inga Strümke and John Krogstie, have contributed to the expert group advising in the governments 1 billion investment on AI research. To deliver on all aspects of the investment, the expert group have presented three main themes: Trust, responsibility and creativity. They also focus on the need for interdisciplinary research alongside targeted research within specific areas.
Read more about the investment and the expert groups work here
Schlumberger Visual Computing Prize 2023
Each academic year the Visual Computing Laboratory here at NTNU offers the Visual Computing Schlumberger Prize of 25 000 NOK to the best performing student(s) within the three Visual Computing courses. The aim of this prize is to stimulate students to follow this important area of computing and this year's joint winners were Armin Bodingbauer and Stella Lukasser. The award was virtually handed over to them in the AI lab on Friday September 15th, by Frank Lindseth, Theoharis Theoharis and Gabriel Kiss (pictured). Representatives from SLB were also present online to celebrate the two students.
One billion NOK towards AI research
Norway's Minister of Research and Higher Education, Sandra Borch said a big "Congratulations" when she and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre presented the governments 1 billion NOK investment in AI research. The investment is broad and includes both research on the technology itself, as well as its consequences. We are excited to see how this develops! Read more about the investment on the governments website here (Norwegian).
NAIL @ Trondheim Tech Port 2023
In June, both Kerstin Bach and Heri Ramampiaro, participated in events held by Trondheim Tech Port. Firstly, Kerstin had a presentation at Tech Ports “Innovasjonsfrokost” about AI in health care on June 2. Then, at Tech Ports yearly meeting June 21, Heri held a talk about AI and the current situation of the field.
You can also look forward to their upcoming Innovasjonsfrokost “Kunstig intelligens i medieverden” on September 15, when Inga Strümke and Jon Atle Gulla will be present to talk about AI in the media.
AI in your news- and podcast-feed
Our researcher Inga Strümke was recently present both in a NRK news segment about Snapchat’s MyAI as well as in an episode of the NRK P2 podcast Drivkraft. As always, Inga stressed the importance of knowing not only the opportunities, but also the limitations of AI. You can see and listen to the segments in the links above (both in Norwegian).
AI for a broad audience
Our researcher Inga Strümke was recently at Lindmo speaking about AI, you can rewatch the program here (Norwegian).
Her book about AI, Maskiner som tenker - algoritmenes hemmelighet og veien til kunstig intelligens (2023), is also available for preorder now. The popular scientific book can be enjoyed by a broad audience as well as experts.
And if you are in Trondheim, you can attend the book launch at Litteraturhuset on the 8th of May!
EvoLP: An evolutionary computation tool
EvoLP is a playground for evolutionary computation, developed by our PhD student Xavier F. C. Sánchez Díaz, in the Julia programming language. It implements a set of building blocks that can be coupled easily to generate genetic, evolutionary and swarm intelligence solvers for a variety of optimization tasks, including discrete, continuous and combinatorial problems. A few optional utilities for analysis (like benchmark test functions, result reporting and statistics logging) are included. It is well-tested, extensively documented and is free — available on GitHub for everyone to use under an open-source license.
Catch IDI 2023
A big thanks to our amazing students that took on the challenge to present their work at Catch IDI on February 24th 2023. We heard about four AI master-projects, all in only 15 minutes!
First, William Dalheim told us more about diffusion models. Then, Patrik Hammersborg talked on explainable AI and chess models such as AlphaZero. We heard about developing videogame agents using NeuroEvolution was presented by Martin Sondov Hallan, who works alongside Kristian Tveiten. Lastly, we heard about making self-driving cars using Imitation Learning and computer vision, as told by Aksel Lunde Aase, who is working with Mathias Wold.
We are positive that their glowing enthusiasm has inspired other students to delve into the world of AI as well!
Applications open for ProbAI 2023
You can now apply to join this year's Nordic Probabilistic AI School! The event will be in Trondheim from 12-16 June.
Read more and apply on the ProbAI website!
NTNU to invest in more powerful infrastructure for AI
The AI and machine learning research community at NTNU is growing at a fast rate. This calls for more powerful computing resources, with secure and efficient handling of data shared between NTNU researchers and external partners as a key element. We are therefore happy that NTNU will invest in updating the infrastructure.
Learn more about the investment in this article.
New project "RICO" will make intelligent control systems more robust
We recently learned that the project "RICO - Robust Intelligent Control" has been awarded funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The aim of the project is to develop new methods to improve the robustness of intelligent control systems. The project will include partners TrønderEnergi, SINTEF Digital, Solution Seeker and Ohmia charging.
Learn more about the RICO-project in this article.
Successful second Nordic Probabilistic AI School 2021
The second Nordic Probabilistic AI School (also known as ProbAI school) was held virtually on June 14-18. The school brought together more than 200 students and a great team of lecturers and speakers from all over the world.
The mission of ProbAI is to create an inclusive environment serving a state-of-the-art expertise in probabilistic machine learning. Learn more about ProbAI 2021 in this article.
Are you a student looking for an AI master's thesis project?
Will you write your master's thesis next year and need some inspiration for a thesis topic? Would you like to work with real-life challenges and data? In that case, we recommend that you take a look at the thesis projects submitted by Norwegian companies and organisations during our master's thesis event March 9.
The recording from the event has been made available for NTNU students and staff. Descriptions of all the thesis projects presented during the pitch session, as well as a few more, has also been made available for students.
Watch the recording from the webinar on artificial intelligence in Norway
On August 14th, we gathered AI experts from academia, industry, and the public sector for a webinar to discuss the status of AI development in Norway.
We heard about the national AI strategy and how some of the country's largest companies are working with AI technology. We discussed the future of AI and even asked the big question: Will robots really take over?
You can watch the webinar-recording online here (Norwegian).
New project SupportPrim will provide recommendations to physiotherapists
The online magazine for Norwegian physiotherapists "Fysioterapeuten" covers the new project SupportPrim, which uses AI to give recommendations about possible treatment for patients. The SupportPrim systems takes into account individual differences between patients.
The project is a collaboration between NTNU's Musculoskeletal research group and the AI Community, with associate professor Kerstin Bach as main contact person from our side.
The project has received support from the Norwegian research council.
New SFI center NorwAI will develop novel ways to utilize data-driven AI in innovative solutions
We were thrilled to learn that the Norwegian Center for Research-based Artificial Intelligence innovation (NorwAI) will be granted status as an SFI center (center for research-based innovation) by the Norwegian Research Council.
NorwAI will develop breakthrough theories, methods and technology for efficient and trustable utilization of data-driven AI in innovative, industrial solutions, together with some of the most competent research environments on AI and big data, and companies with high technological ambitions
You can read about all the new SFI centers at NTNU in this article.
Machine learning used to recognise salmon
Meet former NTNU students, Espen Meidell and Edvard Schreiner Sjøblom, who took a deep dive into the ocean while writing their master's thesis during spring 2019. They focused on how machine learning can be used to recognise individual salmon.
In this video (in Norwegian) they explain how it was done, and why recognizing salmon can be useful for the salmon industry. This work was done in cooperation with Sealab Ocean Group and Norwegian Open AI Lab.
The highly popular summer school ProbAI is back for 2025 - Apply now!
The 6th Nordic Probabilistic AI School (ProbAI) 2025 is back in Trondheim (Norway) from June 16-20 with an interesting and carefully designed curriculum and a seamless blend of theory and hands-on sessions.
The five intensive days are each dedicated to a different topic: introduction to probabilistic modeling, variational inference and optimization, deep generative models, deep geometric models, and probabilistic circuits.
Experience a collaborative and immersive learning environment where students and lecturers work together to deliver an efficient and high-quality knowledge transfer.
APPLY NOW — The application deadline is March 9!
SUPPORT NOW — Become a sponsor/supporter!
NAIL Master's Thesis Award 2024
Each year, the Norwegian Open AI Lab celebrates the exceptional efforts of our top students by presenting the Annual AI Master’s Thesis Awards. On December 4th, we honoured the top three theses of 2024 in an informal ceremony that also featured a workshop for our partners. This event provided a platform for students, supervisors, and NAIL-partner representatives to exchange insights on what constitutes an outstanding master's thesis within AI research.
The highlight of the evening was the announcement of the top three winners: Eirik Runde Barlaug and Jørgen Lind Fløystad with their thesis «Reactive Quadrotor Guidance System Using Deep Reinforcement Learning, Autoencoders and Nonlinear Control», Henrik Friis and Håkon Nese for their work on «CT Neural Computed Tomography for Sparse-View CT and 4DCT», as well as «Stochastic Approximation with Contrastive Learning» by Erland Brandser Olsson.
Curious to learn more about the event, the winners, and see some great photos? Check out the full article here!
AI research from NTNU in national news
We are delighted that the PhD research of Sverre Herland, supervised by Kerstin Bach and co-supervised by Ekrem Misimi, received national recognition on television on 3 October 2024. Sverre appeared alongside his co-supervisor on NRK’s Dagsrevyen 21, where they showcased their latest research findings from two ICRA 2024 papers and ongoing projects in robotic manipulation.
You can also read an article from Gemini about their work or find the papers behind the research online. “6DoF Closed-Loop Grasping with Reinforcement Learning” by Sverre Herland, Kerstin Bach, and Ekrem Misimi. As well as, “Learning Active Manipulation to Target Shapes with Model-Free, Long-Horizon Deep Reinforcement Learning” by Matias Sivertsvik, Kirill Sumskiy, and Ekrem Misimi.
UNESCO endorsement for NTNU and SINTEF AI project
The cAIge project (Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence based Salmon Identification and automated long-term welfare assessment in aquaculture net-pens), has received an endorsement letter from the UNESCO Ocean Decade steering committee. This means cAIge has been recognised as a project forming part of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030.
NAIL associated Professor Rudolf Mester is part of the cAIge project, which seeks to automate the process of welfare monitoring with use of computer vision, as to enhance the health and well-being of farmed salmon, while also improving the efficiency and sustainability of farming operations.
8,8 MNOK granted for continuing education at NTNU
We recently received news that three NTNU applications for Continuing education-funding from the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-Dir) were granted!
Firstly, we have been awarded 5,1 MNOK in funds to make an introduction to artificial intelligence for banking and finance, led by the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management (IØT) in collaboration with the Department for Computer Science (IDI). This work will be led by Morten Risstad (IØT) and is made possible due to close collaboration with NAIL. At IØT they also received another 2 MNOK funding for a second continuing education project tailored to the finance sector.
Secondly, NTNU has received a 1,7 MNOK funding for a course on Language models and innovation. This project will be led by IDI through SFI NorwAI, with Jon Atle Gulla as the project leader, and will be focusing on understanding LLMs and their possible applications.
This funding enables important cross disciplinary initiatives that we look forward to develop further!
AI panel with Inga Strümke and Ottar Osen at NTNU Ålesund
On Friday, March 15th our Associate Professor Inga Strümke participated in the "Endelig fredag"-panel, an event for students at NTNU campus Ålesund. She took the stage together with Professor Ottar Osen and Pål Haugen, researcher at NTNU and product developer at Furuno Norway. In the audience were AI interested students with their ever unquenchable thirst for more AI knowledge.
Visit from Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance
On Tuesday November 14th we had the honour of welcoming the new Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance, Karianne Tung. In the AI lab she got a presentation from NAIL leader Heri Ramampiaro, as well as discussions on AI regulations and the importance of having a human "in the loop". Tung also got to talk to the hard-working students who frequent our lab, both members of our student organization BRAIN, and our AI master students were present. We look forward to further collaborations with the new minister!
NorwAI Innovate best poster award 2023
At the 2023 NorwAI Innovate Conference, one of our PhD-students, Xavier F.C. Sánchez-Díaz was awarded the Best Poster Award for his poster titled 'EvoLP.jl: Modular Optimisation in Julia using Evolutionary Computation'. His work was done together with professor Ole Jakob Mengshoel. The reward is for 10 000 NOK and was handed over by Kerstin Bach, who is the NorwAI research director.
SkyNews segment
Heri Ramampiaro was live on SkyNews on July 6th, talking about how AI might change the jobs of the future, but there will always be a need for human competence. Read more from the reporting they did while in Trondheim here!
Winner of the XAI Challenge at ICCBR 2023
One of our Phd students, Betül Bayrak won the XAI Challenge at the International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR) 2023. Congratulations!
In this work Betül has introduced a counterfactual explainer that offers high-quality, stable, and interpretable counterfactuals. The explainer combines the strengths of counterfactual and feature attribution-based explainers, facilitating diverse perturbation methods and integrating tailored distance metrics. As part of the challenge, the explainer has been integrated in the iSee platform so it can be used by researchers and industry in the future.
NAIL is a proud sponsor of the 10th ACM Celebration of Women in Computing womENcourage™
The conference is hosted by NTNU here in Trondheim and will take place at Trondheim Spektrum between September 20-22, 2023. Among other things on the program you can find a hackathon, workshops, poster sessions, as well as talks and panels with a broad spectrum of interesting speakers. Registration is open and early registrations end on August 1st. Read more and register here!
Debattene om Norges fremtid – AI: Intelligens uten følelser
In June, NAIL had the honour of contributing to the latest instalment of “Debattene om Norges fremtid”. It is a series of deep diving debates, that seeks to shed light on different societal issues in Norway. Heri Ramampiaro took part of the live debate at DIGS in Trondheim on June 15th and Inga Strümke had a pre-recorded section in the program. Also participating in the production were students from our student organisation BRAIN NTNU; A big thanks to Selma Ditlev-Simonsen and Even W. Lauvrak for their contributions. We would also like to thank Fieldwork for the great collaboration!
If you missed the event and live stream, you can read more about the program and watch the recording online here (Norwegian).
You can also read this article in Trønderdebatt, written in connection with the debate, by NAIL-leader Heri Ramampiaro.
AI workshop for Norwegian publishers
In June, NAIL hosted a workshop for Norwegian publishers in Oslo. The day was co-organised with SFI NorwAI and Den Norske Forleggerforeningen. On the programme were presentations from NAIL leader Heri Ramampiaro, associate professor Inga Strümke, researcher Benjamin Kille, as well as Heidi Austlid, leader of Forleggerforeningen. Towards the end of the day we held a workshop wherein participants were asked to reflect on the implications - both positive and negative - the current AI developments might have on their field of work.
AI and the work force
In this article from Dagens Næringsliv (Norwegian) you can read about the 'lawyer-robot' «Harvey» and why NAIL leader, Heri Ramampiaro, is a careful optimist regarding the recent AI-developments.
BRAIN 5-year anniversary
Congratulations to our wonderful student organisation BRAIN NTNU with their 5-year anniversary! We are so proud of all the work you do and very excited to see how far you'll go in the next years. The anniversary was celebrated on Friday April 21st at the AI lab with cake and speeches from both the Dean Ingrid Schjølberg and NAIL leader Heri Ramampiaro. Later on the students continued the festivities with a galla dinner.
Visit from the Ministry of Education and Research
On February 2nd 2023, the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (IE) had a visit from the Ministry of Education and Research (Kunnskapsdepartementet). As part of the visit, they guested us at the Norwegian Open AI Lab. Here they heard from different representatives at the Department of Computer Science (IDI) as well as the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology (IIK) at campus Gjøvik.
AI lab-leader and head of department, Heri Ramampiaro, spoke on AI’s role in politics and everyday life. He talked about our ongoing research projects and initiatives, stressing their societal relevance in an increasingly digital world.
Nemnoor EDIH (European Digital Innovation Hub) launches in March!
Join the launch of Norway’s new center for artificial intelligence!
Artificial intelligence has never been more talked about, discussed, or used than now. For Norwegian businesses, access to the right expertise, test centers, and networks will be crucial in the future.
Nemnoor is a new national center for artificial intelligence that will help companies adopt the technology. The center consists of Norway’s leading experts in artificial intelligence who will guide and offer services in four domains: production, health, energy, and smart cities/communities.
Read more about Nemnoor on their website (Norwegian) and get an insight into what they can offer your business!
Two years of the National AI Strategy – How are we doing?
January 14th 2022 marked two years since the government announced Norway's AI strategy. To mark the anniversary, we have written a short article on how we are doing so far (in Norwegian), together with our good collaborators from Digital Norway, NORA and Smart Innovation Norway.
Language technology projects in NAIL
The interest in language technology, and particularly natural language processing (NLP), has increased rapidly in recent times, as a consequence of its many potential application areas and the technological advances that have been made in the field. However, the most impressive breakthroughs within NLP have been made in the English language. For Norwegian and the Scandinavian languages, there is still a job to be done.
Luckily, our Norwegian Open AI Lab partners and researchers are working on it. In this article you can learn more about our language technology projects.
Successful final review for SELFBACK
On May 27th, the SELFBACK EU project had its final review. The goal of the project has been to develop a decision support system to facilitate self-management for low back pain patients. The multidisciplinary team, lead by Paul Jarle Mork (ISM) and Kerstin Bach (IDI), has used Case-based Reasoning to personalize self-management recommendations delivered via a smartphone app. Partners in the project have been Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, University of Glasgow, University of Southern Denmark, the National Research Center for the Working Environment in Denmark and SMEs Trade Expansion and Health Leads.
In the last two years, the effectiveness of SELFBACK has been evaluated in an international multi-center randomized controlled trial (RCT) using pain-related disability as primary outcome. A company (SelfBack APS) has been established in Denmark, projected to license, and commercialize the SELFBACK technology. While the project is officially closed, the work on analyzing the data is ongoing. In the months to come, more publications on the details of the technology and the RCT’s outcome will be published.
The top AI Master's Theses in 2020 awarded
Artificial Intelligence is a popular topic among students at NTNU. In fact, more than 200 master's students who graduated from the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering last year submitted a thesis in which AI plays a substantial part.
On December 15th, we celebrated the top AI theses of 2020 in a digital event. Eivind Meyer, a graduate from Department of Engineering Cybernetics, was the lucky winner of the awards.
You can read more about the event and see all nominated theses in this article.
New projects to start up in 2021
When 2020 was coming to an end, several NAIL researchers got the great news that their project applications had been approved for funding. These are some of the successful projects to start up in 2021:
- In the project "TEFLON", to be financed by NordForsk, several Nordic partners will design digital language-learning games for Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian.
- "New Machine Learning Algorithms for the Calculation of Water Values" is a new research-based innovation project together with Statnett and the Norwegian start up, Optimeering.
- "SmaRTWork" will develop a digital system for facilitating the return to work for people suffering from muscle and skeletal diseases. The project is a collaboration between the AI group at the department of Computer Science and the department of public health and nursing.
You can find a list of all ongoing NAIL projects in our project overview.
New project will use AI methods to improve time series analysis
The new project "ML4ITS - Machine Learning for Irregular Time Series analysis" was recently approved for funding (16MNOK) by the Norwegian Research Council. The project aims to improve the analysis of irregular time series, by exploring ways to overcome the issue of limited available or labelled data for (multivariate) time series modelling. These are cases where heterogeneity of the data (e.g. non-stationarity, multi-resolution, irregular sampling) as well as noise, pose further challenges.
ML4ITS’s main objective is to advance the state-of-the-art in time series analysis for “irregular” time series by using modern AI methods. The methods will be applied and tested on industrial different use cases in partnership with Refinitiv, Telenor, and Exabel.
At the core of ML4ITS there is a cross-disciplinary environment, including Computer Science, Mathematical Sciences and Electronic Systems departments at NTNU. This is also the first collaborative platform between NAIL and the newly established strategic IoT initiative at NTNU to receive external funding.
New project will analyse physical behaviour and sleep
NAIL researcher Kerstin Bach, along with colleagues at NTNU Department of Public Health and Nursing, will receive funding for an innovative project on physical behaviour and sleep. The project will explore the unique data in the HUNT study (Nord-Trøndelag Health Study) to examine how biological, socioeconomic, individual, and demographic determinants affect physical behaviour and sleep.
The HUNT data will provide insights to why there are large differences in the level of physical activity and the quality of sleep among the population. The funding is granted by NTNU Helse, one of NTNU’s strategic areas, and the project will run for three years.
Symposium of the Norwegian AI Society
The 2019 Symposium of the Norwegian AI Society took place from May 27-28 at NTNU, hosted by the Norwegian Open AI Lab. The symposium brought together researchers and practitioners in the field of artificial intelligence in Norway and Scandinavia to present ongoing work and future directions of AI.
The symposium provides a forum for networking among researchers as well as building and strengthening connections with related research fields, practitioners and businesses.
Ole Jakob Mengshoel on Lørn.tech
In this podcast episode of Lørn.tech, Ole Jakob Mengshoel is interviewed by Silvija Seres. They talk about how AI has developed and how it can be used to solve global challenges, while improving the newest technology (in Norwegian).
There you can also find several other interesting interviews, among others with our partners Telenor, Sintef and Norsk Regnesentral.
The new Nordic AI Network
The leading technical universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden form the Nordic Five Tech alliance. In April 2019 the alliance announced the creation of the Nordic Artificial Intelligence Network.
The intention of the network is to bring together leading expertise in the field of AI and aim to turning the region into a global hub of AI research, education and innovation.
Learn more about the new AI network by reading this article.
Successful AI Hackathon
More than 50 NTNU students spent the weekend March 1-3 at NTNU attending the 2019 AI Hackathon. The event was organized by Telenor and our student organization, Brain.
The students worked with air quality data from Trondheim kommune, gathered by Telenor sensors. They showed enthusiasm and lots of creativity while working on the data. In the end, the winner team was Tannhjulsridderne - congratulations!
NTNU experts discuss DeepSeek on NRK science podcast "Abels tårn"
What is DeepSeek? Is the Chinese AI model that hit the market a couple weeks back as good, cheap and open sourced as the hype suggests? To answer some of the most asked questions about DeepSeek, Associate Professor Inga Strümke and PhD candidate Tollef Jørgensen went on air in a recent episode of the Norwegian science podcast "Abels tårn". If you missed it: the podcast is available online at NRK Radio!
Gemini article on AI GentleMAN robot
In this Gemini-article (Norwegian) you can read about the groundbreaking robot developed by SINTEF and NTNU researchers, among them researcher Ekrem Misimi from SINTEF and Sverre Herland, PhD-student in the GentleMAN project. This robot is trained in a virtual environment, allowing it to grasp objects of various sizes and geometries with unprecedented accuracy. By training the AI agent in a simulated world, the robot can perform tasks in the real world without additional training.
NorwAI Innovate 2024
At the 4ht Annual NorwAI Innovate Conference 2024, leading AI experts and decision makers were once again gathered in Norway's tech capital Trondheim. This year the event was co-organized with us at the Norwegian Open AI Lab, and marked a record attendance with over 215 professionals from various sectors. We were also happy to welcome The Norwegian Research Council to host another important match-making session leading up to the next fase of the AI centre applicantion process.
Among other topics, the conference highlighted the importance of developing Norwegian and Sami language models, with Minister of Research and Higher Education, Oddmund Hoel, emphasizing the need for more computational resources and regulation to support these efforts. National Librarian Aslak Sira Myhre discussed the significance of digitalizing Norwegian content to train generative language models.
Day 2 of the conference focused on AI regulations, featuring debates on the AI Act and its implications beyond the EU. Keynote speakers addressed the challenges and opportunities of implementing AI in Norwegian businesses, with discussions on transforming industries through AI and the government’s plans for AI development. Also on day 2, Abdul Kazeem Shamba was announced as the winner of the conference's Best Poster Award for his work on human activity recognition. Congratulations!
We thank all participants – on and off stage – for their contributions and in ensuring the relevance within Norwegian AI research going forward.
XAI article in Nature
Former NAIL Master's student Patrik Hammersborg, supervised by Associate Professor Inga Strümke, has a new publication on Explainable AI (XAI) in Nature. The article is titled "Information based explanation methods for deep learning agents—with applications on large open-source chess models" and is a re-construction of DeepMind's analysis – but done on the open and available chess model Leela Zero. You can find the article online now. Congratulations!
NAIL at Arendalsuka 2024
Once again, there was an abundance of events centring around artificial intelligence during this year's Arendalsuka, August 12-16. The main question remains: How can we succeed with AI? We saw numerous debates and conversations this week, with contributions from NTNU.
Some key topics included:
- Ethical and Responsible AI: Discussions focused on the ethical implications, societal impact, and ensuring AI technology is reliable and used responsibly.
- Innovation and Compliance: Emphasis on AI as a driver of innovation, the importance of standardisation for compliance, and balancing computing power with energy consumption.
- Collaboration and Competence: Highlighting the need for effective data sharing, closing the skills gap through research, and ensuring decision-makers and SMEs are well-equipped to succeed with AI
One highlight from the busy and inspiring week was the event organised by NTNU, GCE NODE, and Telenor Maritime, with three technology seminars on AI, small satellites, and how new hardware can reduce power consumption. The first of these sessions were led by NAIL leader, Heri Ramampiaro, with NAIL Associated Professor Inga Strümke on the panel. She was joined by Norway's Minister of Research and Higher Education Oddmund Hoel, EVP CXO at Schibsted Marketplaces Sven Størmer Thaulow, and Executive Director Astrid Undheim from NAIL-partner Sparebank1 SMN. You can watch the recorded stream from the event Hvordan sikre tillit til KI- systemer? (Norwegian) online now!
Trondheim Municipality and NAIL Collaborate on Health Data Research
Trondheim Municipality and NAIL has signed a collaboration agreement to research new methods of datacollection in the health sector. The aim is to find out how these data can be used in future AI research, and hopefully contribute to a more sustainable health and welfare services. We will look into how to best utilize Helseplattformen to create AI solutions.
- The AI environment in Trondheim is leading both nationally and internationally; it’s fantastic that as a technology capital, we can take the lead in this work, says Kommunedirektør Morten Wolden.
We are so delighted to have Trondheim Municipality as an enthusiastic partner in the AI lab! Looking forward to collaborating even more with both them in the future.
AI on the agenda for Kosmorama film festival
During this year's instalment of Kosmorama film festival, we contributed to a panel on AI in the filmmaking industry. The panel was part of their Pitch and Tech day for the film industry, so the audience was filled with film industry professionals curious as to how this technology will affect their field of work in the years to come. On the panel was AI Professor Keith Downing from NTNU, together with director Tonje Hessen Schei, and film photographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, all led by author Bår Stenvik.
NTNU AI Master's Thesis Awards 2022 and 2023
Every year we at the Norwegian Open AI Lab seek to encourage the hard work from our top tier students by awarding the Annual AI Master’s Thesis. This year, on January 24th, we awarded the top three theses from both 2022 and 2023. The awards ceremony was combined with a workshop for our partners, where students, supervisors and NAIL-partner representatives got to share their opinion on what makes a good master's thesis.
In the end, the two winners were Ellen Zhang Chang for 2022 with her thesis "Surrounding Dialogue Generation using Deep Learning with Adapters", and Michael Staff Larsen for 2023 for his thesis "Segmentation of Coronary Arteries using Transformers". Well done and congratulations!
In this article about the event you can read more about the program and the winners, and see more photos!
ProbAI School goes to Rio!
ProbAI goes beyond the Nordics as you can now apply to the Tropical Probabilistic AI School 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, 29 Jan – 2 Feb. This is the 5th edition of the research school, and it is of course once again backed by NAIL. Read more about TropAI and apply before the deadline November 24th here.
NTNU Kveld: How will AI effect our lives?
Three NTNU professors and an industry representative were present when NTNU Kveld put AI on the agenda. 14th November at Dokkhuset Scene, Jon Atle Gulla from SFI NorwAI, John Krogstie and Keith Downing, as well as Astrid Undheim from Sparebank1 SMN, took the stage in four talks followed by a Q&A-panel. They talked about the history of the AI field, how we deal with AI used in education, the Norwegian language model NorGPT, and how the bank uses AI in the day-to-day business. The event was co-hosted by NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet and us in NAIL.
Watch the stream recording from the event here (Norwegian)
Visit from University of Washington - Guest lecture with Dr. Yinhai Wang
Dr. Yinhai Wang from the University of Washington is working closely with our partner, Statens Vegvesen, and was visiting Trondheim at the end of October. During his stay we welcomed him as a guest in the Norwegian Open AI Lab. Dr. Wang is a professor in transportation engineering and the founding director of the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) at the University of Washington. He also serves as director for Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans), USDOT University Transportation Center for Federal Region 10. Professors Frank Lindseth and Ole Jakob Mengshoel from the NAIL core team introduced the work we do here at NTNU on mobility.
Best Paper Award PAIS 2023
The Best Paper Award at this year’s 12th International PAIS Conference in Kraków, was awarded to one of our students Eirik Flogard, for his paper "Creating Explainable Dynamic Checklists via Machine Learning to Ensure Decent Working Environment for All: A Field Study with Labour Inspections". The paper is cowritten with Ole Jakob Mengshoel (NTNU), Ole Magnus Theisen (Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority), Kerstin Bach (NTNU). The PAIS conference (Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems) is part of ECAI (European Conference on Artificial Intelligence). Congratulations Eirik!
Norway needs a minister for technology
In this opinon piece, written by Associate Professor in the AI Lab, Inga Strümke, together with Aksel Braanen Sterri academic chief in "Senter for langsiktig politikk" and researcher within ethics at OsloMet, they argue that Norway needs a minister specifically for technology - and within that; AI. You can read the piece in Aftenposten here (Norwegian).
AI at Arendalsuka 2023
Arendalsuka is approaching just over the summer, and we have gathered a handy list with some interesting program posts on AI - as well as other sessions with NTNU and NAIL associated people involved. NTNU people are contributing to several panel debates, presentations and discussions on AI, as well as launching the new Norwegian language model, NorGPT from SFI NorwAI!
We hope to see you there!
Summer reading list
Summer is the time for reading, and perhaps also the time for learning something new. If you'd like to gain some insight on AI this summer, you should check out our AI summer reading list.
Whether you are a beginner to AI or an AI enthusiast interested in deepening your knowledge, we have selected a few books to widen your AI horizon.
ProbAI 2023
We are a proud supporter of the Nordic Probabilistic AI School (ProbAI), which was once again hosted in Trondheim this year. Out of 700 applicants, 160 participants got to attend the summer school to learn more about probabilistic AI, as well as network. Next year ProbAI is headed for Copenhagen, and you can read more on their website or in this text written by David Baumgartner, one of the PhD students working behind the scenes on ProbAI!
Visit from the Prime Minister
In connection with the kick-off for the new national digitalisation strategy, the Prime Minister visited NTNU in Trondheim on June 6th. In the AI lab he saw presentations from the student organisation Cogito NTNU, that works hands-on with AI projects every semester, as well as NAIL leader Heri Ramampiaro, who talked about NorHEAD - Norwegian Center for Headache Research where AI and machine learning is used to improve headache treatment.
You can read more about the kick-off here.
Visit from Minister of Research and Higher Education
On Monday April 24, the AI lab had a visit from Norway's Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe, together with State Secretary Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel and county deputy mayor for Trøndelag, Tomas Iver Hallem. They got an introduction to AI from Inga Strümke, followed by a discussion about regulations and the future of AI research, among other things.
Later on, Borten Moe presented this years number of applicants for NTNU. We are happy to say that this year's numbers shows a rise in applicants to the technology field and especially within information technology.
The latest celebrations at NAIL
This fall we have celebrated both the 5th anniversary of the AI-lab, as well as the 50th anniversary of the Department of Computer Science. In this article you can read more about the latest celebrations, challenges and optimism for the future.
Third annual Nordic Probabilistic AI School 2022
The third annual ProbAI summer school event was held in person in Helsinki Finland on June 13-17 of this year. From over 750 applicants, 150 participants were chosen to attend the event.
The program included inspiring talks, poster sessions and time to network and socialize. You can read more about ProbAI 2022 here.
The top AI theses of 2021 awarded
Artificial Intelligence is a popular topic among students at NTNU. In recent years, around 200 master’s theses in which AI plays a substantial part have been submitted yearly. On December 3rd, we celebrated the top AI theses of 2021 in an awards ceremony at Gløshaugen.
Sindre Stenen Blakseth, a 2021 graduate from the Department of Physics, was the lucky winner of the 2021 AI Master’s thesis awards.
Learn more about this year's AI Master's thesis awards by reading this article.
DeepInMotion to continue the discovery of new ways to detect CP in infants
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is the most common cause of physical disability in childhood which results in life-long needs for special services and is a huge burden for the child and family. Being able to diagnose infants at an early stage is crucial in order to prevent the disease from deteriorating.
Over the last years, NTNU researchers have worked on developing and improving Deep Learning methods to enable early detection of CP. They recently learned that they will be able to continue this work with the support of the Norwegian Research Council in the project DeepInMotion.
The project will focus on innovative explainable AI techniques and develop a smartphone-based clinical service implementation for early detection of CP. The XAI approach is particularly important when developing the smartphone app to be used by medical personnel, in order to give meaningful explanations for end-users and stakeholders. The techniques will therefore be implemented in close collaboration with hospitals. The NAIL contact person for this project is Heri Ramampiaro.
NAIL research featured in Wall Street Journal article
NAIL research on AI in aquaculture was recently featured in this article by Wall Street Journal.
In the article, our partners in Telenor Research shares the story of how AI is changing aquaculture in Norway, by contributing to saving costs and improving efficiency in raising salmon.
If you are interested in the research behind this story, take a look at these two academic articles:
A spatio-temporal recurrent network for salmon feeding action recognition from underwater videos in aquaculture by Håkon Måløy, Agnar Aamodt ang Mismi Ekrem.
FishNet: A Unified Embedding for Salmon Recognition by Bjørn Magnus Matthiesen, Kerstin Bach, Espen Meidell, Håkon Måløy and Edvard S. Sjøblom.
Students developed app to monitor air quality
Master students at NTNU developed the app “Lufta” to keep the inhabitants of Trondheim better informed about the air quality in the city.
By utilizing data from small sensors located in both permanent locations and on cars and buses, they are able to provide improved measurements of the air quality in Trondheim. The students have worked with IoT technology, as the sensors are connected to the 4G network, which enables wireless and immediate collection of the data. They have also worked with machine learning and prediction of how the air quality will be in the future.
The project was initiated by Telenor and has been carried out in close cooperation between NTNU students, AI Lab researchers and Telenor. You can learn more about the project by reading this article (in Norwegian).
AI Challenge - the Future of Artificial Intelligence
On June 18, the AI Challenge conference took place - a full-day conference about the future of artificial intelligence and a side event to NTNU´s science festival "Big Challenge". The conference was co-organized by NTNU Digital, Sintef Digital and the Norwegian Open AI Lab.
We had several interesting speakers: Kamalika Das (RIACS/USRA, NASA ARC), Nicola Palmarini (MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab), Teemu Roos (University of Helsinki), Silvija Seres, Astrid Undheim (Telenor Research), Roger Moore (University of Sheffield), Abhishek Thakur (Boost.ai), and our own Rudolf Mester.
Have a look at this article by Universitetsavisa (in Norwegian) to learn more about the conference.
Nordic Probabilistic AI School 2019
The first edition of the Nordic Probabilistic AI School (ProbAI) was organised June 3-7 2019. The school offered state-of-the-art expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence to the public, students, academia and industry.
This was an intermediate to advanced level school with a particular focus on probabilistic models and deep generative models, covering the topics of latent variable models, inference with sampling and variational approximations, probabilistic programming and tools.
The event was a big success, gathering more than 150 participants from all over the world. In addition to an interesting and challenging academic program, the participants attended various social events, making it a great place to network and meet new people. We are already excited about repeating the summer school in the coming years.
Trym Holter i Digitaliseringspådden
Nysgjerrig på kunstig intelligens (AI)? Hør Trym Holter, direktør for Norwegian Open AI Lab, gjeste Digitaliseringspådden, hvor han forteller om flere spennende AI-relaterte temaer, som talegjenkjenning, motlyd, "smart" teknologi, og gir deg AI-ordlista!
Du kan høre episoden her.
Visit by the Minister of Public Security
On May 13, 2019 we were delighted to welcome the Minister of Public Security, Ingvil Smines Tybring-Gjedde (Progress Party) to NTNU and our AI Lab.
Public security is an important aspect of the work we do at NTNU. Together with the excellent research community on cyber security at NTNU in Gjøvik, we presented some of this work to the Minister of Public Security.
