A Network for Artificial Intelligence: ELLIS Unit Franconia established
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly affecting all areas of science and technology. It is crucial that Europe is able to play an important role in this area, and this is what ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems, set out to foster when it was founded in 2018. Now the ELLIS Unit Franconia has been newly established – with Prof. Florian Marquardt, Managing Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) and Chair of Theoretical Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), serving as the lead project partner.
ELLIS Unit Franconia is joining other important hubs in Europe to take part in this endeavour, which represents one of the most important challenges of our times. The ELLIS Unit Franconia brings together five universities: FAU, the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, the Technical University of Nuremberg (UTN), the Otto Friedrich University of Bamberg, and the University of Bayreuth. Officially, the unit is jointly sponsored by the University of Würzburg, UTN, and FAU. The leadership team consists of Prof. Marquardt (FAU/MPL), Prof. Radu Timofte (University of Würzburg), and Prof. Wolfram Burgard (UTN).
“I am excited that the strength of the region in AI research has been recognized by establishing the ELLIS Unit Franconia,” says Florian Marquardt. “The Unit brings together a diverse network of scientists covering a large spectrum, from medical AI to foundation models and ethical AI. We ourselves, at the Max Planck Institute, have been spearheading AI for science in the realm of quantum physics, as well as neuromorphic computing, where the hope is to replace today’s power-hungry digital neural networks by more energy-efficient physics-based solutions.” According to Marquardt, the establishment of the ELLIS Unit Franconia promises to intensify collaboration between AI researchers in the region, across boundaries between different academic institutions. Prominent computer science colleagues at FAU, like Andreas Maier, have been heavily involved in helping to establish the Unit.
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