TU Darmstadt in the European network for cutting-edge AI research

European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems launched

2020/09/15

The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) today officially inaugurated its network of 30 research units in a video conference. One of the research units is based at TU Darmstadt. Its spokesperson is the Computer Science Professor Stefan Roth, who has been awarded an ERC grant.

Speaker of the ELLIS Unit Darmstadt is Stefan Roth, Professor of Computer Science, who has been awarded an ERC grant.

Spanning 14 European countries, the ELLIS network includes several world-class institutions. The ELLIS units will make a decisive contribution to securing Europe’s leading role in the research field of modern AI.

The core team at the ELLIS unit in Darmstadt includes six principal investigators from the Departments of Computer Science, Human Sciences and Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. “Our membership of the ELLIS network reaffirms once again the leading role played by TU Darmstadt in the field of artificial intelligence and intelligent systems”, emphasises Professor Stefan Roth. “I also believe that there are huge opportunities for synergy with the recently founded Hesse Centre for Artificial Intelligence for which TU Darmstadt is home to the spokespeople and main site of the centre”, according to Roth.

“Today, we celebrate the momentum that the ELLIS initiative has gained since it was founded just two years ago,” said Bernhard Schölkopf, co-founder of ELLIS and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen. “With their combined strengths, the units will help Europe to compete with other AI hotspots, especially the USA and China. They will provide strong foundations for the development of AI in line with the values of open European societies.”

The goal of ELLIS is to develop a European research institute for cutting-edge AI research across various different sites. It will mainly focus on research into machine learning and other fields that are strongly based on machine learning – such as computer vision, natural language processing and robotics, which are all strongly represented at TU Darmstadt. Other areas of focus are human-centric and trustworthy AI, as well as areas of application such as environmental modelling, autonomous systems design, biology and health. The ELLIS Unit Darmstadt starts its work with a team of six ELLIS Fellows and professorships from three departments (Computer Science, Human Sciences, Electrical Engineering and Information Technology). The team includes Prof. Iryna Gurevych, Prof. Kristian Kersting, Prof. Heinz Köppl, Prof. Jan Peters, Prof. Stefan Roth and Prof. Constantin Rothkopf.

Lennart Schmid/feu