Holger Hoos and Nuria Oliver receive the Innovation Award, on behalf of CLAIRE and ELLIS, in Berlin on 30 September. The Confederation of Laboratories for AI Research in Europe (CLAIRE), and the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) have been awarded the 2021 German AI Prize Innovation Award. The German AI Prize ("Deutscher KI-Preis"), awarded by WELT, a German daily newspaper, is the one the largest awards of its kind in Europe and is made up of three categories: the "Innovationspreis" (Innovation Award), the "Anwenderpreis" (User Award) and the "KI-Start-up-Preis" (AI Start-Up Prize). On awarding the 100,000 euro prize to CLAIRE and ELLIS, the jury noted that both networks were supported by outstanding scientists, and are expanding the European position in research based on human-centred values. Professor Holger Hoos (Leiden University), one of the co-founders and chair of the board of directors of CLAIRE said: "We are delighted to see our vision and work for European excellence in AI recognised so prominently, and to share this important award with our colleagues in ELLIS, many of whom are also affiliated with CLAIRE".

The Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (CLAIRE) has announced the launch of four new offices. These will be located in Zürich, Oslo, Paris and Brussels and will complement the existing offices in The Hague, Prague, Rome and Saarbrücken. There will be a launch roadshow beginning on 26 May which will take the form of a series of virtual events. For each event, the offices will invite national and international speakers, including government representatives and panellists from various areas of AI, to talk about topics related to the designated focus area of the respective office. Each CLAIRE Office has its own focus in supporting work on current topics around European and human-centred AI research, AI for good and AI for all.

The 390 labs and institutions that form the CLAIRE Research Network are committed to working together towards realising the vision of CLAIRE: European excellence across all of AI, for all of Europe, with a human-centred focus. Over 22,000 people work for the groups and institutions that form the CLAIRE Research Network in 36 countries (properly accounting for overlap between groups). Associated research groups and institutions can be seen here. To join the CLAIRE Research Network, first sign your support for CLAIRE, and then contact us at network@claire-ai.org to request the application form. To apply, we require that the lab, research group or institution be part of a not-for profit organisation that conducts research in AI, and regularly publishes that research, and have its own working website (not that of a larger entity of which it is part).

CLAIRE, the Confederation of Laboratories for AI Research in Europe, launched its COVID-19 Initiative in March 2020 as the first wave of the pandemic hit the continent. Its objective was to coordinate volunteer efforts from its members to contribute to tackling the effects of the disease. The taskforce was able to quickly gather a group of about 150 researchers, scientists and experts in AI organized into seven topic groups: epidemiological data analysis, mobility data analysis, bioinformatics, medical imaging, social dynamics monitoring, robotics, and scheduling and resource management. We brought you a comprehensive article about the activities of this initiative in one of last month's AI for Good series posts. You can read more about the outcomes and experience of this bottom-up approach in the article: The CLAIRE COVID-19 Initiative: a bottom-up effort from the European AI community.

CLAIRE, the Confederation of Laboratories for AI Research in Europe, launched its COVID-19 initiative in March 2020 as the first wave of the pandemic hit the continent. Its objective is to coordinate volunteer efforts of its members to contribute to tackling the effects of the disease. The taskforce was able to quickly gather a group of about 150 researchers, scientists and experts in AI organized in seven topic groups: epidemiological data analysis, mobility data analysis, bioinformatics, medical imaging, social dynamics monitoring, robotics, and scheduling and resource management. Activities of these groups yielded multiple outcomes including a publicly released resource on COVID-19 related data for drug-repurposing; the development the COVID-19 Infodemic Observatory to track spread of misinformation in social media and tools for the diagnosis based on CT scans using High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms. The latter was the catalyst for establishing a partnership between CLAIRE, the Italian National Inter-University Consortium for Informatics (CINI) and the Associazione Big Data (ABD) to provide HPC-enabled AI technologies to our network members.

In February this year, the European Commission released a white paper entitled: On Artificial Intelligence – A European approach to excellence and trust. With the public consultation phase on this document now closed, CLAIRE (Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe) have published their response, which largely endorses the EC plans. CLAIRE note that the plans and actions outlined in the EC white paper are closely aligned with their vision for European excellence in human-centred AI. One idea they believe has considerable potential is the concept of a CERN-inspired "lighthouse centre" that will bring together top researchers from across Europe and around the world. Holger Hoos, Professor of Machine Learning at Leiden University, The Netherlands, and Chairman of the Board of CLAIRE said "The white paper offers a compelling blueprint. Now, important details need to be filled in, for example on how to balance supporting excellence within the European AI ecosystem along with a broader network, whose members are of key importance for reaching critical mass and ensuring global impact."

There is an interesting move underway to establish a pan-European AI research federation - a sort of decentralised CERN for AI. From their website: "CLAIRE is an initiative by the European AI community that seeks to strengthen European excellence in AI research and innovation. To achieve this, CLAIRE proposes the establishment of a pan-European Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe that achieves "brand recognition" similar to CERN." "The CLAIRE initiative aims to establish a pan-European network of Centres of Excellence in AI, strategically located throughout Europe, and a new, central facility with state-of-the-art, "Google-scale", CERN-like infrastructure – the CLAIRE Hub – that will promote new and existing talent and provide a focal point for exchange and interaction of researchers at all stages of their careers, across all areas of AI. The CLAIRE Hub will not be an elitist AI institute with permanent scientific staff, but an environment where Europe's brightest minds in AI meet and work for limited periods of time. This will increase the flow of knowledge among European researchers and back to their home institutions."

Faculty and staff from several schools at Carnegie Mellon University are joining forces in an effort to accelerate the science of Artificial Intelligence. University leaders said they hope that by pulling together more than 100 faculty through the creation of CMU AI, it will maintain the university's role as a leader in the field. CMU School of Computer Science dean Andrew Moore said the "confederation" of faculty and students from various disciplines, which will allow the school to offer what he calls "full stack" education and research. "That means [the students] need to be able to hang out and work on projects in labs not just with the technology experts on specific parts of AI, like machine learning or computer vision, but they have seen examples of putting everything together," Moore said. Moore said the university has been able to build great AI systems that combine technologies from several different disciplines.