AI Day 2024 + Nordic AI Meet

In brief:

360 Participants

78 Posters

27 Scientific Talks

6 Industry Talks

4 Keynotes

———

October 21–22, 2024
University of Helsinki Main Building (Aleksanterinkatu 5) (How to get there; note: there are multiple entrances to the Main Building, please use Aleksanterinkatu. Nearest exit at University of Helsinki metro station is F on Vuorikatu; nearest accessible entrance is A on Kaisaniemenkatu)

The largest gathering of AI researchers in the Nordics will be in October, when Finland’s eighth annual AI Day joins forces with Nordic AI Meet. The brightest young minds in machine learning and artificial intelligence will converge in Helsinki.

AI Day is the biggest annual event highlighting the leading AI research in Finland. The event brings together researchers, companies, students and the public sector involved in the fast-developing field of AI. AI Day promotes matchmaking, information sharing, and cross-border collaboration. This year, AI Day is co-located with Nordic AI Meet, with a joint program of scientific presentations, posters, socials and industry sessions.

The week of October 21 is an unofficial AI Week, with many other AI-related events in the Helsinki area: Contestations.AI (Oct. 23), AI Finland Gala (Oct. 23), Sujuva Suomi (Digital Agency) webinar (Oct. 24), FCAI AI and Quantum Computing SIG (Oct. 24), Finnish AI Region networking event (Oct. 25).

Photos from AI Day + Nordic AI Meet 2024 by Daolang Huang (Aalto University) and Kushtrim Visoka (NORA)

Registration

Please note that registration on-site must also be completed using the link below. Be ready to show the approved page from the registration form or the confirmation email at the registration desk. We cannot accept cash payments.

Student fee (until 29.9.): 100 €
Regular price (until 22.9.2024): 150 €
Late + on-site price (23.9.–22.10.2024): 300 €

Registration closed

Program overview

Sunday October 20, 17-20: Socializing event for PhD students, with sponsor pitches, at Molly Malone’s (Kaisaniemenkatu 1); separate registration for this has closed. Kindly sponsored by CSC and Silo AI.

Monday 21.10.

Keynotes and plenary sessions are in the Great Hall. Coffee breaks and lunches are in the adjacent foyers (next to the Great Hall). All other sessions are in the rooms listed in the links below.

8.30–9.00 Coffee
9.00–9.15 Opening
9.15–10.00 Keynote: Henry Tirri—Observations on AI by a Ghostrider (2024 edition)
10.00–10.30 Break
10.30–11.30 Scientific talks in parallel: track 1, track 2
11.30–12.30 Lunch
12.30–13.00 Finnish AI dissertation award (Chair: Ilkka Pölönen)
13.00–14.00 Scientific talks in parallel: track 1, track 2
14.00–14.45 Keynote: Qian Janice Wang—AI in smell and taste research: Challenges, opportunities, and the human element
14.45–16.15 Poster session and Coffee break (14.45-15.15)
16.15–17.00 Keynote: Robindra Prabhu—Beyond words - will transformers transform public services?
17.00–17.15 Wrap up of day 1
18.00–19.30 Helsinki City Reception at Helsinki City Hall, Pohjoisesplanadi 11-13
(note: Separate registration is required by October 14. An invitation email will be sent to those who have registered for AI Day + Nordic AI Meet.)

Tuesday 22.10.

8.45–9.15 Coffee
9.15–10.00 Keynote: Felix Stollenwerk—Open Source LLMs for Sweden, the Nordic countries and Europe
10.00–10.30 Break
10.30–11.30 Parallel tracks for scientific talks (PhD students) and industry talks
11.30–12.30 Lunch
12.30–13.00 Fireside chat with Peter Sarlin (Silo AI)
13.00–13.15 Break
13.15–14.15 Parallel tracks for scientific talks (PhD students) and industry talks
14.15–14.45 Coffee break
14.45–15.30 Panel discussion: Cultural diversity in the era of AI (Chair: Petri Myllymäki), with Qian Janice Wang, Felix Stollenwerk, Robindra Prabhu, Frédéric Pascal (DATAIA Institute) and Katja Mankinen (CSC)
15.30–15.45 Presentation of the AI Action Summit hosted by France on February 10-11, 2025: Constance Mickiewicz (French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs)
15.45–16.00 Closing ceremony

Program is subject to minor changes.

Speakers

Keynotes and panelists

Featured

Henry Tirri

Observations on AI by a Ghostrider (2024 edition)

Henry Tirri is the Chief Technology Officer of Nokia Technologies, responsible for technology strategy and R&D for the Technologies business group. With over 25 years of experience, he has led innovative R&D organizations in Public Technology and Communications companies across EMEA and the US. Before rejoining Nokia in 2023, he was CTO at InterDigital and Group CTO at Harman International, focusing on wireless, video, AI, and emerging technologies. Previously Henry held senior executive roles at Nokia, including CTO and Executive Vice President as well as Head of Nokia Research. His background includes professorships at the University of Helsinki, Stanford, and UC Berkeley, and he is currently an Executive in Residence at Aalto University School of Business.

Qian Janice Wang

AI in smell and taste research: Challenges, opportunities, and the human element

Experimental psychologist and computer scientist by training, Janice is an Associate Professor of Consumer Behaviour at the University of Copenhagen. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on multisensory flavour perception and eating behaviour, in order to gain a deeper understanding of why people eat what they do, and to encourage behaviour change for a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. Janice completed her PhD studies at Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford, and holds a master’s degree from the MIT Media Lab. Her research areas spans interaction design, experimental psychology, and sensory science. She works with all food products but has a special interest and expertise in wine.

Robindra Prabhu

Beyond words - will transformers transform public services?

Robindra Prabhu serves as a senior data scientist at NAV, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration. He holds a PhD in particle physics and has experience applying machine learning techniques to data streams at CERN. Additionally, he has expertise in tech policy and assessing the societal impact of new technologies. At NAV, he heads up a team operating at the crossroads of technology, law, and ethics, with aim to integrate techniques and methodologies that may facilitate a responsible deployment of AI in the public sector.

Felix Stollenwerk

Open Source LLMs for Sweden, the Nordic countries and Europe

Felix Stollenwerk is a Senior Research Scientist in Natural Language Understanding at AI Sweden. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics and has played a key role in the development of Swedish language models in recent years. As part of multiple European initiatives, his current focus is on training multilingual and multimodal open source models.

Peter Sarlin

(fireside chat)
Peter Sarlin is the co-founder of Silo AI, Europe’s largest private AI lab, and a Professor of Practice at Aalto University, specializing in machine learning and AI. With a PhD in machine learning, he has a rich academic background that spans roles as a tenured professor, visiting professor and research associate at institutions like Imperial College London, London School of Economics, University of Technology Sydney, Goethe University Frankfurt, University of Pavia, Stockholm University, IWH Halle, and University of Cape Town. Peter's expertise is further recognized by his former roles as Vice Chair of the IEEE Computational Finance and Economics Technical Committee and the IEEE Analytics and Risk Technical Committee. His professional journey includes tenures at the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, among others.

Frédéric Pascal

(panelist)
Frédéric Pascal is a full professor at CentraleSupélec and the director of the DATAIA Institute, Paris-Saclay University, France. He received a PhD in signal processing from the University of Paris Nanterre in 2006. Since 2019, he has coordinated the activities in Artificial Intelligence at CentraleSupélec and is the Givaudan chair on data sciences. Since 2017, he has been on the executive committee of the DATAIA Institute as the program coordinator. He is the author/coauthor of more than 200 papers in the top journals and conferences in Signal and Image Processing, Statistics and Machine Learning.

Katja Mankinen

(panelist)
Katja Mankinen is a data scientist at CSC - IT Center for Science, engaged in diverse RDI projects and contributing to AI development. She holds a PhD from Lund University, Sweden, on searching for new physics at CERN.

Industry session speakers on october 22

Featured

Sebastian Björkqvist

AI Team Lead,
IPRally Technologies Oy

Topic: Optimizing Patent Searching by Leveraging Graph Representations and Examiner Citations

Marko Karttunen

Dr., Data Analytics Consultant,
City of Espoo

Topic: Building a Smarter City: Data and AI Initiatives in Espoo.

Ville Kyrki

Professor, Intelligent Robotics,
Aalto University/FCAI

Topic: A success story of academic and industrial cooperation (together with Jose Luis Peralta)

Mikael Mohtaschemi

Dr., Data Team Lead,
Betolar Oy

Topic: From facilitating material research to enabling AI at the core: Case Betolar

Karoliina Partanen

Director,
AI Finland

Topic: How to make Finland debt-free and turn all the industrial companies to tech companies by means of AI by 2030?

Jose Luis Peralta

Dr., CTO,
GIM Robotics

Topic: A success story of academic and industrial cooperation (together with Ville Kyrki)

Sara Wickström

Professor,
University of Helsinki, Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine and Research

Director,
Multivision Diagnostics

Topic: Multimodal image analysis for cancer diagnostics

Finnish AI dissertation award

Featured

Sebastian Szyller

PhD from Aalto University, 2023.
Thesis: Ownership and Confidentiality in Machine Learning

Call for scientific presentations

The call for scientific submissions in AI, machine learning, NLP, robotics and applications of AI is closed. There are two tracks for submissions: Doctoral Candidates/Doctoral Researchers, and Postdoctoral and Senior Researchers. PhD students and researchers from Nordic countries are encouraged to apply. Further information and submissions are on the EasyChair site.

Call for industry presentations

AI Day’s traditional Industry & Society session will be on Tuesday October 22. This is an excellent opportunity for recruitment, networking, societal impact and forming collaborations across industry and academia. We invite representatives from Nordic industry and public sector to submit presentation proposals that address the following topics:
Successful Industry-Academia Collaboration: Case Examples
Share your experiences and success stories of collaborative projects between industry and academic institutions. Highlight how these partnerships have led to impactful AI solutions, technology transfer, or joint research endeavors.
Research-Based Applications of AI within Industry
Present applications of novel AI techniques in real-world industrial settings. Whether it’s optimizing supply chains, enhancing customer experiences, or AI-assisted processes, we want to hear about your innovative research outcomes.
Relevant Topics for Both Industry and Academia
Beyond the specific cases, we encourage submissions on broader themes that resonate with both industry practitioners and academic researchers. These might include ethical considerations, solving regulatory challenges, workforce development, or emerging trends in AI.
There are six 20-minute presentation slots available. There is a moderate participation fee that all the participants, including the speakers of the event, are expected to pay at registration to cover the costs of the event. Submit your industry presentation proposal, including an abstract of no more than 300 words, through this link by May 31, 2024.
More information from FCAI’s Industry & Society program manager, terhi.kajaste@aalto.fi

AI Day is an annual event organized by the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence FCAI. AI Day 2024 is co-organized with Nordic AI Meet and the Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society and is supported by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT. The city of Helsinki is also supporting the event by offering a city reception and the University of Helsinki by providing the conference venue.