Sustainability to receive increased attention at FCAI
Associate professor Laura Ruotsalainen becomes a new member of FCAI’s steering group – starts to advance sustainability-related goals in AI research.
Image: Juha Tuomi / Rodeo
Associate professor Laura Ruotsalainen from the University of Helsinki has been chosen as a member of FCAI’s steering group. In her new role, Ruotsalainen will look for, bring together, and advance FCAI research that has the potential to support sustainable development goals.
Ruotsalainen is happy about the attention the topic field has received, both at FCAI and in society at large.
”There is a lot to fix in the world from this perspective. Luckily these topics, which have long been known to be important, are gradually receiving the attention they deserve.”
Along with the new nomination, professor Teemu Roos, who is in charge of FCAI’s education program, leaves the steering group. His role as leader of the FCAI education program will not change though, nor will the relevance of his field be diminished. On the contrary, the state of education at FCAI is currently considered to be in such a good state that support is needed elsewhere.
”For instance, the Elements of AI course has become extremely popular”, Ruotsalainen says.
“Sustainability themes, on the other hand, have so far not been contemplated quite as extensively.”
Ruotsalainen is an associate professor both at the Department of Computer Science and at Helsus (Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science). The latter gives her a firm foundation for developing FCAI’s operations from a sustainability perspective.
Ruotsalainen is also currently in the process of founding a new Highlight Program for FCAI, the goal of which is to find connections and bring together AI methods for the use of sustainability science. In addition, Ruotsalainen and Professor Ville Kyrki from Aalto University are launching a virtual laboratory for the development of traffic simulators that advance more environmentally friendly automatic driving. Kyrki coordinates FCAI’s research program Autonomous AI.