# European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems

ELLIS - the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems - is a pan-European AI network of excellence which focuses on fundamental science, technical innovation and societal impact. Founded in 2018, ELLIS builds upon machine learning as the driver for modern AI and aims to secure Europe’s sovereignty in this competitive field by creating a multi-centric AI research laboratory. ELLIS wants to ensure that the highest level of AI research is performed in the open societies of Europe and consists of 43 sites, 16 research programs and a pan-European PhD & Postdoc Program.

## History

The organization was inspired by the Learning in Machines and Brains program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. ELLIS was first proposed in an open letter to European governments in April 2018, which stated that Europe was not keeping up with the US and China. It urged that European governments act to provide opportunities and funding for world-class AI research in Europe.
It was founded on 6 December 2018 at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).

## Board

The members of the board are:
* Serge Belongie (University of Copenhagen & Cornell University)
* Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi (Università degli Studi di Milano)
* Florence d'Alché-Buc (Télécom Paris)
* Nada Lavrač (Jožef Stefan Institute)
* Neil D. Lawrence (University of Cambridge)
* Nuria Oliver (ELLIS Alicante Unit Foundation | Institute of Humanity-centric AI)
* Bernhard Schölkopf (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems) Chairman
* Josef Sivic (Czech Technical University, École Normale Supérieure & INRIA)
* Sepp Hochreiter (Johannes Kepler University Linz) Board guest

## ELLIS sites

ELLIS is creating a network of research sites distributed across Europe and Israel. Currently, there are 43 sites in 17 countries. The long-term goal is to establish a set of world-class ELLIS institutes, each acting as the core of a local AI ecosystem.
ELLIS units :
| Name | Location | Director(s) |
| ELLIS unit Alicante | Alicante, Spain | Nuria Oliver |
| ELLIS unit Amsterdam | Amsterdam, Netherlands | Cees Snoek |
| ELLIS unit Barcelona | Barcelona, Spain | Carme Torras, Dimosthenis Karatzas |
| ELLIS unit Berlin | Berlin, Germany | Klaus-Robert Müller |
| ELLIS unit Cambridge | Cambridge, United Kingdom | Carl Edward Rasmussen, José Miguel Hernández-Lobato |
| ELLIS unit Copenhagen | Copenhagen, Denmark | Ole Winther |
| ELLIS unit Darmstadt | Darmstadt, Germany | Stefan Roth |
| ELLIS unit Delft | Delft, Netherlands | Frans Oliehoek |
| ELLIS unit Edinburgh | Edinburgh, United Kingdom | Ivan Titov |
| ELLIS unit Freiburg | Freiburg, Germany | Frank Hutter |
| ELLIS unit Genoa | Genoa, Italy | Lorenzo Rosasco, Massimiliano Pontil |
| ELLIS unit Graz | Graz, Austria | Wolfgang Maass |
| ELLIS unit Haifa (Technion) | Haifa, Israel | Shie Mannor |
| ELLIS unit Heidelberg | Heidelberg, Germany | Oliver Stegle |
| ELLIS unit Helsinki | Helsinki, Finland | Samuel Kaski |
| ELLIS unit Jena | Jena, Germany | Markus Reichstein, Joachim Denzler |
| ELLIS unit Lausanne (EPFL) | Lausanne, Switzerland | Pascal Frossard |
| ELLIS unit Leuven | Leuven, Belgium | Matthew Blaschko |
| ELLIS unit Linz | Linz, Austria | Sepp Hochreiter |
| ELLIS unit Lisbon | Lisbon, Portugal | Mario A. T. Figueiredo |
| ELLIS unit London (UCL) | London, United Kingdom | Arthur Gretton |
| ELLIS associate unit Lviv | Lviv, Ukraine | Rostyslav Hryniv |
| ELLIS unit Madrid | Madrid, Spain | Pedro Larrañaga |
| ELLIS unit Manchester | Manchester, United Kingdom | Magnus Rattray |
| ELLIS unit Milan | Milan, Italy | Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi |
| ELLIS unit Modena (Unimore) | Modena, Italy | Rita Cucchiara |
| ELLIS unit Munich | Munich, Germany | Daniel Cremers, Fabian Theis |
| ELLIS unit Nijmegen | Nijmegen, Netherlands | Marcel van Gerven |
| ELLIS unit Oxford | Oxford, United Kingdom | Michael Wooldridge, Stephen Roberts, Yee Whye Teh |
| ELLIS unit Paris | Paris, France | Gabriel Peyré |
| ELLIS unit Prague | Prague, Czech Republic | Josef Sivic |
| ELLIS unit Potsdam | Potsdam, Germany | Ralf Herbrich, Sebastian Reich, Katharina Ladewig |
| ELLIS unit Saarbrücken | Saarbrücken, Germany | Bernt Schiele |
| ELLIS unit Sofia | Sofia, Bulgaria | Luc Van Gool |
| ELLIS unit Stuttgart | Stuttgart, Germany | Andreas Bulling |
| ELLIS unit Tel Aviv | Tel Aviv, Israel | Amir Globerson |
| ELLIS unit Trento | Trento, Italy | Nicu Sebe, Bruno Lepri |
| ELLIS unit Tübingen | Tübingen, Germany | Bernhard Schölkopf, Matthias Bethge |
| ELLIS Institute Tübingen | Tübingen, Germany | Bernhard Schölkopf |
| ELLIS unit Turin | Turin, Italy | Tatiana Tommasi |
| ELLIS unit Vienna (IST Austria) | Vienna, Austria | Christoph Lampert |
| ELLIS unit Warsaw | Warsaw, Poland | Tomasz Trzciński |
| ELLIS unit Zürich (ETH) | Zürich, Switzerland | Andreas Krause |

## Research programs

In addition to ELLIS units, a European network of top researchers working at locations throughout Europe is being established, organized into 14 ELLIS Programs. These Programs, directed by outstanding European researchers and including leading researchers as Program Fellows, focus on high-impact problem areas that have the potential to move the needle in modern AI.
The ELLIS Programs are inspired by the CIFAR Program model, and closely collaborate with the CIFAR LMB (Learning in Machines and Brains) Program. Each Program has a budget for 2-3 workshops/year to enable meetings of 10-15 Fellows plus guests for intensive scientific exchange. Workshops can be co-located with academic meetings (usually) held in Europe, or organised as stand-alone events, usually at (and with the support of) ELLIS unit sites.
ELLIS research programs :
| Name | Director(s) |
| ELLIS Health | Gunnar Rätsch, Oliver Stegle, Mihaela van der Schaar |
| ELLIS Robot Learning: Closing the Reality Gap! | Tamim Asfour, Aude Billard, Jan Peters |
| Geometric Deep Learning | Michael Bronstein, Taco Cohen, Max Welling |
| Human-centric Machine Learning | Plamen P. Angelov, Nuria Oliver, Adrian Weller |
| Interactive Learning and Interventional Representations | Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi, Andreas Krause, Bernhard Schölkopf |
| Machine Learning and Computer Vision | Bernt Schiele, Cordelia Schmid, Yair Weiss |
| Machine Learning for Earth and Climate Sciences | Gustau Camps-Valls, Markus Reichstein |
| Multimodal Learning Systems | Cees Snoek, Nicu Sebe |
| Natural Intelligence | Matthias Bethge, Y-Lan Boureau, Peter Dayan |
| Natural Language Processing | André Martins, Iryna Gurevych, Ivan Titov |
| Quantum and Physics Based Machine Learning | Hilbert Johan Kappen, Riccardo Zecchina |
| Robust Machine Learning | Chris Holmes, Samuel Kaski, Yee Whye Teh |
| Semantic, Symbolic and Interpretable Machine Learning | Volker Tresp, Kristian Kersting, Paolo Frasconi |
| Theory, Algorithms and Computations of Modern Learning Systems | Francis Bach, Philipp Hennig, Lorenzo Rosasco |

## PhD & Postdoc Program

The ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program supports excellent young researchers by connecting them to leading researchers across Europe and offering a variety of networking and training activities, including summer schools and workshops. ELLIS PhDs and postdocs conduct cutting-edge curiosity-driven research in machine learning or a related research area with the goal of publishing in top-tier conferences in the field.
There are two tracks within the ELLIS PhD & Postdoc Program: the academic track and the industry track. These tracks have separate requirements for admission and criteria for activity during the appointment, but otherwise offer the same benefits, network and resources to the applicant.
Academic track
PhD students and postdocs in the academic track strive for international collaboration as they partner with two European academic institutions in their research. These candidates are supervised by two advisors from different European countries: one of the advisors must be an ELLIS fellow/scholar or unit faculty; the other advisor should be an ELLIS fellow, scholar, unit faculty or member. PhDs and postdocs in the program visit the exchange institution for min. 6 months (the partitioning of this time is flexible). Normally, the exchange is partially sponsored by the exchange institution; students can also apply for the ELISE mobility grant to support their exchange.
Industry track
The industry track is open to PhD and postdoc candidates that will be part of a collaboration between an academic institution and an industry partner, and will spend time conducting research at the industry partner during their PhD or postdoc. The candidate will spend a minimum of 50% of their time at the academic institution, and at least 6 months (cumulative) with the industry partner.
For this track, both advisors may be located in the same country. One advisor will represent the academic institution and the other the industry partner. One advisor must be an ELLIS fellow/scholar or unit faculty. The second advisor can be an ELLIS fellow, scholar, member, unit faculty OR it is also possible for the second advisor to join if they have co-authored a paper with the applying student as a result of their collaboration, in a top-tier venue in machine learning or related sub-fields (details here).
Calls and admissions: There is a yearly central call for applications in fall, which will be announced on the ELLIS website. Admission to the program is competitive. For reference, about 5-10% of eligible applicants are accepted via the central call. The next chance to apply via the central recruiting is in fall 2024. Nomination to the program (for students who already started their PhD with ELLIS faculty) is possible year-round.