Theme

This workshop aims to initiate tangible actions supported by ELIAS and ELISE to empower the next generation of talent, establish foundational models, and foster startups. Key measures the projects seek to align on include an annual meeting on open source foundation models and sciencepreneurship, a European graduate project programme, a pan-EU incubation programme, and a call for sciencepreneur fellows and units akin to the  European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) network’s calls for fellows and units.

Location

Our venue is the NH Collection Frankfurt Spin Tower Hotel, Frankfurt, Germany.

Programme

DAY 1 (Wednesday, February 7th)

12:00-13:00 Registration & Coffee

13:00-13:15 Official Start of Workshop & Welcome by Matthias Bethge (Tübingen AI Center & ELLIS Fellow)

Part I: The Future of Open-Source Foundation Models

• 13:15-14:50 Speakers: Yann LeCun (Meta), Katharina Frey (Swiss Foreign Ministry & ICAIN), Laura Morselli (CINECA & EuroHPC), Jenia Jitsev (LAION-ELLIS Member)

14:50-15:30 Coffee break

• 15:30-17:00 Speakers: Ce Zhang (Together AI), Samuel Weinbach (IPAI Aleph Alpha), Daniel Naeff (Swiss AI),
• 17:00-18:00 Open discussion on Annual Meeting for Open Source community (e.g. AI+X pre-event on the 2nd or integrated on the 4th) starting with a few more initial spotlight presentations (Hilde Kühne, Robin Rombach, Mario Fritz – ELLIS Fellow) Matthias Bethge (Moderator)

18:00-20:00 Joint dinner

Part II: Can Europe & academia reinvent innovation?

The urgency of foundational solutions aimed at sustainability and building healthier societies could provide an opportunity for Europe and academia to pioneer a new path to innovation.

20:00-20:45 Intro about ELIAS and briefing on ELIAS measures (Nicu Sebe – ELIAS Coordinator & ELLIS Fellow):

1. Sciencepreneur School & TTSS (Arnout Devos & Gregor von Dulong)
2. Hackathon (Georg Martius & Tomasz Trzcinski – ELLIS Members)
3. Pioneer Award (Michael Pfeiffer – ELLIS Member)
4. Pan-European Accelerator (Isabelle Siegrist & Daniel Naeff)
5. European graduate project program & call for sciencepreneur fellows and units (Matthias Bethge)

20:45 Time for open discussions at the hotel bar

 DAY 2 (Thursday, February 8th)

09:00-09:05 Welcome (Matthias Bethge)

• 09:05-09:20 Gregor von Dulong: “Learnings from building and scaling entrepreneurship education at HPI”
• 09:20-09:30 Wieland Brendel (ELLIS Scholar): “Polybot”
• 09:30-10:00 Isabelle Siegrist: “Building a pan-European Accelerator”.

10:00-12:00 Break out groups on:

1. How to build the ELIAS Innovation Alliance (EIA), define the narrative and set up a call for sciencepreneur fellows, units, graduation projects (Matthias Bethge & Arnout Devos)?
2. How to set up an annual meeting for AI (Daniel Naeff & Wieland Brendel)?
3. How to set up a Pan-EU incubation program for AI Startups? (Isabelle Siegrist)

12:00-13:30 Joint lunch

13:30-16:00 Further spotlight presentations:

• Steffen Schneider (KI macht Schule)
• Le Viet from (La Famiglia)
• Beyza Ermis (Cohere AI)
• Presentation and discussion of break out group results.
• Discussion of White paper