Pader­born Uni­ver­sity part of European AI net­work of ex­cel­lence

Paderborn University becomes a founding member of the "ELLIS Unit NRW" research unit. ELLIS ("European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems") is a European network of excellence that brings together leading AI researchers and aims to strengthen Europe's international competitiveness in AI research. The network is organised in units, the so-called "ELLIS Units". The ELLIS Unit NRW, whose co-director is professor Dr Axel-Cyrille Ngonga Ngomo from Paderborn University, is the first and so far only unit that pools the research strengths of an entire federal state.

The aim of the units is to create local centres of scientific excellence in which researchers work together on an interdisziplinär basis and develop long-term research agendas. The units in Franconia, Grenoble and NRW strengthen the existing research ecosystems in countries already represented and expand national cooperation by involving several institutions within each country.

The North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) unit focuses on basic research in the field of machine learning (ML). The focus is on open, generalist base models. These are regarded as fundamental artefacts of machine learning with broad transferability to various application areas. Because they are completely open and reproducible, they are particularly trustworthy. "Our focus is on researching and developing explainable basic AI models whose results can be understood and verified by humans and AI agents. In this way, we contribute to the implementation of trustworthy AIs," explains Professor Ngonga from the Heinz Nixdorf Institute and the Institute of Computer Science at Paderborn University.

The scientist is dedicated to research at the interface between humans, machines and data. In particular, this includes AI methods and data-driven solutions for challenges such as explainable and responsible machine learning. Professor Ngonga leads numerous national and international research projects. He holds the professorship for "Data Science" at the university.

Artificial intelligence is one of Paderborn University's key research areas. Scientists from various disciplines are researching the foundations and effects of AI in order to make human-machine interaction usable for society. The central aim is to make such systems more transparent, easier to understand and therefore safer.

Find out more about AI research at Paderborn University on our topic page.

[This text was translated automatically]