LUMLIS - The Lisbon ELLIS Unit | People | Structure | Activities | Corporate Supporters | Contact

Lisbon Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems

We are pleased to announce the creation of the Lisbon Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems (LUMLIS), a unit of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), hosted at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) of the University of Lisbon (UL).
Instituto Superior Técnico

Overview

Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) is the leading engineering school in Portugal, part of the University of Lisbon. The Lisbon Unit for Learning and Intelligent Systems was established as a new ELLIS unit, with a two-fold mission aligned with the principles and goals described in the ELLIS open letter:
  • Boosting collaborative research and higher education in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in Portugal and Europe;
  • Empowering AI researchers to become active agents in maximizing the social and economic impacts of ML&AI in Europe and the world.

Vision

The vision of LUMLIS is to become the leading AI&ML research unit in Portugal and one of the top centers in Europe. LUMLIS aims at contributing actively to defining and executing the European AI strategy in the next decade, fostering the rapid development of AI technologies and promoting their use for addressing societal challenges and maximizing economic impact.

The research agenda of LUMLIS will bring together researchers from different AI&ML sub-fields with the common goal of designing human-interacting explainable AI systems: this involves a strong bet on human language technologies, social and cognitive robotics, and computational biology, well supported on the development of efficient and reliable ML systems with theoretical guarantees.

The unit will exploit synergies between these areas towards the unified goal of designing AI systems that interact seamlessly with humans, learning from them and for them. To this end, LUMLIS will aggregate researchers who are all faculty members at IST and affiliated with non-profit research centers associated with IST: Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores (INESC-ID), Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), and Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR-Lisboa).

Organisational Structure

The organizational structure of LUMLIS is currently as follows: The association between faculty members and LUMLIS research areas is as follows:

Activities and Events

The members of LUMLIS are actively involved in a number of seminar series and reading groups, as well as collaborative research projects (e.g., the Center for Responsible AI) being executed within IST and and within the non-profit research centers to which they are affiliated. Examples of ongoing reading groups include the LUMLIS reading groups at INESC-ID, focusing on Machine Learning and on Speech and Natural Language Processing. Some of the recent and/or key events are listed next, while past events are listed on a separate page.

Girls in AI

The Girls in AI project aims to share the paths of former and current Técnico students who followed a career in Artificial Intelligence (AI), showing the endless career opportunities in this area and inspiring more girls to follow them. You can check the media coverage for the project, or the videos featuring several of our brightest students/alumnae talking about their work and what inspires them.

Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School (LxMLS)

The Lisbon Machine Learning Summer School takes place yearly at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). The school covers a range of machine learning topics, from theory to practice, that are important in solving natural language processing problems arising in different application areas. The 2024 edition will take place as an in-person event from July 11th to the 17th.

Seminar in Mathematics, Physics & Machine Learning

The IST seminar series Mathematics, Physics & Machine Learning — $(M \cup \Phi) \cap ML$ — aims at bringing together mathematicians and physicists interested in machine learning (ML) with ML and AI experts interested in mathematics and physics, with the goals of introducing innovative Mathematics and Physics-inspired techniques in Machine Learning and, reciprocally, applying Machine Learning to problems in Mathematics and Physics.

ELLIS Lisbon & Unbabel Seminars

The ELLIS Lisbon & Unbabel Seminars aim to provide, on a weekly basis, an outlet for discussion of research on Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing by researchers and students all over the world. The seminars are open to the public, taking place by 6pm Lisbon Time on Mondays.

Talking Robotics

Talking Robotics is a series of virtual seminars that aim to promote reflections and dialogues about Robotics and its interaction with adjacent fields. Talking Robotics happens virtually and bi-weekly, i.e., every other week, allocating 30 min for presentation and 30 min for Q&A and networking.

OLISSIPO Twin Seminars

These seminars, organized within the context of the OLISSIPO project, comprise two short presentations by one researcher from Lisbon and one from a twin international institution working on similar topics. The seminars are open to everyone interested, and they include a discussion to further promote the interaction between all the participants.

Lecture Series in the ELLIS Network

ELLIS is represented by a network of 42 sites across Europe. Many of these sites, including also the Lisbon Unit, regularly organize distinguished lecture series promoting cutting-edge AI research of renowned experts and giving the audience a chance to ask questions and connect with top-notch researchers. Find an overview of the different initiatives here and visit the units’ webpages for more information on upcoming sessions. Many of the talks can be joined online.