AI4Life

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Kick-off meeting

Heidelberg, 25-26 October 2022

by Beatriz Serrano-Solano

AI4Life European project is a collaborative effort that brings together 10 partners from 8 different European countries. Those partners include 4 European Research Infrastructures, covering a broad scope of scientific use cases: marine biology (EMBRC), plant phenotyping (EMPHASIS), compound screening (EU-OPENSCREEN) and structural biology (Instruct). The project is funded with a budget of 4 million euros, which will be used to bridge the gap between the computational and life science communities. AI4Life will last for 3 years, during which time the team will work together to achieve the project’s objectives:
  1. Democratized availability of AI-based image analysis methods.
  2. Establish standards for the submission, storage and FAIR access.
  3. Simple model deployment, sharing, and dissemination through a new developer-facing service.
  4. Organize Open Calls and Challenges for image analysis problems.
  5. Empower common image analysis platforms with AI integration.
  6. Organizing outreach and training events i.e. image analysis courses/workshops and participation in international conferences.

AI4Life officially started in September and kicked off at the end of October 2022. During the kick-off meeting, experts from across Europe gathered in Heidelberg for two days, during which the participants actively engaged in discussions about the timeline, milestones, deliverables and work distribution among the partners, and agreed on a plan for the next few months. The team members are also committed to maintaining an open line of communication with the audience and keeping them informed of the project’s progress throughout the duration of the project. 

Overall, the team had a productive meeting, and we are excited to begin working together.  Thank you to all the organizers, speakers, and participants!

Program
Time Topic Speaker/s
09:00 – 09:10 Welcome Rachel Robinson-Lehtinen
09:10 – 09:40 Introduction to AI4Life & Euro-BioImaging ERIC John Eriksson
09:40 – 09:50 Interactions with other Horizon Europe funded projects Antje Keppler
09:50 – 10:55 Interactions with partner RIs Aastha Mathur, Davide de Cioccio, Roland Pieruschka,
Katja Herzog, Silke Schumacher
10:55 – 11:00 Coffee Break
11:00 – 11:30 Message from the European Commission Project Adviser Antonio Ventura
European Research Executive Agency
11:30 – 12:00 EOSC and costing for cloud resources Peter Maccallum
CTO ELIXIR
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch & Group Photo
13:00 – 13:25 Project administration, timelines & reporting (WP1: Project Management) Rachel Robinson-Lehtinen
Appointment of the Executive Board
Appointment of the Open Calls Selection Committee
13:25 – 15:30 Introduction of Scientific Topics Anna Kreshuk & Florian Jug
WP2: User services & computing infrastructures Wei Ouyang
WP3: Direct support Arrate Muñoz
Discussion Anna Kreshuk & Florian Jug
15:30 – 15:40 Coffee Break
15:40 – 17:45 WP4: Contributing services Ricardo Henriques
WP5: Data, model & computing standards Matthew Hartley
WP6: Support for open calls, challenges & new services Florian Jug
WP7: Communication, outreach & training Aastha Mathur, Marianna Childress-Poli
Discussion Anna Kreshuk & Florian Jug
19:15 Dinner
Time Topic
09:00 – 12:30 Workshop on technical discussions / Pressing issues raised in Day 1
AcknowledgementS