It has been a nerve-racking waiting period since the final interviews in May, but on Friday, September 23 we finally got the announcement. Integreat is one of Norway’s nine new Centers of Excellence funded by the Research Council (read the press release in Norwegian here). The calendar is now officially full until 2033.
Our mission is to radically transform machine learning (ML) by exploiting knowledge together with data to make methods that are more accurate, sustainable, trustworthy and explainable. In contrast to the data-centric paradigm of today’s machine learning, Integreat will develop theories, methods, models and algorithms that integrate general and domain-specific knowledge with data, laying the foundations of the next generation machine learning. This will be done by combining the mathematical and computational cultures, and the methodologies of statistics, logic and ML in completely new ways, to the benefit of science and society.
The appointment gives us €16 million for ten years. This makes it possible for us to assemble our unique team of world-class statisticians, logicians and machine learners. More precisely: 30 researchers from the University of Oslo, UiT The Arctic University of Norway and the Norwegian Computing Center (NR), together with international guest researchers and many PhD students and postdocs. Integreat is launching a major talent training program, as we are welcoming 80 PhD students and hundreds of master students to do their studies and research within Integreat.
Now we have to start planning and mobilizing for the launch on July 1, 2023. Not insignificant cuts have been made in the funding of all the new CoEs and we have to plan for some reduction of activities. I still feel confident in the mission we have been given. We are certainly going to transform machine learning.