Ten Finnish universities join forces to educate in AI

Proposed by the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI), the 10-university network will set out to create 100 new doctoral positions and produce high-level research in the domain of artificial intelligence, as well as to promote industry co-operation and the utilisation of artificial intelligence across scientific fields.

The doctoral programmes also undergird the national push to recruit top talent from abroad and encourage the use of artificial intelligence in business.

Arno Solin, assistant professor of machine learning at Aalto University, has been named director of the network of doctoral programmes. He lauded the programmes as a “fantastic initiative” to strengthen high-level research on the technology.

“We are very excited to build a world-class PhD programme with mobility, quality supervision and multi-disciplinarity in mind,” he stated.

Along with Aalto University, the consortium is made up of LUT University, Tampere University, the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Helsinki, the University of Jyväskylä, the University of Oulu, the University of Turku, the University of Vaasa and Åbo Akademi University.

A joint call for doctoral researchers will be announced shortly here, with the first cohort of students to embark on their research journeys in August 2024.

The project was allocated funding as part of a three-year, 255-million-euro project launched to pilot new practices in doctoral education.

In Finland, efforts have been launched also to utilise artificial intelligence in new applications, as well as to offer anyone interested an under-the-hood look at its current and potential applications.