U Bremen Research Alliance at the ECAI-2023 in Kraków

With 20 workshops and tutorials, ECAI 2023 kicked off on the campus of Jagiellonian University in Kraków on September 30th. The ECAI Organization committee welcomed over 1,000 attendees at the opening reception on October 1st and initiated the main conference at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre.

In total, over 2,000 papers were submitted and evaluated by 1,568 reviewers, setting an ECAI record. 390 papers were accepted, resulting in an acceptance rate of 24 %. The authors of these papers were given the opportunity to introduce their work in an oral presentation of 15 minutes followed by a poster session. The topics were diverse, varying from machine learning and natural language processing, to data mining for data science and AI for social good.

During his keynote speech on “Democracy and the Pursuit of Randomness”, Professor Ariel Procaccia from Harvard University addressed a topic that is currently under discussion in Germany as well: The AI-supported composition of citizen-occupied advisory committees, such as the German citizens’ council “Nutrition in Transition” which advises on questions about food labeling and waste. Professor Procaccia and his team have developed a method to improve representativeness.

At least as important as the scientific discussion was the personal exchange between the European researchers, but also among many participants from North and South America, Asia and the Arab region. The gala dinner in one of the oldest salt mines in the world and the coffee and lunch breaks during the conference provided many opportunities to for networking.

On the first floor of the ICE Krákow, conference participants were provided with delicious meals and exhibitors and sponsors introduced themselves at stands. Nine silver sponsors, including giants such as Amazon Alexa and HPE, as well as two bronze sponsors offered popcorn, coffee and discussions.

At the U Bremen Research Alliance exhibition stand, researchers were offered to send postcards to all over the world inviting their colleagues with the greeting “Let’s meet in Bremen 2026”. The offer was well taken on and, in addition to smiles and searching for analogue addresses on smartphones, also led to numerous conversations about Bremen as  science location. Moreover, participants showed great interest in subscribing to the  newsletter on the IJCAI-ECAI in Bremen (see here).

During the closing ceremony, Grzegorz J. Napela (ECAI Organizing Committee Chair) thanked everyone involved for the successful ECAI 2023 and invited the Organizing Committee of the ECAI 2024 to the stage. The 27th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence will take place October 19-24, 2024 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where the ECAI-conference will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Papers can be submitted until April 2024, further information at ecai2024.eu (link to https://ecai2024.eu/).