News | The heart of talent development in AI and digital innovation

This page collects updates and announcements from LAB42. Here you’ll find news about events, initiatives, collaborations and developments within the community.

While LAB42 is built around ongoing work and experimentation, some moments are worth sharing more formally. This section brings those updates together in one place.

Scroll down to see the latest news from inside LAB42.

LAB42 Community Spotlight: The Code to Change & Civic AI Lab in a €3.1M Project

Bringing together AI research, social impact expertise, and community voices to tackle complex real-world issues: it's exactly the kind of collaboration we believe in. The Code To Change and the Civic AI Lab - both part of the LAB42 ecosystem - are contributing to a newly awarded €3.1M NWO (Dutch Research Council) project. The project is led by the University of Twente and focuses on building inclusive urban resilience.

Advanced AI for surveillance robots

University of Amsterdam, TU Delft, TNO and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee are joining forces to develop AI for surveillance robots. The OpenBots consortium focuses on creating intelligent systems that can support security staff in their daily tasks.

LAB42 wins National Steel Award 2024!

LAB42 has won the National Steel Award in the Steel Reuse category out of 38 submissions. The jury praised the building for its high sustainability and future-proof ambitions.

Learning about AI and ChatGPT

The SME DataLAB42 recently hosted two Masterclasses on Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT for the attendees of the Data Expo 2024 at the Jaarbeurs conventional hall in Utrecht. The expo provided background on AI and ChatGPT specifically, and how it could be implemented in business. The event was supported by Preneurz, an organization that forges partnerships between educational institutions, SMEs, startups, spin-offs, and corporations at local, national and international levels to support SMEs.

New resident: Kaiko

Recently Data & AI company Kaiko joined the LAB42 community by hiring an office at LAB42. Kaiko bridges medical research and clinical application through the development and integration of multimodal foundation models in oncology. Welcome and good luck!

longform.ai receives funding to extract insights from audio data

Online conversations such as podcasts and webinars are growing explosively, and are an increasingly important source of information for analysts, researchers and business decision-makers. This creates a new challenge: with thousands of hours of conversations relevant to your job, extracting those elements that are truly relevant.

Science Park start-up raises $30 million to tackle climate change

Start-up CuspAI has raised $30 million to develop AI-driven materials for efficient CO2 capture. The company aims to use AI to create materials that can effectively capture and store CO2 from the atmosphere or chimneys. CuspAI was founded by Max Welling and British chemist Chad Edwards. Max Welling is Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Amsterdam, based at LAB42.

New Quantum programme at the Faculty of Science

A new Master's programme for the next generation of Quantum scientists will start in September 2024 at UvA’s Faculty of Science. The programme offers a research-based programme with a strong mathematical foundation. Quantum Computer Science (QuCS) leverages the unique expertise in Quantum computing and Quantum information theory present at the Faculty of Science.

'This room makes me feel calm'

LAB42 is almost open for two years now. It was designed to be sustainable, energy neutral, smart and people friendly, but what are the actual experiences of people using this building? UvA PhD researcher Shruti Rao, who makes a strong plea for more user-centred research, aims to find out.

Reducing bias in medical AI solutions

The use of AI in healthcare will grow in the coming years. However, medical AI solutions do not yet work optimally for every population. Due to bias, a systematic error in machine learning models. Researchers of the Informatics Institute at LAB42 have investigated how, for instance, the documentation of datasets can provide improvements for detecting and mitigating bias.

Language & Music Cognition group organises musical experiments for children

As a university, we not only teach students or conduct research, we also want to share knowledge and insights. That is why PhD students Charlotte and Marcel from the Language & Music Cognition group recently traveled to Zutphen, to host activities at the Expedition NEXT science festival. The event is dedicated to enthusing children about science. This year more than 6000 children attended.

'We really want to attract the best people, both international and national talent'

Paola Grosso has become the new scientific director of the Informatics Institute (IvI) since 1 March. Why did she take on this role and what goals does she have for the institute in the coming period?

New ASCII art in our Intelligent Robotics Lab!

Since last week we have a new piece of ASCII art in our Intelligent Robotics Lab. It’s a portrait of Hiroshi Ishiguro (石黒浩)! Prof. Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro is the founder of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, Japan. He is well-known for his work in developing humanoid robots that closely resemble humans in appearance and behavior.

LAB42 receives honourable mention at Architectenweb awards ceremony!

The Architectenweb awards were presented on 8 November. An exciting evening for LAB42, as the building was nominated in the Educational Building of the Year category. The ITC faculty of the University of Twente won, but LAB42 received an honourable mention!

World Deaf Day: Prof. Floris Roelofsen connects deaf community with science

Today is World Deaf Day 2023. At the UvA we have a designated cross-faculty lab, that researches and develops innovations concerning Dutch sign language: SignLab. This year, the first-ever SignLab Open House was held, where the deaf community and UvA researchers met and talked about the current innovations. Professor Floris Roelofsen from the Institute of Logic, Language and Computation at LAB42 was present to highlight the need for research on sign language.

Multilingual language technology that goes beyond ChatGPT

In recent months, text generator ChatGPT has amazed the world with automatic writing of humanlike texts in all kinds of styles. The fundamental techniques of ChatGPT date from 2017, but it has scaled up computing power and training data to such an extent that this year’s results have astonished even experts in the field.

'Make the Netherlands a leader in responsible AI'

Investing in talent, a joint agenda and strong infrastructure are the basis for the Netherlands to take a leading role in responsible AI. That was the message from the Amsterdam AI coalition to State Secretary for Kingdom Relations and Digitalisation Alexandra van Huffelen and Wethouder Alexander Scholtes during the working visit to LAB42. Amsterdam AI is committed to promoting responsible AI development and application in the Netherlands.

UvA and NFI open forensic research lab 'AI4forensics'

Algorithms can support forensic experts. For example in speaker recognition, facial comparisons, and in tracing criminal money flows. In the AI4forensics lab that opened last week, four PhD students and a postdoc conduct research into artificial intelligence for forensics. The lab is a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) and is located in the ICAI - Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence at LAB42. Read the full article.

'There is a lot of interest to collaborate with Computational Social Science students'

Last September, a new Bachelor program 'Computational social science' was launched. Jacobijn Sandberg, director of the College of Informatics, talks about the how and why, and also about a second new Bachelor program that is in preparation: 'Science, Technology and Innovation'.

UvA and Bosch continue collaboration with new research lab

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) and technology company Bosch will be launching a new research lab together, expanding their existing cooperation as a result.