Lab Principles

Each lab follows ICAI principles, which form the core of the way of working in an ICAI lab. The focus in the lCAI Labs is on AI development in a shared agenda together with partners.

An ICAI lab is a collaboration with a focus on AI technology. This means the involved partners co-design the agenda, strategy and content in the lab. Ownership is shared in the labs. Together, the partners involved in a lab develop new state-of-the-art knowledge on a technical topic in the field of AI. Research will be conducted with use-cases and, ideally, data and other evaluation resources from the partner(s).

ICAI labs take external challenges as a starting point. That is, researchers work on specific research topics jointly determined by the partner(s) and the knowledge partner(s). The lab has a shared research agenda that is defined and maintained by the knowledge institute(s) and the partner(s) together.

An ICAI lab has a minimum size of 5 PhD students with a lab Manager (typically at the Assistant Professor level) and a governance structure. Additional staff may be part of the setup, such as software engineers, postdocs, research assistants, depending on the overall goals of the lab. The manageable size of a lab is max. 25 researchers.

The lifetime of an ICAI lab is 5 years. PhD students are hired for a 4-year period, but experience teaches us that it will not be possible to let them all start on the same day.

An important ingredient of ICAI labs is knowledge transfer. Within the lab it is a critical factor to make the lab and partnership a success. ICAI labs also take on responsibility to share knowledge, and organize events that help strengthen their local AI ecosystem. In addition, ICAI labs contribute to the national AI ecosystem.