Labs

An ICAI Lab is a research collaboration between one or multiple industrial, governmental or not-for-profit partner(s) on the one hand and one or multiple knowledge institute(s) on the other hand.

• ICAI Labs have a focus on AI technology. Research will be conducted with use-cases and, ideally, data and other evaluation resources from the sponsoring partner(s).
• ICAI Labs have an outward focus. That is, researchers work on specific research topics jointly determined by the sponsoring partner(s) and the knowledge partner(s).
• 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 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 this 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.
• The overall high-level goal of an ICAI Lab is usually a mixture of three factors: creating new knowledge, bringing the knowledge creation efforts of the sponsoring partner(s) to a higher level, and attracting and developing new talent.
• To be able to establish a flourishing ICAI Lab, the sponsoring partner(s) need to fulfil a number of requirements. They should (1) have a data pipeline in place, (2) employ highly skilled people to ensure that the outcomes of the Lab are integrated in the organization, and (3) have internal capacity (staff, facilities, …) to work with the researchers that make up the Lab.