As project manager of ICAI Amsterdam, Jeanne Kroeger deals with the business and organizational side of the labs, occasionally receives delegates from abroad to talk about ICAI, and is now busy organizing the first physical social meetup on June 30^th for the Amsterdam location. Kroeger: ‘It is important to create environments where people can meet their colleagues in an informal setting. I hope that all ICAI cities can join this social event.’

Jeanne Kroeger is project manager of ICAI Amsterdam and before that she was community manager of Amsterdam Data Science. Kroeger has a Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Liverpool.

What is the idea behind the ICAI National Social Meetup on June 30?

‘The purpose of this social event is to have one moment where ICAI members across the whole country can come together at their location to meet their colleagues in an informal and relaxed way. The idea is that other ICAI cities will join in and that they will host their own physical meetup for all ICAI members involved in that city. Amsterdam and Nijmegen will host their own events. There will be a broadcast at the same time with a five-minute connection on screen with a few words from Maarten de Rijke, director of ICAI. Other than that, it is an informal gathering. It’s really an opportunity for everyone to meet and chat. It is accessible to all ICAI members, from junior, senior and support staff, and within academia, industry, non-profit and government. We will host the meetup from three to five pm, so it’s within working hours.’

Why is ICAI organizing social events like this?

‘I think there is a lack of community feeling in every organization right now. Because of covid, all the people who started in the last two and a half years have not had the opportunity to come into the office. In Amsterdam, for some people this event will be the first time they meet other ICAI members in person. All the labs focus on specific things, but there’s transferable knowledge across the labs. In my previous role for Amsterdam Data Science, I could see that some people were working on very similar topics, but had no idea about each other. It is important to create environments where people feel like they can come and meet their colleagues in an informal setting. The environment in which you work is so crucial. For me it’s almost more crucial than the content because it’s what gives me the energy and motivation to continue.’

How well do the people from the different ICAI Amsterdam labs know each other?

‘I recently had organized lunch for the ICAI Amsterdam lab managers. There were ten of us in the room and only two people really knew each other. The rest had never spoken to each other, while some of them have their offices maybe five doors down from each other. So there’s something to be said about creating more of a community in ICAI Amsterdam and the other hubs and then across those hubs.’

What should the ICAI community look like in four years?

‘I think ICAI should be a household name. The general knowledge about ICAI is starting to build. The ICAI labs have been producing incredible results in the last five years and have made incredible collaborations. We are forming a solid network of labs and the aim is to build more connections across the country. I’ve had meetings with delegates from other countries to talk about ICAI. The word is going out about ICAI!’

Which organizations from abroad visited you to talk about ICAI?

‘We had a delegation from Estonia and I’ve had conversations with large international companies. I think in four years it would be great for the ICAI format to be more standardized. The Netherlands is really well-positioned: it’s a great international hub, easy to get to and it has an amazing standard of living. We are at a point where new AI initiatives are coming out, and it would be great if we can make sure that we position all of these initiatives together, so that they are acting in the same direction as opposed to competing against one another. ICAI has really put itself on the right path to make the Netherlands an important research AI hub.’

What were the main questions these delegations came with?

‘A lot of them were amazed by the amounts of money the labs received for fundamental research. Their main question was basically how the ICAI labs managed to do that. You don’t see this willingness of companies to fund fundamental research in many other countries. To get a five-year commitment from companies, that’s just phenomenal.’

What will be the main challenge for ICAI in the future?

‘ICAI has got that nimbleness. It’s very agile and flexible. Prestigious organizations like the European ELLIS, the Royal Society in the UK or the KNAW in the Netherlands have become so large that things can start to move very slowly. ICAI is growing right now, but I hope it can keep that nimbleness. I think this is possible if ICAI keeps evaluating and keeps seeing what it needs to be.’

Would you like to get to know your fellow ICAI members and have a drink with them? Sign up for the ICAI National Social Meetup – Summer Drinks on June 30th!

It has been four years since ICAI kicked off and in the meantime ICAI has grown from 3 to 29 labs. How is ICAI doing so far? We take stock of the situation with a lab manager, a PhD student and the scientific director.

Efstratios (Stratis) Gavves is (former) lab manager of QUVA lab, co-director of QUVA and POP-AART ICAI labs, associate professor at University of Amsterdam and co-founder of Ellogon AI BV.

Natasha Butt is first year PhD student within QUVA lab, has a MA degree in Data Science and a BA degree in Econometrics.

Maarten de Rijke is the scientific director and co-founder of ICAI, professor of AI and Information Retrieval at the University of Amsterdam.

What was ICAI’s original purpose? Has that changed in the last four years?

Maarten: ‘The original vision was that we felt that more needed to be done to attract, train and create new opportunities for AI talent, while at the same time we wanted to work with a diverse set of stakeholders on shared research agendas. The underlying idea was that AI can make a positive contribution in lots of societal areas. We have been trying things out. And you learn by doing; that has been the mantra since day one and that will not change. One thing that is changing though, is that the first ICAI labs have matured and that there is a follow-up contract that is not just about attracting and training talent, but also about retaining talent. With the Launch Pad program we want to help the PhD students find their next opportunity in interesting places, ideally here in the Netherlands. Similarly, as PhD students begin to graduate from their lab, some of them have entrepreneurial plans. With the new Venture program we look at how we can help them connect to the right stakeholders and funding. So it’s still the same mission, but the instruments expand.’

ICAI has grown from 3 labs to 29 labs in the past four years. What is it like to work in a research lab with external partners?

Natasha: ‘What I really like is that you get to meet and collaborate with so many different researchers within industry. For a PhD student starting out this is really interesting and exciting. I can’t really weigh in on the negatives because we haven’t published a paper yet.’

Maarten: ‘Especially in labs where the non-academic partners don’t have a long tradition of research, it can be a challenge to identify good problems that matter academically and industrially. You need good problems that don’t need ten years to solve, but that also cannot be solved in three months. Aligning the horizons and expectations is something that needs attention.’

Stratis: ‘Working with external partners is inspiring and fruitful. The cornerstone for a successful relationship is managing expectations. Generally one could say that companies like stability and structure, while researchers in the university thrive with creative chaos. Finding a good balance between these two can bring great results. In fact, in my experience I have seen this work quite smoothly, because we have been lucky that the people involved are very conscious and open-minded.’

To what extent do universities and companies or governmental organizations need each other in developing AI that can make us more future-proof?

Maarten: ‘We see a slow change right now in the ownership of big challenges. It is no longer just governmental, academic, or industrial, but much more a shared ownership. We are coming to the realization that the best way to tackle climate, health, energy and logistics problems, is to go after these problems together. All of these big challenges are multi-stakeholder and multi-disciplinary. For example, when you’re working on computer vision, at some point you will run into some legal or ethical questions that are tough. Think of all the deep fakes. On the one hand these generative models are fantastic and creative, but there’s another side. An algorithm developer should hang out every now and then with people who bring a different perspective to the table.’

Natasha, you are from Great Britain. Stratis, you are from Greece. Are there initiatives like ICAI over there?

Stratis: ‘I think ICAI is a very successful experiment that will be followed, one way or the other, by other countries. We had some preliminary conversations in Greece and I think that there is interest for sure.’

Natasha: ‘In the UK I haven’t come across many things like ICAI. But when I studied at UCL in London, there were a lot of AI societies and entrepreneurship societies that would hold events and invite students from other universities. So there’s definitely an appetite for it. Especially in London there are a lot of hubs and all the universities are pushing it.’

Are there countries that were an inspiration for ICAI?

Maarten: ‘Yes, the Von Humboldt fellowships in Germany for example. And especially the attitude behind it was an inspiration for us: start with talent, bring the talent to the country, and then invest and create opportunities. We also saw the same attitude in France.’

Stratis: ‘The instrument that ICAI presents, is an innovation by itself. And this success will be broadcasted to other countries, because there is a need for it. This is how things will be working from now on: funding appears to be less expected from government structure and instead come from private initiative. People are searching for alternative sources of funding and I think that ICAI presents a fair way of doing this in such a way that both sides benefit.’

What are the plans for the next four years?

Maarten: ‘We are working on a large new program, funded by NWO, to expand ICAI with 17 new labs. I hope that by the end of this year we will have around 50 labs. Part of the plans is to expand to all academic cities. We would like to reach out and help people there to get going. Another thing is that our colleagues, whom we are heavily involved with in Nijmegen, have set up AI course programs for medical professionals. We are trying to see how we can do similar things, but then for other sectors like logistics and civil servants.’

Stratis: ‘My goal is to get Natasha and her lab mates graduate. And to attract more industries into the concept of ICAI, perhaps export it outside the Netherlands and maybe even to Greece. And of course, to keep doing top-notch research.’

Do you have questions for each other?

Natasha: ‘I would like to know what plans there are for the future. What sort of events do you hope to put on, especially from a PhD perspective?’

Maarten: ‘We want to organize as much as possible as the PhD students need. So we should listen to what would help you. The ICAI Launch Pad program helps PhD students who are towards the end of their PhD trajectory. But of course early stage PhD students have different needs, plans and questions. So we’d like to hear how we can help to make this a better experience. So far, we have put a lot of focus on sharing expertise and experiences, but of course there’s more to being an AI PhD student than that. You Natasha, and other PhD students, should be the ones that tell us.’

And where can she go with her ideas?

Maarten: ‘YaSuei Cheng, the ICAI community manager, can help organize things or find the right people to get something going. And here in Amsterdam we have quite some experience in setting up internships. But I’m sure that there are many things that we’re not seeing, so please let us know.’

Stratis: ‘I was wondering, what is the idea on how to get new spin-offs into existence? Is there guidance there? Let’s say that Natasha comes up with a great idea that her lab partner Qualcomm is not interested in. What should she do?’

Maarten: ‘We’ve teamed up with an initiative called TTT-AI. This organization is all about tech transfer and helping people finding out if there’s a market for their ideas. This initiative works around the whole country. It wants to connect the local ecosystem with local researchers, but also share systems across the country.’

The next ICAI Day on June 1^st will be about AI entrepreneurship. Stratis, as co-founder of Ellogon AI, you know a thing or two about this. What is it like to launch a company from lab to the market?

Stratis: ‘I’m still learning, so I can’t tell you the full story from A to Z, but maybe from A to F. It is a lot of fun actually. We are the new generation of academics. It is expected, or at least appreciated, if we look at possibilities like this. But I’m not sure that everyone will be cut out for it. In a way we are working double jobs. It’s really rewarding though in many ways. What I found really interesting, is that so many academics and researchers already have moved to industry. And maybe there is something beyond the obvious argument that people only go there because there are better salaries. I can confirm that creating your own company, working on real problems and solving completely different issues, is really interesting.’

Natasha, how do you feel about making the move to industry in the future?

Natasha: ‘I’m pretty open-minded. It would be really nice and useful to hear the experience of people who went to industry and people who stayed in academia. Doing internships would also help.’

Maarten, what would you advise PhD students in finding the next step?

Maarten: ‘I think it’s a great idea, like Natasha says, to try out a few internships. I generally recommend to go to a completely different team and work on different problems. A different experience helps you to shape your thinking about what you’d like to do next. Maybe even consider doing an internship with a NGO. The Red Cross for example has loads of interesting challenges.’

And what can be done to help researchers to set up AI startups?

Maarten: ‘Mentoring is always useful. To hear other voices and to speak with friendly but critical colleagues who can walk alongside you for a while and connect you to potential customers and challenging problems.’

Stratis: ‘Once you’re in a company, you’re living in borrowed time until you really make it. Learning how to run a company, while developing a product, can be hard. So one thing that can be done is to familiarize people with this aspect of entrepreneurship so that they can anticipate the difficulties. And there are so many things that can be quite easily solved that can still make a huge difference.’

Would you like to meet your fellow ICAI members? On June 1^st, the hybrid Summer Edition of the ICAI Day takes place. The theme of this edition is ‘AI Entrepreneurship: From the lab to the market’. Sign up!

In order to implement new AI technology in medical clinics in a sustainable way, close collaboration between the clinic and commercial parties is crucial, argues Rianne Fijten. ‘You need to make sure that if the grant money runs out, which it always does, the product that you built is not just lost.’

Rianne Fijten is one of the scientific directors of Brightlands Smart Health Lab, assistant professor and senior scientist of clinical data science at Maastro clinic.

Brightlands Smart Health Lab is a collaboration between Maastricht University, Brightlands Institute for Smart Society, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Maastro Clinic, Maastricht UMC+, ilionx and Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organization.

Could you tell me about the research happening in the lab? What makes this research unique?

‘What is interesting about our lab, is that we really go from technology to the clinic. That’s a concept I’ve not seen anywhere else. Usually a research group focuses on a very specific part of a pipeline, problem or societal issue. Within the lab we have three pillars: data infrastructure, data science and clinical implementation. It is a pipeline from start to finish: we set up the infrastructures to get the data out of the hospitals, extract the data, build AI models and then implement it into the clinic.’

‘Another important thing is that we are close to business. Getting data science into a medical clinic is difficult, but getting it into the clinic without a commercial party involved, is even more difficult. To make sure that the new techniques are supported and maintained, it is crucial to connect the clinic to commercial parties, because researchers will not sustain it after their research is done. They have other research to do.’

What is your personal mission within this lab?

‘My main focus is on the last pillar. Since AI is booming business, so many AI-models have been built. But what you see in healthcare is that implementing those in the clinic is the difficult part. So we try to implement clinically relevant tools, but also find out why research doesn’t end up in the clinic, and what the problems and issues are in that process.’

What kind of clinical needs are you addressing?

‘A good example is a decision aid for prostate cancer patients that we built with the company Patient Plus. As every treatment has different side effects, this tool gives patients the option to find their personal risks of getting side effects, based on their personal characteristics. Prostate cancer is an interesting choice for a decision aid tool, because this disease has a very high survival rate, which makes it possible for patients to choose between different treatments. Patients answer questions like ‘what is your age?’, ‘do you smoke?’ or ‘are you a diabetic?’ Those are all risk factors for incontinence for example. At the end the patient will get a visualization of their personal risks and learns about the disease along the ride. For this tool we have set up a collaboration with urologists that we know very well. And we then offered it to a company, under certain conditions of course, so that they can make sure it will be used in the clinic in the future.’

The lab collaborates with seven different partners. What is it like to work with so many partners?

‘It gives us a lot of flexibility. Working with this big pool of collaborators allows us to set up different alliances that are suited to answer a specific question or solve a specific problem.’

All nine PhD students of the lab are located physically at the partners and mentored by senior scientists at the partners. Why did you choose that approach?

‘In order to keep the collaborations alive and to keep the relationships good, it is important to work together, even if you don’t have a specific project that you are working on that very moment. I think it is very important to establish long-term relationships and by working together in supervision of these PhD students you achieve that.’

What do you want to have achieved in four years?

‘If anything comes out of our ICAI lab, I hope that it is raising more awareness about closer collaboration with the clinics and industrial partners. What we see a lot within the projects is that at first the people at the clinic don’t really see the need for or are a bit anxious to involve industrial parties. I don’t know why, I think it’s the non-profit versus for-profit problem. I hope that with the projects we are going to do within the ICAI lab, that this is one of the take-home messages that we can deliver. We are currently forming the bridge, and hopefully in the future they can keep finding each other without our help.’

On April 21, 2022, the Brightlands Smart Health Lab will talk about their current work during the lunch Meetup of ‘ICAI: The Labs’ on AI for Radiation Treatment in the Netherlands. Want to join? Sign up!