50 attendees from the Norwegian AI research community gathered in Tromsø, Norway for the 2025 Norwegian AI Symposium
More than 50 attendees from the Norwegian AI research community gathered in Tromsø, Norway for two days of insightful presentations, interactive technical sessions, and scientific and social interactions.
More than 50 attendees from the Norwegian AI research community gathered in Tromsø, Norway for two days of insightful presentations, interactive technical sessions, and scientific and social interactions.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Advisor at SFI Visual Intelligence
The aim of the 2025 Norwegian AI Society (NAIS) Symposium was to bring together AI researchers and practitiners from Norway and Scandinavia to present ongoing work and discuss future directions of artificial intelligence (AI). This year's event was jointly organized by NAIS, SFI Visual Intelligence, and The UiT Machine Learning Group.
After a light lunch and warm welcome by organizers Kerstin Bach and Robert Jenssen, the event kicked off with a stimulating Day 1 program, featuring a keynote by Visual Intelligence PI Elisabeth Wetzer, three technical sessions, the Dissertation Award 2024 presentation, and a refreshing symposium dinner at Maskinverkstedet.
Wetzer's keynote gave the attendees an overview of commonly used techniques from classic image analysis and learning-based approaches, their limitations, and how to efficiently combine tools from both worlds.
The technical sessions featured both full papers and position papers on different topics related to AI, such as visual question answering, AI for digitalized carbon storage, and machine ethics.
This year's Dissertation Award 2024 presentation was given by Mina Young Pedersen—Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Amsterdam and the Dissertation Award 2024 winner. Her thesis—titled "Malicious Agents and the Power of Few: On the Logic of Abnormality in Social Networks"—draws on computer science, formal logic, and social science to explore urgent questions, such as how can we formally reason about malicious agents in social networks, and how can such reasoning be implemented computationally.
The second and final day of the symposium maintained Day 1's high caliber with a stimulating program, including keynotes by Professors J. S. Marron and Keith Downing, the NAIS general assembly, the final technical session, and the NAIS poster session.
Marron's keynote discussed Data Integration via Analysis of Subspaces (DIVAS). DIVAS improves earlier methods using a novel random direction approach to statistical inference, and by treating partially shared blocks. Its usefulness was illustrated using mortality, cancer and neuroimaging data sets. Downing's keynote explored the origins and anatomy of natural and artificial neural networks as predictive mechanisms.
The NAIS poster session featured recently published work on different aspects on AI—offering an interactive venue for sharing the latest AI research.
Organizers Kerstin Bach and Robert Jenssen thank all who came to Tromsø to present ongoing work and discuss future directions in artificial intelligence.
"It was a delight to host, interact and learn with the Norwegian AI research community here at UiT. I wish to thank the organizing committee, the invited speakers, and session chairs for contributing to a very successful event!," Jenssen says.
"We were happy to once again gather our Norwegian AI colleagues! This year's symposium has been a great platform for seeing what the Norwegian AI research community is currently working on and for discussing recent AI-related work in Norway," Bach adds.
The 2025 NAIS Symposium was jointly organized by the Norwegian AI Society and the UiT Machine Learning Group. The Machine Learning group heads SFI Visual Intelligence, together with partners from the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Computing Center.
Registration for the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference 2026 is officially open. Early bird fees are available before December 1st 2025.
Det skal eksperter på kunstig intelligens, cybersikkerhet og juss fra UiT Norges arktiske universitet diskutere på Verdensteatret Kino den 17. september. Arrangementet er gratis og åpen for alle (Norwegian news article at uit.no)
The presentations from the Visual Intelligence Workshop on Foundation Models are now available on the Visual Intelligence YouTube channel.
Congratulations to Nikita Shvetsov for successfully defending his PhD thesis and achieving the PhD degree in Science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on August 27th 2025.
Det sa digitaliseringsminister Karianne Tung (Ap) da hun besøkte UiT Norges arktiske universitet i Tromsø for å lære mer om utdanning og toppforskning på kunstig intelligens ved universitetet (Norwegian news article at uit.no)
A new study shows how deep learning can achieve human-level performance in estimating uncertainty when classifying foraminifera (News story at EurekAlert.org)
Congratulations to Iver Martinsen and Durgesh Kumar Singh, who successfully defended their PhD theses at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on August 20th and 21st respectively.
Visual Intelligence brought together academia, industry, the institute sector, the Research Council of Norway, and Norwegian politics to discuss why and how Norwegian academia and industry should collaborate more closely to develop innovative artificial intelligence.
João Campagnolo is a PhD Candidate in the Neuroscience Department of the University of Copenhagen (KU). He visited SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from April to May 2025.
Students from EUGLOH partner institutions can now apply for an exclusive mobility scholarship worth 2 900 EUR for the NLDL 2026 Winter School. Application deadline October 3rd 2025
Visual Intelligence will be well represented at MICCAI 2025—one of the leading AI conferences on medical imaging and computer assisted intervention—with three recently accepted research papers.
Last week, we wished Aasland—accompanied by Political Advisor Munir Jaber and Senior Adviser Finn-Hugo Markussen—welcome to the Norwegian Computing Center (NR). One of the visit's goals was to showcase ongoing Visual Intelligence projects at NR.
Alba Ordoñez and Anders U. Waldeland presented ongoing work on seismic foundation models and an interactive seismic interpretation engine at EAGE Annual 2025 in Toulouse, France.
Østmo was invited to Abels tårn—one of the largest popular science radio shows in Norway—to answer listener-submitted questions related to artificial Intelligence (AI). The live show took place at Blårock Cafe in Tromsø, Norway on June 12th.
VI industry partner Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) received an Industrial PhD grant from the Research Council of Norway. The project will be closely connected to Visual Intelligence's "Earth observation" innovation area.
Visual Intelligence Researchers Amund Vedal and Arnt Børre Salberg recently presented ongoing Visual Intelligence research at a plankton-themed workshop organized by the Institute of Marine Research (IMR), Norway
We happily welcome Dennis Adamek, who recently started as a Doctoral Research Fellow at Visual Intelligence in Tromsø in April 2025.
Congratulations to Professor Lars Ailo for receiving the NORA Award for Diversity in AI at the NORA Annual Conference in Halden, Norway.
Teresa Dorszewski is a PhD Candidate at the Section for Cognitive Systems at the Technical University of Denmark. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from January to April 2025.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen was invited to give a keynote and participate in a panel discussion on AI as critical national infrastructure at the NORA Annual Conference 2025 in Halden, Norway.