Tiago Ramos and Nour Rekik were two of 250 participants attending the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference 2025
Deep learning researchers from 27 different countries congregated at the 8th edition of the NLDL conference. - I have seen several interesting posters and talks that have opened my mind about different paths to explore in my own research, says NLDL 2025 attendee Tiago Ramos.
Deep learning researchers from 27 different countries congregated at the 8th edition of the NLDL conference. - I have seen several interesting posters and talks that have opened my mind about different paths to explore in my own research, says NLDL 2025 attendee Tiago Ramos.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Advisor at SFI Visual Intelligence
Along with Nour Rekik, he is one of 250 participants who attended the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference 2025.
Ramos is a first-year PhD candidate from Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto in Portugal, who attended NLDL 2025 as his first-ever science conference. Through interaction and discussion with like-minded researchers, he believes he has received valuable input on his PhD project throughout the conference.
Rekik is a software engineer at PEER Group GmbH in Germany. Having been interested in research since her AI graduation project, Rekik saw NLDL 2025 as an opportunity to stay updated on the latest advances in AI and deep learning
- It has been very nice to interact with other people, explore different possibilites in the fields of AI and deep learning, and learn more about the diverse research presented here at NLDL, says Rekik.
This year's NLDL conference featured a high quality scientific program of inspiring keynotes, Winter School tutorials, diverse AI research showcases, and thought-provoking discussions during our mainstay "Diversity in AI" and "Industry and AI" side events.
NLDL 2025 kicked off with the first day of the NLDL 2025 Winter School: a 5-day course consisting of tutorials by experts within AI and deep learning. Around 140 students from across the globe participated in this year's winter school.
This year's Winter School program covered highly relevant topics such as aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty in statistics and machine learning by Willem Waegeman (Ghent University, physics-informed machine learning by Sølve Eidnes (SINTEF Digital Oslo), responsible and explainable AI by Virginia Dignum and Leila Methnani (Umeå University), and large language models by Egil Rønningstad, David Samuel, and Andrey Kutuzov (Language Technology Group UiO).
This year's Winter School speakers provided our participants with an immersive, interactive and engaging exploration of these AI and deep learning-related topics.
Like past NLDL conferences, we were delighted to host high profile international researchers as invited keynote speakers. The keynote topics included deep learning for natural language understanding by Marie-Francine Moens (KU Lueven), O(n) equivariant deep learning by Michael Felsberg (Linköping University), fair AI in psychiatry by Line Clemmensen (University of Copenhagen), and whether AI breakthroughs can solve the current healthcare crisis by Bram van Ginneken.
NLDL 2025 hosted a strong and diverse selection of high quality publications, ranging from deep learning-related topics such as hallucination detection in LLMs, deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, diffusion models, and deep learning models in medical image analysis. These submissions were presented during dedicated poster sessions and oral presentation sessions throughout the week
NLDL aims to be a venue for addressing important and relevant topics within AI today. The mainstay events "Diversity in AI" and "Industry and AI" gathered two strong panels of experts to discuss the present disparities within
Only 30% of those who work with AI globally are women. The "Diversity in AI" event gathered representatives from research, industry and public administration to share their views on the lack of diversity and inclusion in the AI and technology fields. They presented their opinions on the topic through a series of thought-provoking keynotes and during a stimulating panel discussion.
AI technologies continue to be implemented in industrial areas such as medicine and health, fisheries, finance, and transporation. Through a strong panel of experts, NLDL 2025's "Industry and AI" event addressed significant topics such as why AI is important for industry, how AI can provide additional value for industry, the problems said technology can potentially solve, and how academia and industry should collaborate on faciliating the safe and sustainable use of AI. After presenting their views through four different and inspirational keynotes, the experts convened for an in-depth discussion regarding the topic.
In addition to presenting and discussing research, NLDL provides participants the opportunity to mingle and socialize in the cool Arctic environment of Tromsø, Norway. This year's social program consisted of an icebreaker event at Polaria aquarium, an organized trip to the idyllic Sommarøy, a conference dinner at Scandic Ishavshotel, and the social event "Meet the AI Industry" at Storgata Camping.
Some of these events allowed conference-goers to catch glimpses of the exotic Northern Lights
General chair Michael Kampffmeyer thanks all NLDL 2025 participants for coming to Tromsø to share their knowledge, establish new research collaborations, and present cutting-edge research in the cool Arctic air of Tromsø, Norway.
On behalf of the NLDL general chairs, he extends a special thanks to all presenters and invited speakers for contributing to a successful conference.
- It has been fantastic to see so much high-quality work being shared, and we truly appreciate everyone’s efforts in making NLDL 2025 a success, says Kampffmeyer
See you all at NLDL 2026 from January 5th to 9th 2026!
NLDL 2025 was organized from January 6th to 10th 2025 by the UiT Machine Learning Group and SFI Visual Intelligence, with Norwegian AI Research Consortium (NORA) as a core collaborative partner.
The NLDL 2025 Winter School was organized by UiT The Arctic Universty of Norway and SFI Visual Intelligence, and co-hosted by NORA as part of the NORA Research School.
We happily welcome Veronica Lachi and Qing Liu as new Associate Professors at SFI Visual Intelligence.
Artur Radzivil is a PhD Research Fellow at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University. He visited Visual Intelligence in Oslo from September to November 2025.
Congratulations to Marius Aasan, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on February 10th.
We had the pleasure of talking to UiT students about the career opportunities at SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT at TEKdagen 2026.
Centre Director Robert Jenssen met with Sigrun Aasland, Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education, alongside UiT and Aker Nscale representatives to give an update on Aker Nscale's AI Giga Factory in Narvik, Norway.
Zheming Xu is a PhD Research Fellow at Beijing Jiaotong University. She visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from September 2025 to January 2026.
Få kvinner søker seg til fag innenfor kunstig intelligens. Det kan skape blindsoner, mener ekspert (Norwegian news story in NRK.no).
Visual Intelligence was represented by Centre Director Robert Jenssen, Associate Professor Kristoffer Wickstrøm, and VI Alumna Sara Björk at the Arctic Frontiers side session "How can AI and satellite collaboration strengthen Arctic resilience?".
Petter Tømmeraas, Director of Data Center Services at Aker Nscale, visited SFI Visual Intelligence to learn more about our research projects and AI startups established by former UiT students.
We happily welcome Keyne Oei and Boye Sjo as new PhD Research Fellows at SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
Congratulations to Børge Solli Andreassen, who successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Oslo on December 18th 2025.
Attracting 280 international AI researchers, the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference (NLDL) 2026 was successfully organized from January 5th to 9th 2026 at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Norway.
Visual Intelligence hosted a special NLDL 2026 mentoring session for young researchers with Professor Mihaela van der Schaar – a globally renowned AI researcher and expert
Centre Director and NLDL General Chair Robert Jenssen was interviewed by NRK about this year's Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference.
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270 KI-eksperter fra nært og fjernt møtes ved UiT for å dele siste forskningsnytt. Et av formålene er å styrke internasjonale bånd og samarbeid på tvers av det globale KI-miljøet (Norwegian news article on uit.no)
Med ferske millioner på konto skal Senter for pasientnær kunstig intelligens (SPKI) ved UNN bidra i et stort nasjonalt KI-prosjekt de neste fire årene (News article on unn.no)
We happily welcome Zijun Sun as a new Doctoral Research Fellow at SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø, Norway.
The Visual Intelligence Management Team, Robert Jenssen, Line Eikvil, Anne Solberg, and Inger Solheim, wishes everyone a happy holiday season and new year!
Several of our researchers represented SFI Visual Intelligence at EurIPS 2025 – the NeurIPS-endorsed European AI conference.
Congratulations to Senior Research Scientist Anders Waldeland, who was awarded the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025 at the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo, Norway.