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.
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.
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.
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.