NLDL-2023 crowd
Image:
Harald Lykke Joakimsen

NLDL-2023 crowd

High spirits at the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference - NLDL 2023

The Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference, Tromsø, January 9th to 13th, was a great gathering of 250 deep learning researchers.

Hight spirits at the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference – NLDL 2023

The Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference, Tromsø, January 9th to 13th, was a great gathering of 250 deep learning researchers.

The conference brought together an international crowd of PhD students, academic researchers, and industry, for five days filled with keynotes, presentations, posters, diversity in AI event, industry event, panel discussions and social gatherings.

Line Clemmensen from the Technical University of Denmark giving a tutorial on data representativity and low-resource modeling in deep learning at the winter school. Photo: Harald Lykke Joakimsen/UiT

NLDL received a record number of submissions from 18 different countries yielding a strong scientific program and a high quality proceedings of articles.

New to NLDL this year was the PhD winter school which consisted of two days of tutorials by experts in the field, co-hosted by NORA as part of the NORA Research School. The winter school gathered 150 PhD students and young researchers. The tutorials were:

  • A gentle introduction to Deep Reinforcement Learning (Rudolf Mester and Even Klemsdal, NTNU Trondheim)
  • Self-Supervised Learning: Training Targets and Loss Functions (Zheng-Hua Tan, Aalborg University)
  • The Challenge of Unverfiability in eXplainable AI Evaluation (Anna Hedstrøm, TU Berlin)
  • Data representativity and low-resource modeling in deep learning (Line Clemmensen, Technical University of Denmark)
  • High Performance Computing for Deep Learning (Sabry Razick, University of Oslo; Hicham Agueny, University of Bergen; Vetle Hofsøy, UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
  • Representation learning and learning with few data (Marcus Liwicki, Luleå University of Technology)
Anna Hedstrøm fron TU Berlin giving a tutorial on explainable AI at the first day of the Winter School. Photo: Harald Lykke Joakimsen/UiT.

NLDL featured prominent keynote speakers within deep learning research giving exciting talks:

  • AI for Science: Discovering diverse classes of equations in medicine and beyond (Mihaela van der Schaar, Cambridge University)
  • Learning to read X-ray: applications to heart failure monitoring (Polina Golland, MIT)
  • Deep Learning and remote sensing for ecosystem monitoring (Christian Igel, University of Copenhagen)
We are extremely proud to gather our international, Nordic, and national colleagues for a whole week of scientific interactions and chasing of the Northern Lights. NLDL is organized by the Visual Intelligence research centre and the UiT Machine Learning Group, and we are truly grateful to all our co-workers for taking part in the local organization. NLDL wouldn’t be possible without all the fantastic reviewers, and of course all the participants. Thank you!  

Says the organizers Michael Kampffmeyer, Robert Jenssen and  Sigurd Eivindson Løkse.

Next years conference is already under planning and will be hosted January 8th– 12th 2024.

Latest news

NLDL 2026 was a great success!

January 12, 2026

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.

Fruitful mentoring session with Professor Mihaela van der Schaar

January 11, 2026

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

uit.no Toppforskere på kunstig intelligens samles i Tromsø

January 5, 2026

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)

unn.no: Forskningsmillioner til pasientrettet KI-satsing

December 23, 2025

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)

Happy Holidays from SFI Visual Intelligence!

December 18, 2025

The Visual Intelligence Management Team, Robert Jenssen, Line Eikvil, Anne Solberg, and Inger Solheim, wishes everyone a happy holiday season and new year!

Anders Waldeland receives the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025

December 4, 2025

Congratulations to Senior Research Scientist Anders Waldeland, who was awarded the Digital Trailblazer Award 2025 at the Dig X Subsurface conference in Oslo, Norway.

sciencenorway.no: AI can help detect heart diseases more quickly

December 3, 2025

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence that can automatically measure the heart's structure – both quickly and accurately (Popular science article on sciencenorway.no)

State Secretary Marianne Wilhelmsen visits SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT

November 26, 2025

State Secretary Marianne Wilhelmsen visited UiT The Arctic University of Norway to learn more about SFI Visual Intelligence and UiT's AI initiatives in education and research.

TV2.no: Sier Elon Musk er smartere enn Leonardo da Vinci

November 25, 2025

KI-chatboten Grok har fortalt brukere at verdens rikeste mann er både smartere og sprekere enn noen andre i verden – inkludert basketballstjernen LeBron James og Leonardo da Vinci (Norwegian news article on tv2.no)

Successful science communication workshop at Skibotn

November 21, 2025

The Visual Intelligence Graduate School gathered our early career researchers for a 3-Day Science Communication workshop at Skibotn field station outside of Tromsø, Norway.

uit.no: UiT og Aker Nscale sammen om storsatsing på kunstig intelligens

November 19, 2025

Onsdag inngikk Aker Nscale og UiT Norges arktiske universitet en ti-årig samarbeidsavtale for å utvikle og styrke kompetansemiljøene for kunstig intelligens i Narvik og Nord-Norge. Aker Nscale garanterer for 100 millioner kroner i avtaleperioden (news story on uit.no)

Two fruitful days at The Alan Turing Institute's headquarters

November 17, 2025

Centre Director Robert Jenssen and PhD Candidate Lars Uebbing had two fruitful days together with researchers at The Alan Turing Institute's headquarters in London