PhD student Rwiddhi Chakraborty at UiT
Self Supervised Explainability on Graphs
In the past decade, the availability of large-scale datasets allowed the proliferation of deep learning-based architectures in computer vision, language modelling, and graph-based data. The curation and annotation process of these datasets is overly expensive. In recent years, new methodologies emerged to train deep learning models on unlabeled data, so called self-supervision.
To prepare students on these highly relevant topics, we, University of Oslo (UiO) and UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), as part of the SFI Visual Intelligence efforts, joined forces to teach a special curriculum course about bleeding edge topics related to deep learning methods based on self-supervision and non-structured data (that is, based on graphs). Moreover, due to the need to reveal the decisions made by these models, we placed special emphasis on novel techniques used to explain the inner workings of these models.
The course puts an emphasis on letting the student discuss and lead the learning endeavor. The sessions encompassed active discussions among the participants. Professors from UiO and UiT provided useful moderation and insights to the discussions. William Ho, a UiO masters’ student, mentioned, “this [course] has been the most enjoyable course I’ve ever taken [at] IFI,” due to its highly interactive setup. Also, Rwiddhi Chakraborty, from UiT, expressed the usefulness of the curriculum and discussions. Another anonymous student mentions, “[presenting papers to each other] has been fantastic to complete the learning cycle—since we are learning the content and then presenting/teaching it as well.”
The wonderful experience has already led to innovative ideas on improving collaboration between the two sites and will be integrated into future offerings of the course. After seeing the success and enthusiasm from the students, we will explore new ways of providing more joint venues for the students to collaborate between the two sites.
Responsible at UiT: Michael Kampffmeyer
Responsable at UiO: Adín Ramírez Rivera
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.
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.
Både forskere og statsråd mener kunstig intelligens bør tydelig merkes. Men forlaget som lager puslespillet som ekspertene mener er KI-generert, sier de ikke har noe med hvordan illustratører lager produktene sine (Norwegian news article by NRK)