Visual Intelligence Days 2025: Two packed days of scientific and social interactions!

85 researchers from the Visual Intelligence consortium convened for the Visual Intelligence Days: the annual workshop where researchers, user partners and invited guests convene to share knowledge and updates on the latest research and innovations within the centre.

By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Officer at SFI Visual Intelligence

This year's Visual Intelligence (VI) Days consisted of two full-packed days of presentations, collaborative work sessions, and scientific and social interaction among our attendees. The Visual Intelligence Days 2025 took place from September 23rd to 24th at Quality Airport Hotel Gardermoen in Oslo, Norway.

Visual Intelligence Graduate School pre-program

Before gathering for the main conference, the Visual Intelligence Graduate School (VIGS) organized a VI Days 2025 pre-program event at Fjellstua in Oslo, Norway. The pre-program's aim was to gather our young researchers for a technical and social gathering to grow transferable skills, share scientific experiences, and socialize with one another.

The technical program focused on further strengthening research collaborations within Visual Intelligence—with a particular emphasis on improving existing initatives and establishing new collaborative measures in the future.

The event was concluded with a high-stakes and competitive street curling tournament, followed by a mingling session for our early career researchers with pizza and good conversations.

Day 1: Research innovation highlights and "Dreaming big"

After a warm welcome from the Management Team, the first Visual Intelligence Day was kickstarted with an introduction to multimodal intelligence by Professor Adín Ramírez Rivera. The session was followed by the "Dream Big" session: A dedicated session to status updates and thoughts about Visual Intelligence's bigger picture—which included presented perspectives from user partners and a panel discussion between VI's Principal Investigators.

Several Visual Intelligence researchers presented the latest research innovation highlights from the centre's main innovation areas and research challenges: medicine and health, marine sciences, energy, and earth observation.

The presented highlights included novel deep learning methods for hierarchical classification of plankton, marine acoustic data, oil spill detection, left ventricle analysis in echocardiography, and liver, vessel and tumor segmentation.

Many of the highlights were presented during a dedicated poster session later that day, allowing attendees to ask the presenters questions about their research.

After an insightful and enriching scientific program, the day was concluded with a conference dinner with delicious food, speeches, and good conversations.

Day 2: Collaborative work sessions, future outlooks, and international perspectives on research-based innovation

The VI Days was both continued and concluded by a packed Day 2 program. Georgios Leontidis, Interdisciplinary Institute Director and Professor at the University of Aberdeen, started the day by presenting internationally-oriented perspectives on research-based innovation – providing VI's researchers new inspiration for working with this type of innovation.

The collaborative work sessions – centered around user partners University Hospital of North Norway, Helse Nord IKT, Kongsberg Satellite Services, Institute of Marine Research, Equinor, and Aker BP – was the big focus of the Day 2 program. The sessions' aim was to review ongoing and future research activities within VI's main innovation areas, and to discuss potential adjustments to the 2026 research plan.

Research leaders from VI's user partner and research partner institutions gathered for a panel discussion on how to further strengthen the research consortium, such as through new emergent areas, joint initiatives across applications, and industrial PhD projects. The panel consisted of the following participants:

• Patrick Blomquist, Senior Advisor Data Science and AI at Equinor
• Erik Steen, Chief Engineer at GE HealthCare
• Georgios Leontidis, Interdisciplinary Institute Director and Professor at University of Aberdeen
• Robert Jenssen, Centre Director at SFI Visual Intelligence (moderator)

After a look into the current trends in deep learning by Arnt-Børre Salberg, Chief Research Scientist at the Norwegian Computing Center, the VI Management Team concluded this year's VI Days by reviewing the results from the collaborative work sessions and wishing everyone a pleasant trip home.