Tilak Purohit and Barbara Ruvolo, contributing to Idiap’s “AI for Life” research program, participated and won 1st prize at the Lemanic Life Science Hackathon organized at EPFL at the end of April 2024. Their winning project resulted in an AI-enabled user interface prototype to support the detection of depression via speech.
We are thrilled to announce that, for the third consecutive year, the Idiap Research Institute will participate on May 14th in the annual Pint of Science Valais Festival, taking place from May 13th to May 15th 2024. This worldwide event, renowned for its commitment to making science accessible to all, aligns perfectly with the institute’s mission to engage and inspire the broader public about the potentials and advancements in Artificial Intelligence.
Understanding and explaining how AI works is key to build trust and have better human-AI collaborations. In partnership with researchers from Lausanne, Zurich, and Adelaide, our colleague Damien Teney published an article providing a fresh explanation of neural networks’ capabilities.
Each year the institute gives two awards to distinguish two of its students. In 2023, the Best Paper Award went to Tobias Löw, and the Student Award to Hatef Otroshi Shahreza. Congratulations!
Idiap and the 3D2cut company developed a system capable of identifying vines and of assisting pruning. A scientific publication resulted from this collaboration. This project was supported by the The Ark foundation for innovation in Valais.
Idiap researchers and their colleagues worldwide are investigating the generalization and personalization of models using mobile sensor data to infer people’s mood. A Distinguished Paper Award at the Ubicomp/ISWC conference recognized the scientific publication presenting this research.
In a systematic review, Idiap researchers analyzed urban data crowdsourcing platforms around the world. Their work highlights the growing role of these platforms to inform urban policies and shed light on the state of development of these tools.
In June, Dr. Matteo Sorci joined Idiap as Innovation Manager, bringing to the Institute his 14-year innovation expertise gained in the world of high-tech development and commercialization.
After nine days of intense work, Idiap Research Institute has announced the winners of the 12th edition of the Idiap Create Challenge (ICC) 2023. This artificial intelligence hackathon brought together engineers and creatives from several countries to transform their ideas into working prototypes with the help of the institute.
As artificial intelligence technologies reach everyday new performances, their energy cost is also increasing significantly. Idiap researchers are proposing a novel approach to address this challenge during a period of rising energy costs.
On 1 May 2023 the Board of Directors of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences elected five new members to the Swiss Young Academy (SYA). With this election, the Academies acknowledge the ideas and commitment of the newly-elected members at the interfaces between science, society and politics.
Attracted to Idiap thanks to the Idiap Female Fellowship Researchers program, Raphaëlle Luisier has been promoted to permanent researcher at the Institute.
Idiap hosted a Biometrics Week. This one of a kind event gathered several hundreds of people from various backgrounds ranging from academia to industry. Organizers included the European Association for Biometrics and the US based Center for Identification Technology Research.
An Innosuisse project allowed Idiap to set up AI tools able to help experts to study the manufacturability of new aluminum elements requested by their customers.
The Idiap Research Institute uses signal processing and machine learning to design effective tools to improve people’s daily lives, especially those with communication difficulties. Ina Kodrasi, head of the Signal Processing for Communication group, is contributing to significant advances in the field of pathological speech.
Created in 2022, Cross Research Groups will foster collaborations between Idiap research groups. Their aim is to have long-term impacts on society thanks to an approach mixing both business oriented solutions and interdisciplinary scientific groundwork.
Luminous paints make it possible to tell the time on analogue timepieces even in the dark. These compounds are still applied manually, as conventional automation solutions are not suitable for this task. That’s why researchers from Idiap and Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH are developing a flexible robot system that can be programmed by showing it what to do.
Head of the Social Computing research group, Daniel Gatica-Perez has contributed to Idiap’s vision of Artificial Intelligence for Society since 2002. Last year, he received two awards recognizing his long-term impact at the interface between technology and society.
Every year, the Institute nominates two students for its internal awards. In 2022, the Paper Award goes to Alexandre Bittar, and the Student Award goes to Teguh Lembono. Congratulations!
In anticipation of the retirement of its current director, Hervé Bourlard, the Idiap Foundation Council is pleased to announce that Andrea Cavallaro will soon be taking over as director of the institute. He is also appointed full professor at EPFL’s School of Engineering.
Esau Villatoro, research associate at the Speech & Audio Processing group at Idiap, and his colleagues from the Mathematics Research Center (CIMAT) from Mexico have won first place in two competitions related to Natural Language Processing. The objective of these competitions is to improve important aspects of Mexican society such as tourism and communication.
Former Idiap PhD Angelos Katharopoulos has received EPFL's Electrical Engineering Doctoral program (EEDE) Thesis Award for his outstanding research on the efficiency of deep learning models.
Idiap researchers published a paper describing an approach to speech processing based on the properties of the human brain. Their method proved as efficient as the current standard, whilst conserving the advantage of energy efficiency. Moreover, their work is replicable thanks to open access software paving the way for future applications.
Accelerating the selection of potential sources of antibiotics using artificial intelligence is one of the goals of ABRoad. This project is the result of a partnership between InflamAlps, a pharmaceutical R&D company, and Idiap. Supported by The Ark Foundation, this innovative project aims to develop a digital platform enabling the selection of potential sources of antibiotics.
Originating from a paper published by Idiap in 2002, PyTorch is one of the most important and successful machine learning software projects in the world. The Linux Foundation announced that the hosting of PyTorch will transition from Meta to its own infrastructures. This new environment will continue to foster the open source spirit provided by Idiap’s original publication.
Bringing artificial intelligence and bioinformatics closer in Switzerland, Idiap and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) signed a collaboration agreement. By becoming a partner institution of SIB, Idiap ensures its groups active in bioinformatics benefit from SIB’s national network of expertise, while enabling the SIB to access its 30 years of experience in AI research.
Team LaternaMagica is the winner of the 11th edition of the International Create Challenge that took place from August 16th to August 24th. This 9-Day AI Super Hackathon organized and hosted by Idiap aims to have teams that transform their idea into a prototype. This year the competition gave a special twist with two teams that took challenges proposed by BCVs.
Neural networks are often among cited technologies when it comes to artificial intelligence latest exploits. The downside is that this technology can be demanding in terms of energy costs. Two Idiap researchers demonstrated that in certain cases you should rather go for classical maths rather than for the AI hype.
In collaboration with a private company, Idiap researchers presented a novel approach to retrieve information from conversations’ transcripts. Their method uses both automatic speech recognition and natural language processing technologies.
The Robot Learning & Interaction research group at Idiap has recently acquired a new tool. A small quadruped robot named SOLO12, whose mission will be to allow the researchers and engineers of the institute to develop new robotic applications based on artificial intelligence.
Idiap researchers are Lemanic Life Science Hackathon winners
