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.
Researchers from Idiap, EPFL, Leuphana University Lüneburg, and UNIL published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications results of their work conducted in the midst of the pandemic related lockdowns. Their paper highlights the potential for both theoretical and applied research.
Three new students joined the Genomics & Health Informatics group at Idiap. Coming from universities in Paris and Lausanne, they chose Valais to improve their skills.
Arriving in 2019 for a sabbatical year from the University of Mexico, Esaú Villatoro has now been working at Idiap for more than two years. Between publishing his work and adapting to Swiss life, he looks back on his experience at the institute.
Institute’s researchers in biometrics developed tools for more efficient and more reliable facial recognition techniques in the automotive industry. They made available their results open source.
Idiap Research Institute and the School of Engineering at EPFL invite applications for the directorship of Idiap. The successful candidate will also hold a faculty position as full professor at EPFL School of Engineering.
The Institute nominates every year two students for its internal awards. In 2021, the Best Paper Award goes to Suhan Shetty, and the Best Student Award goes to Parvaneh Janbakhshi. Congratulations!
Results from our Genomics & health informatics research group, in collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute in London, describe the use of a computational analysis method to classify images of healthy and affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) motor neurons. This new technological breakthrough allows a better understanding of the disease and provides guidance for lab research.
Access to information is a challenge for disabled people, even at a time when communications channels are increasing. An international consortium gathering researchers, as well as private and public partners, under the leadership of the University of Zurich and including Idiap and Icare from the French speaking side of Switzerland was granted 6 million Swiss francs from Innosuisse—completed by 6 million from private partners—to take up this challenge.
Head of the Computation, Cognition & Language Group at Idiap, Lonneke van der Plas was nominated professor by the University of Malta. She is affiliated to this university since 2014.
The lack of representativity in databases used to train facial recognition tools often creates biases. Creating a repository of fake faces can resolve these biases. Financed by the Hasler Foundation and under the supervision of Idiap Research Institute, the SAFER project gathers the University of Zurich and the company SICPA.
The institute was inspired by the Swiss apprenticeship system to create its Masters in Artificial Intelligence, now it decided to train classic apprentices. Yana and Mattéo, our two apprentices, just started at Idiap.
Head of the Biometrcs security & privacy research group at Idiap, Sébastien Marcel was appointed Professor at School of Criminal Justice (Ecole des Sciences Criminelles) of the University of Lausanne from September 1st. His nomination is strengthening an already deep rooted collaboration between the two institutions.
Students from the Master’s AI completed the program offered by Idiap and Swiss Distance University. Thanks to their project integrated in a company, many of them are receiving job offers from their host company. This approach also fits businesses looking for digital skills.
Awarded in the speech and audio processing field, this prestigious prize was jointly awarded to Prof. Hervé Bourlard, Idiap’s director and head of the Speech & Audio Processing research group, and his colleague Prof. Nelson Morgan from the Berkeley University (USA).
Associated since Idiap’s creation in 1991, EPFL and the Institute have strong links. The new strategic alliance strengthens these links in the research, education and technology transfer areas.
Artificial intelligence and big data pioneers Octopeek (France) and Idiap announce a partnership. A member of Octopeek’s scientific staff will spend four years at the very heart of Idiap, culminating in a PhD—a unique opportunity to use video data to develop research on multimodal learning, and to spur innovation.
Thanks to a significant multi-million budget increase during the 2021-2024 period, Idiap’s new strategy will create over 60 highly skilled jobs, and interdisciplinary research groups dedicated to technology transfer towards businesses. This program is possible thanks to the support of the Canton of Valais and the Municipality of Martigny.
After spending almost 13 years with us, François Fleuret is appointed professor at UNIGE. To allow him to maintain his link with our institute and in recognition of his contributions, he is also appointed as an external member researcher of Idiap.
The Speech and audio processing group at Idiap, in collaboration with Swisscom, improves Swiss-German speech recognition for the voice assistant of the Swisscom TV Box through a multi-dialect approach.
Idiap researchers published the results of a study showing that analyzing pictures and audio from voluntarily recorded videos thanks to an app helps to determine with more objectivity the context of alcohol drinking among young people.
Thanks to her master's degree in AI and her internship in the Genomics & health informatics group, Colombine Verzat discovered that she particularly enjoyed implementing research in applied projects. We look back on her journey and how this master's degree allowed her to highlight what she really wanted to bring to the world of research.
Always observe what’s smaller while maintaining the highest image quality possible. This requires ever more powerful microscopes, but computational methods can also do it. This is the subject of the thesis that Olivia Mariani successfully defended.
Perfect understanding of a text is not possible without context. Same goes for a computer. It cannot do a good translation without understanding what is really defined in a text. At Idiap, Lesly Miculicich conducted research to make this possible through her thesis which she successfully defended last February.
Since his arrival at Idiap 20 years ago, Sébastien Marcel is shaking up the research community in biometry. After several major projects and a long term hard work, the researcher established the bases for a new biometrics standard.
The Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and Idiap start a partnership
