West University of Timișoara launches a new Artificial Intelligence HUB: “Timișoara Research in Artificial Intelligence Network (TRAIN)”

At the end of a conceptual and heuristic development stage, the West University of Timișoara is launching a new research, innovation, and development platform, through which it will build a knowledge and education ecosystem based on Artificial Intelligence networks and algorithms.

It is a platform that will enable the piloting of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, which will turn WUT into a HUB that stimulates research and educational development in this field, in Banat but also at national and European level. The HUB will be called “Timișoara Research in Artificial Intelligence Network (TRAIN)”.

A team from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, led by Lecturer Darian Onchiș, PhD, has created the “Timișoara Research in Artificial Intelligence Network (TRAIN)” platform, which, apart from the researchers of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, will continue to be developed by a team of AI networks and algorithms experts, specialists, and practitioners.

“Artificial Intelligence is an education and research tradition at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of WUT. Over 27 cohorts of computer science specialists have graduated from the Artificial Intelligence master program. The professors of the Department of Computer Science, a third of whom are specialised in Artificial Intelligence, ensure this continuity. Various topics in the field of Artificial Intelligence have established the research team at the FCS as an advanced research group in multi-agent systems, expert systems, metaheuristics, neural networks, natural computing, data exploration, and multicriteria optimization. Other topics intensely discussed in contemporary public debates, such as Big Data, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, are the topics that the WUT research team is focusing on at present in its current projects with national or European funding. The team is working with colleagues from other fields, especially on practical applications, such as computer geography. This tradition has taken us here and makes us optimistic and ambitious for the future, in this new format that aims at stimulating research and innovation in Artificial Intelligence.”

WUT Rector, Prof. Dr. Marilen Gabriel Pirtea, PhD

            The new platform was launched in an official event, which had as a guest Professor Bernard Schölkopf, director of the Max Planck institute for Intelligent Systems from Tübingen, Germany, one of the most influential researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence in Europe. His works, for which he has received many prestigious awards, such as the “Körber European Science Prize” or the “German AI Award”, and for which he has been included in the ISI Highly Cited Researchers, are landmarks in the field of machine learning, both theoretical and applied. He is also chairman of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS). Another special guest at the launch conference was Professor Pedro Real from the University of Seville. Representatives of significant partners from the business field and traditional partner institutions also participated in the event.

Through this event, the West University of Timișoara is taking a significant step towards the companies in the region, especially towards those interested in Artificial Intelligence. It will present to them the available competences and will show them a permanently open communication bridge, so as to meet their needs, both in terms of graduates, and in terms of solving open-ended issues in the field of AI.

The “TRAIN” platform will become a powerful centre of technological creation and invention through a wide participation of partners, collaborators, and associated centres, and will launch a knowledge and education ecosystem in AI architecture, a goal which we set high from the beginning, in keeping with the dynamics of our university.