Finnish-British co-op opens doors for AI research

The MOU will allow shared research and joint translation projects around the data-centric engineering programme, which is funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. The first project will dive into the diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy and how artificial intelligence could improve the current diagnostic methods.

The venture is fast at work, building one of the most comprehensive collections of retinal images and optical coherence tomography scans in the world.

“This is a significant international collaboration and I am delighted the Turing is now formally linked to one of the most dynamic research institutions in Europe,” commented Adrian Smith, institute director at the Alan Turing Institute, in a release. “Together, we share a common goal of shaping the world we live in for the better and this collaboration will enable us to combine world-class expertise and apply data science and AI approaches to tackle real-world problems.”

The collaboration will also bring world-class academic expertise to Finland, with the appointment of professor Mark Girolami as adjunct professor of machine learning at Aalto University. Further points of collaborative contact are to be looked into, according to the director of FCAI, professor Samuel Kaski.

“We are looking forward to continuing the existing collaboration with a number of Turing partners and working on the new initiatives we identified based on our complementary strengths.”

FCAI was initiated by the University of Helsinki, Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The centre currently has sixteen company members and more than 50 ecosystem members, and has the aim of creating a wide research ecosystem with actors from academia, industry and the public sector.