The AI Strategy for Europe, IJCAI-ECAI-18 (Stockholm)

The AI Strategy for Europe

Wednesday, July 18th, 16:40 – 18:20, T2

This session will present the AI strategy announced by the European Commission on 25 April, highlighting the importance to join forces and to build on Europe’s excellence; therefore the mobilization of the AI community is key! The session will also present the funding opportunities for AI in the EU Research and Innovation programme Horizon2020, as well as the opportunity to contribute to the European AI alliance, a multi-stakeholder forum discussing the future of AI from its various perspectives. Finally the session will invite some existing associations representative of the community and already contributing to AI, to present their support activities.

Chairs: Cécile Huet (European Commission) and Barry O’Sullivan (EurAI and UCC, Ireland)

Cécile Huet is Deputy Head of the Unit "Robotics and Artificial Intelligence" at the European Commission. This unit funds and assists beneficial robotics and AI developments within Europe.

The unit is in charge of one of the world's largest civilian programme in robotics with a budget of €700 million EU funding from Horizon 2020, supplemented by €2.1 billion from the European robotics industry in the context of the Robotics Public-Private Partnership.

Moreover this unit is at the heart of the new Communication on Artificial Intelligence for Europe. 

Cécile joined the European Commission in 2001, and the unit dealing with Cognitive systems and Robotics since its creation in 2004. Before joining the EC, she worked for the industry in the field of signal processing after a post-doc at the University of California Santa Barbara and a PhD at University of Nice Sophia Antipolis.

In 2015, she has been selected as one of the "25 women in robotics you need to know about"