The Artificial Intelligence National Laboratory brought together Hungarians doing research abroad

The Hungarian Machine Learning Meeting (Magyar Machine Learning Találkozó) provided an opportunity for Hungarian machine learning researchers working in foreign institutions to meet each other and the younger generation of Hungarian machine learning researchers and Ph.D. students. During the 3-day informal summer meeting, 17 internationally renowned researchers gave presentations, and the Hungarian young researchers presented their research in 35 posters, with many informal joint activities. Two of the speakers were professors from Cambridge University and two from Carnegie Mellon University, while other speakers came from Google, Deepmind, Huawei, Harvard University, ETH Zurich, among others.

The mixed language of the event indicates that the speakers were all researchers of Hungarian origin working abroad, and the Hungarian audience included many of our non-Hungarian speaking colleagues, so while the informal discussions were predominantly in Hungarian, the presentations were in English.

The main mission of the Artificial Intelligence National Laboratory, which was launched in 2020, is to bring together Hungarian researchers, organise events (such as the AI & AUT EXPO), European AI Centres, and build ELLIS links.

Two of the speakers were professors from Cambridge University, two from Carnegie Mellon University, and others from Google, Deepmind, Huawei, Harvard University, ETH Zurich, among others.

The presentations also covered the latest technologies used in industrial research and development centres (e.g. Google, DeepMind, Huawei), covering machine learning and deep learning theory, reinforcement learning, machine perception, language modelling, search and recommender systems theory. Scientific applications of machine learning included presentations on molecular modelling, drug design, and biological intelligence
research in biological intelligence.

The event was welcomed by András Kemler, one of the directors of the Bosch Budapest Development Center, András Benczúr, the scientific coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence National Laboratory, and Roland Jakab, the president of the Artificial Intelligence Coalition.

Based on the feedback of more than 60 participants who evaluated the event through an anonymous questionnaire, next year we will present several research areas in varying lengths with different depths of presentations, giving more space to young researchers from Hungary to introduce themselves, and we are also planning thematic roundtable discussions, with a special focus on talent management, supporting young researchers and women researchers in machine learning, international relations, and joint PhD programmes.