Tiago Ramos and Nour Rekik were two of 250 participants attending the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference 2025
Deep learning researchers from 27 different countries congregated at the 8th edition of the NLDL conference. - I have seen several interesting posters and talks that have opened my mind about different paths to explore in my own research, says NLDL 2025 attendee Tiago Ramos.
Deep learning researchers from 27 different countries congregated at the 8th edition of the NLDL conference. - I have seen several interesting posters and talks that have opened my mind about different paths to explore in my own research, says NLDL 2025 attendee Tiago Ramos.
By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Advisor at SFI Visual Intelligence
Along with Nour Rekik, he is one of 250 participants who attended the Northern Lights Deep Learning (NLDL) Conference 2025.
Ramos is a first-year PhD candidate from Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade do Porto in Portugal, who attended NLDL 2025 as his first-ever science conference. Through interaction and discussion with like-minded researchers, he believes he has received valuable input on his PhD project throughout the conference.
Rekik is a software engineer at PEER Group GmbH in Germany. Having been interested in research since her AI graduation project, Rekik saw NLDL 2025 as an opportunity to stay updated on the latest advances in AI and deep learning
- It has been very nice to interact with other people, explore different possibilites in the fields of AI and deep learning, and learn more about the diverse research presented here at NLDL, says Rekik.
This year's NLDL conference featured a high quality scientific program of inspiring keynotes, Winter School tutorials, diverse AI research showcases, and thought-provoking discussions during our mainstay "Diversity in AI" and "Industry and AI" side events.
NLDL 2025 kicked off with the first day of the NLDL 2025 Winter School: a 5-day course consisting of tutorials by experts within AI and deep learning. Around 140 students from across the globe participated in this year's winter school.
This year's Winter School program covered highly relevant topics such as aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty in statistics and machine learning by Willem Waegeman (Ghent University, physics-informed machine learning by Sølve Eidnes (SINTEF Digital Oslo), responsible and explainable AI by Virginia Dignum and Leila Methnani (Umeå University), and large language models by Egil Rønningstad, David Samuel, and Andrey Kutuzov (Language Technology Group UiO).
This year's Winter School speakers provided our participants with an immersive, interactive and engaging exploration of these AI and deep learning-related topics.
Like past NLDL conferences, we were delighted to host high profile international researchers as invited keynote speakers. The keynote topics included deep learning for natural language understanding by Marie-Francine Moens (KU Lueven), O(n) equivariant deep learning by Michael Felsberg (Linköping University), fair AI in psychiatry by Line Clemmensen (University of Copenhagen), and whether AI breakthroughs can solve the current healthcare crisis by Bram van Ginneken.
NLDL 2025 hosted a strong and diverse selection of high quality publications, ranging from deep learning-related topics such as hallucination detection in LLMs, deep learning for remote sensing data analysis, diffusion models, and deep learning models in medical image analysis. These submissions were presented during dedicated poster sessions and oral presentation sessions throughout the week
NLDL aims to be a venue for addressing important and relevant topics within AI today. The mainstay events "Diversity in AI" and "Industry and AI" gathered two strong panels of experts to discuss the present disparities within
Only 30% of those who work with AI globally are women. The "Diversity in AI" event gathered representatives from research, industry and public administration to share their views on the lack of diversity and inclusion in the AI and technology fields. They presented their opinions on the topic through a series of thought-provoking keynotes and during a stimulating panel discussion.
AI technologies continue to be implemented in industrial areas such as medicine and health, fisheries, finance, and transporation. Through a strong panel of experts, NLDL 2025's "Industry and AI" event addressed significant topics such as why AI is important for industry, how AI can provide additional value for industry, the problems said technology can potentially solve, and how academia and industry should collaborate on faciliating the safe and sustainable use of AI. After presenting their views through four different and inspirational keynotes, the experts convened for an in-depth discussion regarding the topic.
In addition to presenting and discussing research, NLDL provides participants the opportunity to mingle and socialize in the cool Arctic environment of Tromsø, Norway. This year's social program consisted of an icebreaker event at Polaria aquarium, an organized trip to the idyllic Sommarøy, a conference dinner at Scandic Ishavshotel, and the social event "Meet the AI Industry" at Storgata Camping.
Some of these events allowed conference-goers to catch glimpses of the exotic Northern Lights
General chair Michael Kampffmeyer thanks all NLDL 2025 participants for coming to Tromsø to share their knowledge, establish new research collaborations, and present cutting-edge research in the cool Arctic air of Tromsø, Norway.
On behalf of the NLDL general chairs, he extends a special thanks to all presenters and invited speakers for contributing to a successful conference.
- It has been fantastic to see so much high-quality work being shared, and we truly appreciate everyone’s efforts in making NLDL 2025 a success, says Kampffmeyer
See you all at NLDL 2026 from January 5th to 9th 2026!
NLDL 2025 was organized from January 6th to 10th 2025 by the UiT Machine Learning Group and SFI Visual Intelligence, with Norwegian AI Research Consortium (NORA) as a core collaborative partner.
The NLDL 2025 Winter School was organized by UiT The Arctic Universty of Norway and SFI Visual Intelligence, and co-hosted by NORA as part of the NORA Research School.
NRK, the national broadcasting company in Norway, spoke to Visual Intelligence researchers Robert Jenssen, Suaiba Amina Salahuddin, Michael Kampffmeyer and Elisabeth Wetzer about this year's Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference in Tromsø, Norway.
Andre uka i januar samles forskere fra hele verden i Tromsø for å dele og lære om siste nytt innen forskning på kunstig intelligens.
In record time, principal investigator Michael Kampffmeyer became a professor in machine learning at the young age of 32. Read more about his academic journey and work in the latest UiT Researcher Portrait
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2024 has been a year full of exciting events and accomplishments, and we look forward to continuing our journey on researching the next generation of deep learning methodology in 2025!
In a Dagens Medisin op-ed, SPKI director Karl Øyvind Mikalsen, Kristine Bø, Bjorn Anton Graff and Kurt Vanvik discuss how interregional collaborations in Norway now contributes to the implementation of AI radiology solutions across the Norwegian health regions
Jenssen has established several important collaborations between Visual Intelligence and international research environments within artificial intelligence. He has now joined the scientific advisory committee at Europe's most prominent research centre within intelligent systems.
2024 marks the research centre's fourth year of researching the next generation of deep learning methodology for extracting knowledge from complex image data. We look back at various innovation highlights achieved in the first half of Visual Intelligence's run.
Congratulations to Rwiddhi Chakraborty for successfully defending his PhD thesis and achieving the PhD degree in Science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on December 13th 2024.
The graph community in Tromsø gathered on November 27th for the northernmost "Learning on Graph" Conference meetup.
Centre director Robert Jenssen recently gave a talk about the use and benefits of AI technologies during Pasientsikkerhetskonferansen 2024
Congratulations to Kristoffer Wickstrøm for receiving the Best Paper Award 2024 from the journal Pattern Recognition Letters!
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Professor Michael Kampffmeyer gave a presentation titled "Kunstig intelligens som forklarer hva den tenker" as part of a Norwegian Centre for E-Health Research Webinar (Norwegian dialogue).
I teorien ja, men i praksis fungerer det ikke slik.
EUGLOH students from partner institutions under the EUGLOH alliance can now apply for an exclusive mobility scholarship for the NLDL 2025 Winter School which covers travel, accommodation, and sustenance for successful applicants.
Visual Intelligence researchers represented the centre during Inspirasjonsdagen 2024. The event aimed to stimulate high school students' interest and curiosity for STEM and healthcare-related study programmes at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
Our summer students have worked on projects related to fatigue and stress recognition with machine learning as their first research experience. Their results were presented at Georg Sverdrups hus at University of Oslo on October 16th 2024.
PhD candidate Rwiddhi Chakraborty recently gave an invited research talk titled "Perspectives on Multimodal Reasoning" at the Pioneer Centre for AI at University of Copenhagen.
Visual Intelligence was represented at Frampeik 2024 by associate professor Elisabeth Wetzer. The event gathered student researchers at Verdensteatret in Tromsø for discussions around AI-related topics.
Registration for the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference 2025 is now open. The general deadline for registration is January 1st 2025.
We happily welcome Jan Zavadil, who recently started as a doctoral research fellow at Visual Intelligence in Tromsø in September 2024.