PhD student Rwiddhi Chakraborty at UiT
Self Supervised Explainability on Graphs
In the past decade, the availability of large-scale datasets allowed the proliferation of deep learning-based architectures in computer vision, language modelling, and graph-based data. The curation and annotation process of these datasets is overly expensive. In recent years, new methodologies emerged to train deep learning models on unlabeled data, so called self-supervision.
To prepare students on these highly relevant topics, we, University of Oslo (UiO) and UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), as part of the SFI Visual Intelligence efforts, joined forces to teach a special curriculum course about bleeding edge topics related to deep learning methods based on self-supervision and non-structured data (that is, based on graphs). Moreover, due to the need to reveal the decisions made by these models, we placed special emphasis on novel techniques used to explain the inner workings of these models.
The course puts an emphasis on letting the student discuss and lead the learning endeavor. The sessions encompassed active discussions among the participants. Professors from UiO and UiT provided useful moderation and insights to the discussions. William Ho, a UiO masters’ student, mentioned, “this [course] has been the most enjoyable course I’ve ever taken [at] IFI,” due to its highly interactive setup. Also, Rwiddhi Chakraborty, from UiT, expressed the usefulness of the curriculum and discussions. Another anonymous student mentions, “[presenting papers to each other] has been fantastic to complete the learning cycle—since we are learning the content and then presenting/teaching it as well.”
The wonderful experience has already led to innovative ideas on improving collaboration between the two sites and will be integrated into future offerings of the course. After seeing the success and enthusiasm from the students, we will explore new ways of providing more joint venues for the students to collaborate between the two sites.
Responsible at UiT: Michael Kampffmeyer
Responsable at UiO: Adín Ramírez Rivera
We happily welcome Sigurd Almli Hanssen and Adrian Duric as new PhD Candidates at SFI Visual Intelligence's hubs in Tromsø and Oslo respectively.
AI expert Eirik Agnalt Østmo explains that the law is intended to make AI technology safe for everyone (Popular science article on sciencenorway.no)
Aitor Sánchez is a PhD candidate at the Intelligent Systems Group of the University of the Basque Country in Spain. He visited Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from March to June 2025.
We happily welcome Nicolo Grometto as a new PhD Candidate at SFI Visual Intelligence in Bodø, Norway.
Visual Intelligence hosted a hybrid meeting with researchers from the Alan Turing Institute at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, Norway.
Visual Intelligence researchers participated in this year's Forskningsdagene: an annual national research festival which aims to stimulate the general public's interest and curiosity in research.
Norge arbeider med å få på plass en egen lov for kunstig intelligens. Loven skal passe på at vi bruker KI på en trygg måte (Norwegian news article at uit.no).
85 researchers from the Visual Intelligence consortium convened for the Visual Intelligence Days: the annual workshop where researchers, user partners and invited guests convene to share knowledge and updates on the latest research and innovations within the centre.
Registration for the Northern Lights Deep Learning Conference 2026 is officially open. Early bird fees are available before December 1st 2025.
Det skal eksperter på kunstig intelligens, cybersikkerhet og juss fra UiT Norges arktiske universitet diskutere på Verdensteatret Kino den 17. september. Arrangementet er gratis og åpen for alle (Norwegian news article at uit.no)
The presentations from the Visual Intelligence Workshop on Foundation Models are now available on the Visual Intelligence YouTube channel.
Congratulations to Nikita Shvetsov for successfully defending his PhD thesis and achieving the PhD degree in Science at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on August 27th 2025.
Det sa digitaliseringsminister Karianne Tung (Ap) da hun besøkte UiT Norges arktiske universitet i Tromsø for å lære mer om utdanning og toppforskning på kunstig intelligens ved universitetet (Norwegian news article at uit.no)
A new study shows how deep learning can achieve human-level performance in estimating uncertainty when classifying foraminifera (News story at EurekAlert.org)
Congratulations to Iver Martinsen and Durgesh Kumar Singh, who successfully defended their PhD theses at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on August 20th and 21st respectively.
Visual Intelligence brought together academia, industry, the institute sector, the Research Council of Norway, and Norwegian politics to discuss why and how Norwegian academia and industry should collaborate more closely to develop innovative artificial intelligence.
João Campagnolo is a PhD Candidate in the Neuroscience Department of the University of Copenhagen (KU). He visited SFI Visual Intelligence in Tromsø from April to May 2025.
Students from EUGLOH partner institutions can now apply for an exclusive mobility scholarship worth 2 900 EUR for the NLDL 2026 Winter School. Application deadline October 3rd 2025
More than 50 attendees from the Norwegian AI research community gathered in Tromsø, Norway for two days of insightful presentations, interactive technical sessions, and scientific and social interactions.
Last week, we wished Aasland—accompanied by Political Advisor Munir Jaber and Senior Adviser Finn-Hugo Markussen—welcome to the Norwegian Computing Center (NR). One of the visit's goals was to showcase ongoing Visual Intelligence projects at NR.