Vilnius University and Its Arqus Partners Strengthen Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Vilnius University (VU), together with its Arqus Alliance partners – the University of Graz (Austria), Leipzig University (Germany), Durham University (United Kingdom), the University of Granada (Spain), and Maynooth University (Ireland) – as well as the consulting firm Ernst & Young, will implement the project “European AI Sandbox for Entrepreneurial Learning (EAS-EL).”, awarded by European Innovation and Technology Institute.

The EAS-EL project reflects the broader ambition of the Arqus Alliance to strengthen cooperation among universities and jointly develop long-term solutions that enhance the innovation potential of the Alliance’s members.

“The EAS-EL project is one example of how the universities of the Arqus alliance, by working together, can share expertise asl well as develop new solutions, join efforts when activating their existing high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure, and establish long-term forms of collaboration. Projects like this strengthen the Alliance’s overall innovation potential and enable results that would be difficult for institutions working independently to achieve. It is particularly important that the system under development shall be accessible to students, researchers, and personnel from a wide range of disciplines. In this way, artificial intelligence-driven innovations alongside entrepreneurship become not only a field of technology, but also an area of broader interdisciplinary cooperation,” says Prof. Gintaras Valušis, Vice-Rector for Research at Vilnius University.

One of the main objectives of the project is to strengthen the Arqus alliance as an ecosystem for artificial intelligence (AI)-driven entrepreneurship and innovation. In the long term, the aim is to ensure that new AI-based business ideas and new innovative companies are facilitated consistently across the universities of the Alliance. The project will ensure that AI innovations are accessible not only to those working in the area of technology and natural sciences. Students and personnel from the area of humanities and social sciences will also be able to develop AI-based solutions and explore their applicability potential.

The project has been awarded funding of up to €1,998,995, will begin in September this year and will run for 24 months.