-NorwAI is extremely timely, says Kerstin Bach, new research director  

-    Our Large Language Model program is an extremely timely project. And with the European AI act coming, our work on trustworthiness and AI’s position in society are both interesting and important. 

Says Professor Kerstin Bach, just appointed the new Research Director at NorwAI, when asked to point at important work at NorwAI right now,  

    -There is no drama in the appointment, she says:  - My predecessor, Professor Kjetil Nørvåg, is off on his sabbatical. 

Forward-leaning

Nevertheless, there is anticipation tied to her new position as Kerstin Bach is a popular and forward-leaning profile in the Department of Computer Science at NTNU, the largest academic AI research community in Norway.Her core competence field is Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In addition to her position at the NorwAI research center, she is the deputy head of the Data and Artificial Intelligence group and part of the Norwegian Open AI Lab. 

Kerstin was awarded her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her main research interests are data-driven decision support systems as well as knowledge-intensive case-based reasoning. She is the chair of the German Society for Computer Science's Special Interest Group on Knowledge Management and a board member of the Norwegian AI society.

NorwAI and NAIL

- You have positions in both NorwAI and the Norwegian Open AI Lab (NAIL), both situated at the same department at NTNU.  Some people may wonder what the difference between the two is?

- NAIL is a hub for AI researchers to meet, facilitate research activities, participate in public debates, and collaboratively develop new project. At NAIL, we as researchers work with students and partners from Norway. At NorwAI, financed by the Research Council and partners as a Research Center for AI innovation (an SFI) we work in close cooperation with industry partners on practical use cases derived from their needs and innovation programs for the defined period until 2028. And of course, we also educate many master students and PhDs, 500 and 20-40 respectively, in the 8-year lifespan of our center, says Kerstin Bach. 

-Some say NorwAI is a closed community, not giving insights on what we are doing?

-Absolutely not. We publish research and results regularly, and our papers are accepted internationally. Our research fellows even win prizes. An open and across domain research is one of the trademarks of our work. We continuously give both academic and popular keynote lectures. The latest major event was the Arendalsuka where we publicly presented a preview of the Norwegian language model NorGPT which has the potential to become a national infrastructure in its field, says Kerstin Bach. 

Research contributions 

At NorwAI Innovate, NorwAI’s yearly AI conference at the end of October, she will give an update report on research contributions from NorwAI. 

-The work of our PhD students and Postdoctoral fellows in the different work packages evolves and we can see that interesting work is ongoing and publications are accepted at international conferences and journals. I of course don’t want to spoil the presentation, so come and meet us as NorwAI Innovate’s plenary and poster sessions.

Kerstin Bach’s own main research interest is methods for applied artificial intelligence. 

-While the application domains differ, we are investigating how to use knowledge and experience in intelligent systems. Moreover, how to build systems that support complex, knowledge-intensive decisions using heterogeneous data sources, says Kerstin Bach.  

Long AI CV

She has been the project manager of the selfBACK EU project that developed an e-Health application for low back pain patients and been involved in a number of EU-funded projects. It is important to work internationally and disseminate our work, but also build research networks and promote our work beyond Norway. 

She enjoys discussing AI methodologies and applications with fellow researchers, but more importantly teaching it to students and bringing it into multidisciplinary projects.  

-But even better is the dialogue with students, teaching and get challenged by their curiosity and eager to dig even deeper, be even more bold and see their eagerness to open up new perspectives. I really like the excitement to explore the frontiers of our domain and our knowledge, says Kerstin Bach

Projects:
SupportPrim - Using AI for treatment planning of musculoskeletal pain (2020-2024)
SmaRTWork - a digital system for personalised return to work recommendations for sick-listed with musculoskeletal disorders (2021-2027)
Exaigon - Explainable AI systems for gradual industry adoption (2020-2024)
AI4EU - An AI-on-demand platform for Europe (partner, H2020, 2019-2021)
selfBACK - A decision support system for self-management of low back pain (project manager, H2020, 2016-2021)
Back-UP - Personalised Prognostic Models to Improve Well-being and Return to Work After Neck and Low Back Pain (task leader, H2020, 2018-2021)