The internal NorwAI Forums helps overcome boundaries for partner innovations

The internal NorwAI Forums helps overcome boundaries for partner innovations

A rare glimpse of our internal work:

NorwAI Forum will innovate across boundaries  

NorwAI Forums are twice a year internal summits for NorwAI partners for sharing, discussing and setting goals for across industry and academic collaboration. Here is a glimpse behind the curtains at our partner work.

As the Trondheim Forums hosted by NTNU are research-focused, the Oslo Forums hosted by SINTEF Digital are focused on innovation.

On November 14th, NorwAI Innovation Director Till Christopher Lech at SINTEF Digital invited partners to a Forum in Oslo for a dialogue on innovation assignments. The Forums roll between partners, this time the location was at Forskningsparken at Blindern. Together with Associate Professor Nhien Nguyen at NTNU, head of the AI Innovation Ecosystem work package at NorwAI, they both asked how to innovate across boundaries. Boundary objects and boundary spanners are key to success. 

Nhien and Till dicsussing on stage
Associate professor Nhien Nguyen, NTNU and Till Christopher Lech, Innovation Director at NorwAI
shared views on the boundaries and spanners for innovation. Photo: Kai T. Dragland

Main topics

29 participants divided (almost) equally between industry professionals and academics in the debates ignited by keynotes, panels, and group discussions. Examples:

  • What is the maturity of industrial AI? The keynote highlighted that its maturity is case-dependent and evolves over time: exampled by simulator tuning, wind turbines and transformer temperature models that industry partners now are engaged in.
  • What are the challenges and opportunities in innovation through collaboration between academia and industry? It was noted cultural differences, varying business models, but also the potential for mutual benefits when aligning goals. 
Signe Riemer-Sørensen pointing at presentation slide
Signe Riemer-Sørensen, research manager at SINTEF Digital, heads NorwAIs work package on
Hybrid AI Analytics where heavy asset industries meets across companies boundaries. Photo: SINTEF

Tons of use case analytics presented at the session gave shared insights of a vary of ongoing radical and incremental innovation work within the partners. The groups were divided to further discussions with industry, finance and marketplace perspectives.

People gathered around a table doing group work
Group work at NorwAI Forum in Oslo. Photo: SINTEF

Data session

Data is a critical factor. A special data session dived into important perspectives such as

  • preparing AI-ready data, emphasizing trust, legal compliance and synthetic data
  • AI in organizational contexts and the importance of policy and guidelines
  • collaborative writing on human values in LLMs
  • data accessibility for researchers
  • data infrastructure 

- I concluded the workshop by stressing the importance of data access for NorwAI's R&I work. We must highlight the need for benchmarks, collaboration, and resource sharing to ensure AI is deployed effectively and to identify knowledge gaps and research problems, says the host of the latest NorwAI Forum.

2024-11-26

By Rolf D. Svendsen