The Lyon-Saint-Étienne university campus officially launches its center of excellence dedicated to artificial intelligence. Supported by a consortium of eleven institutions to date, including 4 universities (Lyon 1, 2, 3 and Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne) ; 6 schools (ENS de Lyon, École Centrale de Lyon, INSA, École des Mines de Saint-Étienne, VetagroSup and ENTPE) and the Hospices Civils de Lyon, the creation of this center of excellence follows on from the application submitted in 2023 for the “AILyS” project as part of the France 2030 investment plan.

Although this did not receive ANR funding as a Cluster-IA, the various players involved in the project decided at the time to continue moving forward together, pursuing their exchanges and capitalizing on the work already achieved.

Giving visibility to the skills and players on the Lyon-Saint-Étienne site

"The set-up of the project itself brought out a number of very interesting things,” explains Aurélien Garivier, AILyS project coordinator. "Firstly, an awareness of the richness of the Lyon-Saint-Étienne site and the various players involved in terms of artificial intelligence skills. Secondly, there was a real need for coordination and collaboration. All the parties involved therefore decided to continue the project anyway, albeit with redefined priorities and objectives to fit in with the lower budget, which was nowhere near what had been envisaged in the initial set-up."

Today, the new AILyS project is on track, with three main priorities:

• To maintain an up-to-date map of in-house skills and activities, so as to know who does what, where, and to list all events relating to artificial intelligence on the Lyon-Saint-Étienne site. This would take the form of an internal exchange tool for the community of artificial intelligence teachers and researchers.
• Set up an external gateway for people wishing to communicate with this academic ecosystem, e.g. industrial players with research or training projects.
• Develop a coordination capacity to respond to future calls for projects on the subject of artificial intelligence, by setting up a watch, in particular to seek European funding.

"It's important to specify that AILyS is not intended to compete with anything, but simply to complement and support existing initiatives,” explains Aurélien Garivier." Particularly in the field of continuing education, where the Lyon-Saint-Étienne site, along with Grenoble and Clermont-Ferrand, is the winner of the FIAURA project (Formations Intelligence Artificielle en Auvergne Rhône Alpes). So it goes without saying that in this area - continuing education - AILyS will be able to draw on FIAURA's activities."

Recruitment in progress and a major scientific event to come

As for the next steps, a project manager is currently being recruited. This person will be responsible for coordinating the center of excellence, centralizing all information, setting up groups to respond to calls for proposals, and setting up a website to help achieve the three objectives mentioned above.

On the scientific front, AILyS will organize regular theme days with speakers from a wide range of scientific fields. The first of these is currently being organized, and the date and venue will be announced shortly.

A special highlight is planned for June 30 to July 4, when AILyS will take part in the organization of the COLT 2025 conference (Conference on Learning Theory), at ENS de Lyon. "This is one of the major international meetings in machine learning and artificial intelligence theory, and perhaps the biggest conference on the theoretical aspects of machine learning,” comments Aurélien Garivier. "This is the first time it has been organized in Lyon, and it will be a great event for AILyS to be associated with it.”