Eastern European Machine Learning (EEML) summer school

The EEML summer school is an international event which was initiated in 2018 and will be organised every year in an Eastern European country. The 2019 edition will take place in Bucharest, Romania, between 1st and 6th of July 2019, on the campus of Politehnica University of Bucharest. The first edition of the school was organised in July 2018, in Cluj-Napoca, in collaboration with Romanian Institute for Science and Technology and Babes-Bolyai University, under the name Transylvanian Machine Learning Summer School.

The event brings together some of the most respected names in the field from all over the world, to provide a week of high quality training and networking experience. The school is open to students and practitioners from all over the world, with priority being given to participants from Eastern Europe during the selection process. The school aims to make ML education accessible and to encourage diversity in STEM, by promoting diversity in gender and affiliation and keeping registration fees as low as possible, through sponsorships.

The list of speakers for the 2019 edition is almost finalised, and comprises researchers from renowned universities and research labs around the world, including Eastern Europe: Transilvania University Brasov, Higher School of Economics Moscow, University of Oxford, Berkeley University, Facebook AI Research, Google AI, University of Amsterdam, Leuven University, DeepMind, McGill University, University of Washington.

The application period is now open and interested candidates have until 29th of March 2019 to submit their applications. Last year, the school received 827 valid applications for 100 places available. Due to high demand, the program is open to 150-200 participants this year.

EEML is organised by AI researchers originating in Eastern Europe but now based abroad (Doina Precup, Razvan Pascanu, and Viorica Patraucean). The 2019 edition is organised in collaboration with local researchers and practitioners from Bucharest (Elena Burceanu, Marius Leordeanu, Traian Rebedea) and Iasi (Gabriel Marchidan). Politehnica University of Bucharest and Romanian Association of Artificial Intelligence are the hosts of the school. The organising team relies on an advisory board formed of experts in ML from Eastern Europe and the rest of the world.

To provide low participation fees, the school relies on the generosity and support of sponsors and donors. So far, several local and international companies have announced their support: DeepMind, Arnia, Bolt, Siemens, NNAISENSE, Cegeka, Intel, IST Austria, CuriousAI, Bitdefender, FotoNation, BRD, UiPath, Oveit, Facebook, LummetryAI.