RESEARCH

AI for real world, with applications in healthcare and smart territories

The research activity of the Institute is based on the idea that AI operates in the real world, particularly with applications in healthcare (medicine and biology) and smart territories. The scientific program covers four main research areas: core elements of AI, AI for integrative computational medicine, AI for computational biology and bio-inspired AI, and AI for smart and secure territories. The activity the each chairholder gravitates around these four axes and is not limited to the single axis the chair is related to.

Synergies between the chairholders and their teams across the different axes show that cross-fertilization starts from the core elements of AI and leads to the more applicative axes in computational medicine (e.g., the federated learning FedBioMed project of M. Lorenzi and the ANTIDOTE project of E. Cabrio and S. Villata), in biology (e.g., the single cell and molecular studies on SARS-CoV-2 of P. Barbry and F. Cazals), and in smart territories (e.g., the traffic flow improvement of P. Goatin and the smart building of P. Alliez). These more applicative axes generate new challenging issues to be addressed as fundamental AI problems in Axis 1 (e.g., cyber-defense through statistical network analysis by C. Bouveyron). We provide a summary below of the implementation of the research program and its results.

A successful research strategy

A pool of high level reseachers

The Institute currently comprises 47 Chairs in 4 strategic scientific areas: • Core elements of AI, • AI for integrative computational medicine, • AI for computational biology and bio-inspired AI, • AI for smart and secure territories.

The Institute started in 2019 based on the 27 Chairs selected ab initio by the international jury, as well as 3 international chairs. In order to strengthen Axis 3 “Computational biology and Bio-inspired AI’’ and Axis 4 “Smart Territories”, 13 new Chairs have been awarded to researchers from the Institute community. Finally, 4 affiliated chairs were also awarded in 2020 4 and 2021 to researchers from partner companies. These researchers devote 20% of their time to the Institute’s research, benefit from 3IA’s scientific activities and may co-supervise PhD students or post-doctoral researchers. These affiliated chairs strengthen ties with partner companies. With these new recruitments, a total of 47 chairs are involved in 3IA research as of December 2021. As expected, the work of the chairholders has been strongly supported by the Institute through the recruitment of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers.

The Scientific Council of 3IA organizes three calls for applications per year for these recruitments. Thus, 44 PhD students and 16 post-doctoral researchers have been recruited. Notice that 6 of these 44 PhD students have been recruited to work with researchers who are not 3IA chairholders. This is a strong indication that the Institute action is not limited to Chairs only. In addition, the Institute is developing a program of visiting researchers to strengthen its attractiveness and its international links. Funding for 4-month invitations had been earmarked for foreign researchers but only a part (3 over 7) has been honored because of the pandemic, but the system will be relaunched as soon as the situation allows it.

Evolution of the number of academic Chairs by axis Number of academic Chairs Axe 1 Core element of AI 2019

Axe 2 Int. Comput. Medecine

Axe 3 Int. Comput. Biology

40 academic chairs 16 3 international chairs 14 4 4 affiliated chairs 12 10 8 3 6 12 2 7 4 2 5 3 0 Axe 4 Smart and Sec.Terr. 2020 2021