The 2nd European Summer School in Artificial Intelligence – ESSAI 2024

July 15-26, 2024

Athens, Greece

https://essai2024.di.uoa.gr/

IMPORTANT DATES

07 Feb 2024: Course Title submission deadline (mandatory)

14 Feb 2024: Final submission

06 Mar 2024: Notification

ABOUT

ESSAI 2024 is the second edition of the annual summer school on AI held under the auspices of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI).  

ESSAI 2024 will provide an interdisciplinary setting in which courses are offered in all areas of Artificial Intelligence and also from wider scientific, historical, and philosophical perspectives. ESSAI is a central meeting place for students and young researchers in Artificial Intelligence to discuss current research and share knowledge. Courses will consist of five 90-minute sessions, offered daily (Monday-Friday) in a single week, to allow students to develop in-depth knowledge of a topic.

The first edition of ESSAI was held in Ljubljana, Slovenia (https://essai.si/ ) between the 24th and 28th of July 2023 and was extremely successful, attracting over 500 participants. We look forward to a second edition of ESSAI that is at least as successful. 

TOPICS AND FORMAT

ESSAI aims to cover all subdisciplines of AI and the interactions between them. 

Proposals for courses at ESSAI 2024 are invited in all areas of Artificial Intelligence, including but not limited to the following: 

• Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (MAS)
• Causality and Causal Learning (CL)
• Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of AI (ELS)
• Foundation Models (FM)
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR)
• Learning Theory (LT)
• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Neuro-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NSLR)
• Planning & Strategic Reasoning (PLAN)
• Reinforcement Learning (RL)
• Robotics (ROB) 
• Safe, Explainable and Trustworthy AI (SET)
• Search and Optimization (SO)
• Supervised and Unsupervised Learning (ML)
• Vision (VIS)

Each course will consist of five 90-minute lectures, offered daily (Monday-Friday) in a single week. 

While introductory courses will typically focus on one subarea of AI, introductory and advanced courses are encouraged to present a broader perspective on AI and should be of interest beyond one specific area.

CATEGORIES

Each proposal should fall under one of the following categories.

INTRODUCTORY COURSES

Introductory courses are intended to introduce a research field to students, young researchers, and other non-specialists, and to foster a sound understanding of its basic methods and techniques. Such courses should enable researchers from related disciplines to develop some comfort and competence in the topic considered. Introductory courses in a cross-disciplinary area may presuppose general knowledge of the related disciplines.

ADVANCED COURSES

Advanced courses are targeted primarily to graduate students who wish to acquire a level of comfort and understanding in the current research of a field.

PROPOSAL GUIDELINES

To be considered, course proposals should closely adhere to the following guidelines:

• Courses must be presented by lecturers who submitted the proposal. For courses with more than two lecturers, the role of each lecturer should be clearly explained and justified in the proposal.
• Course proposals should explicitly state the intended course category. Proposals for introductory courses should indicate the intended level, for example, as it relates to standard textbooks and monographs in the area. Proposals for advanced courses should specify the prerequisites in detail.

Proposals must be submitted in PDF format via:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essai2024

and include all the following:

1. Personal information for each proposer: Name, affiliation, contact address, email, homepage (optional)
2. General proposal information: Title, category
3. Information about the course content:
1. Abstract of up to 150 words
2. Motivation and description (up to two pages)
3. Tentative outline
4. Expected level and prerequisites
5. Appropriate references (e.g., textbooks, monographs, proceedings, surveys)
6. Whether the course will appeal to students outside of the main discipline of the course
4. Information about the proposer(s):
1. Short CVs of the proposer(s)
2. Evidence that the proposer(s) are excellent lecturers with relevant teaching experience, in particular in delivering intensive courses in an interdisciplinary setting. 

To keep participation fees to a minimum, all the instructional and organizational work of ESSAI is performed on a completely voluntary basis. However, the registration fees of organizers and instructors will be waived. In addition, and where appropriate, ESSAI will seek to partially reimburse travel and accommodation expenses associated with delivering a course. If lecturers can cover their travel and accommodation expenses from other sources, this is greatly appreciated. 

SUBMISSION INFORMATION

By February 7, 2024: Proposers must submit on EasyChair at least the name(s) of the lecturers(s), the ESSAI area and course level and a short abstract.

By February 14, 2024: Submission must be completed by uploading a PDF with the actual proposal as detailed above.

SUBMISSION PORTAL

Please submit your proposals to

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=essai2024

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Chair: Brian Logan, Utrecht University

Co-chair: Magdalena Ortiz, TU Wien

Local Chair: Manolis Koubarakis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

ESSAI Steering Committee Chair (EurAI Board representative): Giuseppe De Giacomo, Oxford University