## 4th European Summer School on Artificial Intelligence (ESSAI 2026)
## 2nd International Summer School on Bilateral AI
## 6-10 July 2026, Vienna, Austria
## https://essai2026.eu

*General Information*

ESSAI is the annual summer school on AI held under the auspices of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), and in 2026 it will encompass the 2nd International Summer School on Bilateral AI. ESSAI is the largest school of broad AI in Europe, offering courses in all areas of Artificial Intelligence and from a wide range of perspectives. Its thematic scope is analogous to major AI conferences like ECAI, IJCAI and AAAI, covering all AI subdisciplines and their interconnections. ESSAI is a central meeting place for AI students and young researchers to deepen their knowledge, broaden their perspectives, discuss current research, and build connections with other researchers.

*Location*

The fourth edition of ESSAI will be held in Vienna, a city where history and innovation walk side by side. Home to world-renowned universities and research centers, Vienna has inspired great thinkers for centuries—think of Erwin Schrödinger, Lise Meitner, Sigmund Freud, Kurt Gödel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, or the Vienna Circle. Today, Vienna continues to welcome students, scholars, and curious minds from around the globe. Vienna awaits you with world-class culture, groundbreaking science, and cozy coffee houses—all in a city celebrated for its quality of life.

*Invitation to Submit a Course Proposal*

We welcome leading AI researchers to submit course proposals for inclusion in this school, which provides a uniquely stimulating teaching environment. We expect to welcome around 400 students with diverse backgrounds, who can choose courses from parallel tracks in order to deepen their understanding of familiar AI disciplines, dive into new ones, and discover new interdisciplinary research areas combining different AI approaches. The lecturers of the selected courses will be invited to join the school’s academic and social program and enjoy an exciting summer week in beautiful Vienna.

*Important Dates*

* December 3 (AoE), 2025: Deadline for submitting a course proposal
* January 21, 2026: Notification of acceptance of course proposals
* July 6-10, 2026: Summer school

*Topics*

ESSAI aims to cover a broad range of AI subdisciplines and the interactions thereof. Proposals for courses are invited in all areas of AI, including but not limited to the following:
* Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (MAS)
* AI for Social Good (A4SG)
* Causality and Causal Learning (CL)
* Computer Vision (VIS)
* Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of AI (ELS)
* Foundation Models (FM)
* Human-In-The-Loop AI (HLAI)
* Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR)
* Learning Theory (LT)
* Machine Learning (ML)
* Natural Language Processing (NLP)
* Neural Networks (NN)
* Neuro-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NSLR)
* Planning & Strategic Reasoning (PLAN)
* Quantum Machine Learning (QML)
* Reinforcement Learning (RL)
* Robotics (ROB)
* Safe, Explainable and Trustworthy AI (SET)
* Search & Optimization (SO)
* Uncertainty in AI (UAI)

*Special Themes*

ESSAI 2026 will feature two special themes. We welcome in particular course proposals that align with the following topics:

**Bilateral AI**, which aims at developing the foundation for broad AI systems with interacting sub-symbolic and symbolic components.

**Digital Humanism**, an interdisciplinary research field that studies the complex interplay between digital technologies and humans.

These themes are closely related to two research priorities being pursued in Vienna and Austria: the Bilateral AI Cluster of Excellence (https://www.bilateral-ai.net/) and the Digital Humanism initiative (https://caiml.org/dighum/).

*Course Categories*

We invite courses that will consist of **4 lectures of 90 minutes (one lecture per day, 6 hours of teaching in total)** in the week the school takes place (alternative course durations can be considered if they are well-motivated). Every course proposal should belong to one of the following two categories:

* **Introductory courses** are intended to introduce an AI research area to students, young researchers, and other non-specialists and to foster a sound understanding of 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 assume general knowledge of the related disciplines.

* **Advanced courses** are targeted primarily to graduate students who wish to acquire a level of comfort and understanding of current research in an area of AI.

While introductory courses will typically focus on one subarea of AI only, advanced courses are encouraged to present a broader perspective on AI, and they should be of interest beyond a single specific area. The course proposals will be reviewed by a Program Committee covering all the research areas presented above, which will select the courses to be taught by the school.

*Submission Instructions*

A course proposal consists of the following:

(A) An abstract of approximately 150 words (aimed at Program Committee members)

(B) A single PDF document containing:

1. Contact information for each proposer (name, affiliation, address, email, web page)
2. Information on the course content (up to two pages):
* Course title and category (Introductory or Advanced)
* Motivation and description of course content
* Tentative outline and teaching concept (including a distribution of teaching material over the 4 x 90 min lectures)
* Expected student level and prerequisites. 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.
* Target audience, including whether and how the course will appeal to students beyond the main subarea of the course
* If applicable, information on where the course has already been taught and in which venue
* Relevant references (e.g., textbooks, monographs, proceedings, surveys, a link to lecture slides if already available)
3. Information about the proposer(s):
* Short CVs of the proposer(s)
* Evidence that the proposer(s) are excellent lecturers with relevant teaching experience, particularly in delivering intensive interdisciplinary courses
* Courses should normally have no more than two lecturers. For courses with more than two lecturers, the role of each lecturer should be explained

Your course proposal should be submitted using the CMT system (the link is available at https://essai2026.eu).

*Contact*

Questions regarding this call can be sent to the email address essai2026-pc-chairs@list.tuwien.ac.at

*Participation*

All lecturers named in the proposal are expected to teach in person at the school. To keep registration fees to a minimum and facilitate the participation of more students, all instructional and organisational work for ESSAI is carried out on a voluntary basis. The registration fees of instructors will be waived. In addition, and where appropriate and possible, ESSAI will seek to partially reimburse travel and accommodation expenses; typically, the support can only be given to one lecturer per course. If lecturers can cover their travel and accommodation expenses from other sources, this is greatly appreciated.

#### Organizers

*General Chair*

Vida Groznik, University of Ljubljana

*Local Organizers*

* Kees van Berkel, TU Wien
* Thomas Eiter, TU Wien
* Jan Maly, WU Wien
* Magdalena Ortiz, TU Wien
* Marta Sabou, WU Wien
* Leyli Slavata, TU Wien

*Program Chairs*

* Luc De Raedt, KU Leuven and Örebro University
* Mantas Šimkus, TU Wien

*ESSAI Steering Committee*

* Giuseppe De Giacomo, University of Oxford
* Vida Groznik, University of Ljubljana
* Brian Logan, University of Aberdeen & Utrecht University
* Magdalena Ortiz, TU Wien

5-9 October 2026, Napoli – Italy
https://icmi.acm.org/2026/
============================================

We are calling for teams to propose one or more ICMI Multimodal Grand Challenges.

The International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) is the premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction, interfaces, and system development.

The conference's goals are to implement believable, autonomous, adaptive, context-aware Human Computer Interaction (HCI) systems able to infer how organizational, cultural and physical contexts shape individual perception, choices and actions. Such systems, e.g. synthetic agents, robots, avatars or analysis systems act in real-time, sustain dyadic/group interactions and actively cooperate in discussion, decision-making, problem solving, learning/knowledge building. These systems gather information and meanings in the course of everyday activity and build knowledge and practical ability to render the world interpretable while interacting with users attuned to behavioural sequences that underpin collaboration.

ICMI Multimodal Grand Challenges aim to inspire new ideas in the ICMI community and create momentum for future collaborative work. Analysis, synthesis, and interactive tasks are all possible.

Challenge papers will be indexed in the main proceedings of ICMI.

We invite the ICMI community from various fields related to multimodal interaction to collectively define and tackle these scientific Grand Challenges in this domain including but not limited to the following categories:
1. DATA CHALLENGES: gathering new experimental data and theories across a spectrum of disciplines;
2. ALGORITHM CHALLENGES: developing algorithms, models and computational paradigms that may equip machines with human level automaton intelligence;
3. APPLICATION CHALLENGES: implementing HCI systems that enhance quality of life in society and simplify the user access to future telecommunication services;
4. MULTIDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGES: promoting multidisciplinary exchanges, educational initiatives, and new socio-psychological and computational approaches towards socially-emotionally-context-aware Information Communication Technologies (ICT).

Prospective organizers should submit a five-page maximum proposal containing the following information:
1. Title
2. Abstract appropriate for possible Web promotion of the Challenge
3. Distinctive topics to be addressed and specific goals
4. Detailed description of the Challenge and its relevance to multimodal interaction
5. Length (full day or half day)
6. Plan for soliciting participation
7. Description of how submissions (challenge's submissions and papers) will be evaluated, and a list of proposed reviewers
8. Proposed schedule for releasing datasets (if applicable) and/or systems (if applicable) and receiving submissions
9. Short biography of the organizers (preferably from multiple institutions)
10. Funding source (if any) that supports or could support the challenge organization
11. Draft call for papers; affiliations and email address of the organisers; summary of the Grand Challenge; list of potential Technical Program Committee members and their affiliations; important dates

Proposals will be evaluated based on originality, ambition, feasibility, and implementation plan.

A Challenge with dataset(s) or system(s) that has had pilot results to ensure its representativity and suitability to the proposed task will be given preference for acceptance; an additional 1 page description must be attached in such case.
Continuation of or variants on the 2025 challenges are welcome, even if we require submissions of this form to highlight the number of participants that attended during the previous year and describe what changes (if any) will be made from the previous year.

The ICMI organizers will offer support with basic logistics, which includes rooms and equipment to run the Workshop, coffee breaks can be offered if synchronised with the main conference.

===============================================
Important Dates and Contact Details
===============================================
Proposals due: December 16, 2025
Proposal notification: January 30, 2026
Grand challenge date: October 5, 2026
===============================================

Proposals should be emailed to the ICMI 2025 Multimodal Grand Challenge Chairs, Sebastian Zepf (sebastian.zepf@mercedes-benz.com) and Alessandro Vinciarelli (Alessandro.Vinciarelli@glasgow.ac.uk).