INSAIT, the Bulgarian AI Centre, an initiative supported by the ETHZ, the EPFL and other actors, aims to build excellence in Bulgaria and Eastern European countries.
On 11 April 2022, the Institute of Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Technology (INSAIT) was officially launched in Sofia, Bulgaria. At the inauguration, guests from politics, business, and science participated, among them, the Swiss Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin, Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich, and Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL. Further high-level guests included the President of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov, as well as, Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Education and Youth, and Maria Leptin, the President of the European Research Council (ERC).
INSAIT is a new Bulgarian Research Institute established in partnership with the ETH Zurich and EPFL from Switzerland. It also receives advice and supervision from top academics, such as form the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of California-UC Berkeley, Yale University, Princeton University, and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The initiative is a brainchild from Martin Vechev, a Bulgarian computer scientist who studied at the Sofia High School of Mathematics (SMG), and received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the Simon Fraser University in 2001 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge in 2008. He currently works as a Full Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich., where he leads the Secure, Reliable, and Intelligent Systems lab. Previously joining the ETH Zurich in 2012, he was a Research Staff member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York, USA from 2007-2011.
The objective of INSAIT is to become a leading international scientific institute for computer science, artificial intelligence (AI) and computational technology and to attract regional and worldwide talents, who are essential to boost the digital transformation and establish a competitive economy in Bulgaria and Eastern Europe. INSAIT receives financial support from the Bulgarian government, and technology companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google, DeepMind, SiteGround and several Bulgarian entrepreneurs to contribute to the creation of international research and educational programs in artificial intelligence and computer science at INSAIT.
The INSAIT initiative goes along with the efforts by the European Union (EU) to establish a more balanced European environment for talents in research and innovation, reducing the existing divide between institutions in Eastern and Northwestern Europe in line with the policy objective of the European Research Area.
The purpose of INSAIT is especially relevant, considering that the AI component in education in Bulgaria is still weak. According to the recently released AI Watch Index 2021 (see SwissCore article), academic offers related to AI will affect the employability in the future labor market and the presence of advanced digital competencies in the economy and will be a decisive factor in the reduction or increase of prevailing differences and inequalities in the EU. For the ongoing digital transformation of Europe, the European Commission (EC) is promoting the development and uptake of AI as one of the main drivers to boost the EU’s technological and industrial capacity. Since 2018, a series of strategies and initiatives have been put in place, including the European strategy for AI and its Coordinated Plan, the Communication “Fostering a European approach to Artificial Intelligence”, and the European AI regulation proposal, the AI Act.
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