Why are some of the best students from around the globe visiting Finland?

These are some of the comments from students who have done short internships at FCAI this year through a pilot program with BAIR, the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab in California. The program, funded by FCAI and CSC IT Center for Science, brings students to Finland for up to 90 days to work with local researchers and leverage CSC supercomputing capabilities.

Computer science graduate student Aly Lidayan says her local mentors, FCAI professors Luigi Acerbi and Stéphane Deny, were recommended to her and share her research interests. Her two-month stay allowed interaction with researchers at both Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, and will continue with remote collaboration. Her computational cognitive science project concerns how to understand human planning over their own future beliefs. 

“Humans are good at figuring out what information they need to make decisions or take actions, balancing exploration of unknown situations with exploiting what information they already have,” Lidayan explains. “How to do this well in AI systems, which typically need far more data than humans, is still an open question.” Lidayan spent the summer in Finland developing a computational model and designing experiments to test it in people through an online game.

While Lidayan was able to enjoy the long periods of daylight, fellow Berkeley student, mechanical engineer Serena Yu arrived in Finland in October, but is undaunted by the darkening days. “I like the autumn leaves and even visited [fortress island] Suomenlinna, as well as [FCAI’s annual] AI Day,” says Yu. She is working with FCAI professor Vikas Garg to find better ways to fit physics simulation and machine learning together. “While at Berkeley, I sometimes find it challenging to compare or integrate different approaches—but Vikas has publications in precisely this area. I felt that by coming to Finland, I can advance my research.”

Yu, who is from Taiwan, and Lidayan, who grew up in the UK, both note the diversity of researchers and colleagues in the Helsinki area. “It’s super international, and people are very friendly and easy to talk to, plus you have access to two universities,” says Lidayan. “And the city feels very livable, safe, clean and green.” 

“It’s really nice to meet people from lots of different countries,” adds Yu. “People have been friendly and helpful and are open to sharing and discussing. I really appreciate the problem-oriented approach they take in their research.”

Both students also met with CSC staff, who gave them an orientation to computing resources. Lidayan says her project isn’t too computationally intensive, but Yu says she will set up an account to use the supercomputer LUMI, Europe’s fastest. “For multi-scale physical phenomena with lots of variables, like climate simulation, you need to learn how to solve these problems in a computationally efficient way,” says Yu.

Lidayan is thinking of coming back to Europe after finishing her PhD, and used this exchange as an opportunity to meet people working on AI in Europe. With the launch of ELLIS Institute Finland, there may be no better time to take the icy plunge and move to Finland!

The BAIR-FCAI exhange continues in 2025, and for students in Finland who want to visit Berkeley, there is the ICSI program from FARIA.

This news item was originally published on the FCAI website on 26.11.2024