Call for Participation


COVID-19 Statement

We would first like to express our empathy and condolences with those affected by COVID-19 so far, and those who will have a difficult 2020.

The Summer School Organization Committee is monitoring the situation surrounding COVID-19 and considering what impact this may have on our event. Our plan to manage potential travel restrictions is as follows:
  • The summer school will take place in late July in France, when a strong improvement in the situation related to Covid-19 is foreseen.
  • However, in case some countries still have restrictions on travelling, we will propose an innovative on-line/off-line participation allowing participants to remotely attend the keynotes and courses, and to realise the practical exercises by accessing services that are deployed in factories running in three sites (Nuremberg, Saint-Étienne, St Gallen). Students will participate to the deployment of distributed and decentralized connected Industry 4.0

Context and Motivation

The current process of digitization undertaken in all parts of society, business and technology is transforming industry in all its facets and processes. Data, smart services, Internet of Things, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence are changing the way humans and companies work together. There is a strong reshaping of Industry going on.
In this strongly dynamic context, the current data revolution and increasing automation of cognitive tasks are raising challenging issues related to:

  • interoperability of data, things and services in the increasingly open and geographically distributed industrial ecosystems;
  • efficient processing of the big amount of data generated by distributed production and business processes supported by IoT;
  • consistent and coordinated autonomous decisions and activities undertaken by fine-grained (machines, robots, humans) to coarse-grained (workshops, enterprises) entities in decentralized and open ecosystems.

In order to build a trustful intelligent open infrastructure to support this industry of the future, it is important to enhance the set of methods and to increase research in the domain of Artificial Intelligence on the one hand, and to foster education, development and cross-fertilization efforts with the actors of Industry 4.0 on the other hand.
Artificial Intelligence technologies pertaining to Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Autonomous Agents and Decentralized Artificial Intelligence, Responsible Artificial Intelligence are interesting candidates to tackle the challenging issues of Industry 4.0.
In that direction, it is of first importance to share experiences and expertise between academia and industrial partners from France, Germany as well as other European countries with regard to Industry of the Future and AI.

Goal of the Summer School

This Summer School aims at investigating how Artificial Intelligence technologies can tackle the challenging issues of the industry of the future with respect to interoperability, data processing and autonomy, thus contributing to a trustful and responsible intelligent infrastructure. The key objective is to prototype and review solution approaches to actual problems.
The goal is to gather young talents and train them on common theoretical and practical basis by experts from industry and academia, inspired by the visions and the experience of keynote speakers. Participants will also work towards executable proof-of-concept solutions addressing requirements stemming from the industry and building on cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Agents, Linked Data and Big Data Technology. The main topics of the Summer school will be on the Web of Things, Knowledge Graphs, Decentralised AI, and Responsible AI.

Potential Interest

Participants will benefit from a motivating environment where:

  • This event is closely aligned with the cutting-edge R&D activities.
  • Excellent young talents draft innovative proof-of-concept solutions to actual problems.
  • A reality check by expert reviewers confirms the further viability of the initial solutions.
  • The events provide their participants with a network of business/project partners for subsequent experimentation and implementation;
  • An unique opportunity to share experiences and expertise between academia and industrial partners from France, Germany as well as other European countries with regard to Industry of the Future and AI.

Topics

The Summer School will be organised along 4 main topics, each having balanced time dedicated to lecturing and practicing. In addition, students will have several working sessions in groups to draft plausible solutions to the challenges, create prototypes and test their approach as fast and as efficiently as possible.

The main topics of the sessions will enable to cover how Industry 4.0 problems can benefit of:

  • Web of Things – exploiting semantic descriptions of things, building mashups of things automatically;
  • Knowledge graphs – knowledge representation at scale, graph-based data management and querying;
  • Decentralized AI – autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, coordination;
  • Responsible AI – AI ethics & AI safety

Important Dates

  • Opening of application for participation:
  • End of application:
  • Notification of acceptance:
  • Deadline for registration:
  • Summer School : -, 2020

Organization

EMSE logo UJM logo
Intelligent Systems & Informatics Connected Intelligence team of Laboratoire Hubert Curien
FAU logo Fraunhofer IIS logo
Chair of Technical Information Systems Fraunhofer Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS

Local organization chairs

  • Olivier Boissier, Mines Saint-Étienne
  • Pierre Maret, Université Jean Monnet
  • Antoine Zimmermann, Mines Saint-Étienne

Committee

  • Philippe Beaune, Mines Saint-Étienne
  • Olivier Boissier, Mines Saint-Étienne
  • Victor Charpenay, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
  • Andreas Harth, Fraunhofer IIS & Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
  • Maxime Lefrançois, Mines Saint-Étienne
  • Pierre Maret, Université Jean Monnet
  • Antoine Zimmermann, Mines Saint-Étienne

Program

See the detailed program

We now propose a full program of the summer school on a separate page, with high quality keynotes and lectures provided by experienced lecturers in the different domains covered by the summer school.

Speakers and tutors

This is the list of confirmed speakers.

  • Andrei Ciortea, Post doc at University St. Gallen working on the Web of Things and Multi-agent technologies
  • Andreas Harth, Professor at University Nürnberg-Erlangen; Web of Things, KG.
  • Jomi Fred Hübner, Associate professor at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil; Multi-agent programming, autonomous systems.
  • Tobias Käfer Post doc at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology; Linked Data and distributed Knowledge Graphs.
  • Matthias Kovatsch Principal Researcher at Huawei's German Research Center, Munich
  • Simon Mayer, Professor at University St. Gallen in Switzerland.
  • Marc-Oliver Pahl, Research Director at Institut Mines Télécom, Rennes; IoT, Security.
  • Dave Raggett, Former W3C Team Contact for the Web of Things and Activity Lead for the Web of Data.
  • Volker Tresp, Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and Distinguished Research Scientist at Siemens; Industrial Knowledge Graphs.
  • Birgit Vogel-Heuser Professor Dr-Ing. at Technische Universität München.

Lectures

All lectures consist in theoretical and practical sessions covering hands-on exercises on various kinds so that you will be able to participate to the coding challenges and be ready to continue coding and integrating semantic web technologies, multi-agent systems, web of things.

Coding challenge

Participants will work in teams on a week-long coding challenge integrating technologies encompassing all topics presented at the summer school. The challenge will make use of sensors and actuators deployed in a replica of an industrial facility. Instructions to the participants will be given before the event to prepare for the challenge.

Summer School Agenda

Each day is dedicated to one of the 4 topics of the summer school and consists of a keynote speech, lectures and practical work, then application of theory to the coding challenge. At the end, each team will present the outcome of their work. Social events are planned to encourage networking and team building.

The detailed program is here

Sponsorship

logo IMT logo DFH/UFA logo AFA

If you are a company who would like to support this summer school and have a chance to advertise and get in touch with young talents and academic researchers, you may want to discuss our sponsoring options by contacting us.

Registration

Fees

  • The registration fees are 300 €, for those participating on site. The fees include coffee breaks, lunches, special event dinner and accommodation at the student residence of Mines Saint-Étienne.
  • Reduced fees for remote participants will be 150 €.
  • Thanks to our sponsorships, some fees may be waived. If you need a fee waiver, please send us a motivation letter, and we will consider your request in the limit of our budget.

We will limit the number of participants to 30 people. Therefore, in case we receive too many applications, we will select attendees based on their résumés and cover letter. Both files must be compiled into a single document that you will submit using the registration form on EasyChair.

Venue

École des mines de Saint-Étienne - Espace Fauriel
29, rue Ponchardier, F-42023 Saint-Étienne

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Access

By plane

Lyon Saint Exupéry airport From the airport, you should take Rhône Express (usually every 20 min) till Lyon Part Dieu train station. Then cf. "By train"

By train

From Lyon train station (Part-Dieu or Perrache) you can catch a train to Saint-Étienne Châteaucreux (TER, every 30', duration 40'). There are frequent trams (Tram 2 or 3) to station "Jean Moulin" + Bus (bus M6) to station "Centre de congrès" (Bus Schedules)

By car

GPS: 45° 25’ 40″ N / 04° 24’ 14″ E

Contact

École des Mines de Saint-Étienne
158 cours Fauriel
42023 Saint-Etienne, France
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