1. Can you tell us about your role as a business developer and how you connect researchers to societal partners and stakeholders?
As the AI business developer for Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), my role involves connecting researchers at EUR to external stakeholders, scouting for opportunities for AI research, and supporting subsidy applications.
Once a researcher approaches me with the request to search for external stakeholders for their current or future research projects, I define the request and formulate it in a manner to entice action from external partners. Then, I reach out to externals and schedule an initial meeting between them and the researchers to define further and align. I also support contract research, where external companies collaborate with EUR researchers or where researchers have existing contacts with external companies that lead to potential contract research opportunities. For subsidy applications, I am responsible for ensuring the parties are onboarded in time; the right stakeholders are engaged; and timely intervention in case some leads are missed or not picked up.
I am also involved in defining and leading the development of strategic priorities for AI at EUR from a business development perspective in collaboration with Erasmus Research Services (ERS) management and other EUR stakeholders. For example, I acted on the strategic opportunity to include fintech, energy and port in Convergence AI multi-year plans. I am developing the plans for the Convergence centre for fintech with input from researchers. I also scoped out three areas of future work research within the EUR, including platform economy, robotics and automation, and labor productivity and research in AI ethics to enable stronger connections and representation of our research.
In addition, I work on internal alignment with stakeholders on AI within EUR, supporting programs such as ECDA and AI@EUR. My work also involves representing and aligning with Convergence AI activities, where I initiated discussions of multi-year plans around energy, port, and fintech. In short, my job is to connect people and opportunities, align interests, and facilitate know-how to bring together the best external partners for researchers at EUR.
2. Can you discuss any notable collaborations or projects that have come out of these partnerships?
During my time as the business developer for AI-MAPS ELSA Labs, we were able to secure €2 Million in funding and establish partnerships with several internal and external parties in AI, surveillance, privacy, policing and law. One highlight from this project included securing three critically important partners for the proposal with just four days until the deadline: a 5G partner, a major international industry partner and the leading European human rights organization.
Additionally, I led the collaboration between EUR and TU Delft for the launch of Zuid Holland SME AI clinics within the NWO funded ROBUST program, from which EUR also has its first 2 ICAI Labs. The clinic aims to help small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)/MKBs in the Netherlands overcome hurdles in adopting data science technologies.
I am working on developing a Convergence center for fintech, which will focus on generating synthetic and encrypted data sets for use in test cases, text mining for large language models in financial research, and econometrics, and building an IT infrastructure to enable secure data sharing and computations across partners, including external companies.
I am also proud to have helped EUR become an associate partner for TTT.AI, a national project focused on supporting AI startups from universities, and to have developed a proposal for the Groenvermogen, WP2 call on Hydrogen Transport and Storage, where EUR is now a consortium member. Lastly, I led EUR's community partnership for the World AI Summit 2023, which will help us gain broader exposure for EUR AI research.
3. What are the developments in the field of AI that EUR could capitalize on?
We are currently living in a defining moment in AI history with the confluence of increasing computing power, availability of data which is being collected at a massive scale and algorithmic advancements. While this has been brewing since around early 2010s with the popularity of deep learning, the launch of ChatGPT has made AI accessible and even fun (in some cases) to use for the masses with impact of all domains – whether it is writing articles or developing a new website.
With this there are new concerns around the LLMs (Large Language Models) like GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, and the almost race against time in which tech giants are commercializing developments. The promise of LLMs is the ability to generate content which in most cases is indistinguishable from human-level content. One of the biggest criticisms is “do these developed LLMs help solve any real-world problems?”. With future developments, we could see algorithms being managed and monitored by other algorithms and the development of autonomous agents capable of executing tasks without human intervention.
Broadly I think EUR is very well positioned to address three key areas:
- Our community understanding and relationship with AI – I believe we as EUR are uniquely positioned to educate, create, and nurture the understanding broader society has with AI whether it is addressing financial inclusion, energy poverty, arts and culture, communication, AI in education etc. We can also play a key role in defining how the employment of the future would look like with more and more white-collar tasks being done or supplemented by AI.
- Legal and ethical aspects around AI – In many ways, LLMs are black boxes spitting out fabricated information and/ or untrue information in some cases and ripe for misuse by malicious actors. With our law, philosophy, management, history, culture, and communication schools we have the expertise to be at the forefront of addressing the complex legal and ethical questions that arise with this boom in AI. Unique is also our perspectives on the environmental impact and ensuring the windfall from these developments is distributed equally to communities (inclusive prosperity).
- What does it mean to be human? – With near human capabilities of LLMs in some tasks, from a more philosophical perspective the question also arises what defines us as humans. At EUR, we would be able to look at it from a socio-cultural perspective while addressing the fundamental shifts that would happen due to AI.
4. What is needed for EUR to unmissable in the field of AI?
There is stellar research being done at EUR around the broader impact of AI on and in society and our impact would be greater through stronger representation of EUR on events around AI, national and international, stronger internal alignment, better organization to overcome ‘siloed’ initiatives, strengthening incentives for researchers to work in interdisciplinary manner, expanding the number of researchers around key strategic areas related to AI and broadening the support provided to researchers to capitalize on the initiatives. By implementing these measures, EUR can make a significant contribution towards shaping the future of AI in society and paving the way for a more collaborative and impactful research community.
For more information contact: ERS Business Development & Knowledge Transfer Team kto@eur.nl