ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI officially started on September 1, 2022. It is a growing network compromising 26 founding members dedicated to outstanding research and innovation in safe and secure Artificial Intelligence. Based on the EU funding period, ELSA was scheduled to end in August 2025.
But since its founding, ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI has created leading research and resulted in high-impact results. Hence, the European Commission decided to extend the Lighthouse until August 31, 2026.
The extension will enable the network members to deepen their research and continue their leadership in new trends and developments within AI research and beyond, such as the advent of LLMs, the EU AI Act, or new Generative Models. Additionally, researchers and experts from within the ELSA networks have been providing their advice to the EU AI Office on the implementation of the EU AI Act. The extension allows them to continue their efforts.
Besides intensifying research, the extension will stabilize the Europe-wide connection, collaboration, and synergies created within ELSA as well as the four main pillars of the European Lighthouse:
- The ELSA Work Packages and Use Cases, which streamline the research within ELSA and foster the bridge between academia and industry
- The ELSA Benchmarks, available on the ELSA Benchmarks platform.
- ELSA-hosted Industry Calls, which so far have supported twelve startups and SMEs with €60.000 of funding each, intense collaboration, and network, research, and industry expertise.
- The ELSA Mobility Fund, which enables postdocs, PhDs, and experienced researchers to travel for research purposes.
Prof. Dr. Mario Fritz, ELSA coordinator and CISPA-Faculty, concludes: “With the extension of ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI, the European Commission has enabled a diverse network of excellent researchers to carry on their outstanding work and strengthen Europe’s position within the landscape of groundbreaking foundational AI research and innovation. We are excited about the opportunity to keep adding value to European research – through our own work as well as funding mobility, startups, and SMEs.”
ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI supports Europe’s goal to strengthen its role in AI technology and software research as well as its safe development. The Lighthouse is committed to delivering excellent research. Of the over 220 ELSA-acknowledging papers on diverse AI topics, ranging from robust Bayesian networks to explainable AI, ethics, and AI Governance, a significant number have been presented at top-tier venues, such as NeurIPS, ICML, or USENIX. The European Innovation Radar Platform currently features six ELSA innovations.
About the Networks of Excellence
Under Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, the European Commission has funded the establishment of so-called “Networks of Excellence” (short: NoEs) to address pressing scientific and technological challenges related to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. The networks focus on different aspects of AI Trustworthiness. Please find more information about Europe’s Networks of Excellence (NoE) on the official website: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/networks-excellence-ai-robotics-researchers
About ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI
ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI is an EU-funded growing Network of Excellence that spearheads efforts in foundational safe and secure AI methodology research. ELSA builds on and extends the internationally recognized and excellently positioned ELLIS (European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems) network of excellence. ELSA – European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI is funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe grant agreement No. 101070617.
