Turning Franco-German collaboration into research projects
In July 2026, Institut DataIA Paris-Saclay, AI Grid and SCAI (Sorbonne Cluster for Artificial Intelligence) jointly organised the AI for Science: Franco-German Summer School 2026 in Paris. The event brought together young AI researchers from France and Germany to exchange ideas, explore shared scientific challenges and develop new research perspectives.
Working in Franco-German teams, participants turned these discussions into collaborative research proposals. Five projects were subsequently selected for funding by a jury of professors and AI Grid mentors, including Nadjib Lazaar, International Relations Officer at Institut DataIA.
With a total of €18,000 in funding provided by the three organising institutions, the selected teams will now have 11 months to develop their projects, bringing together complementary expertise in artificial intelligence and their respective scientific fields.
Five projects at the intersection of AI and science
The five selected projects address challenges in life sciences, environmental research, cybersecurity, mathematics and physics.
- GRACEFUL | Life Sciences
How can robots designed to assist older people make decisions that are understandable and accepted by the people involved?
Team: Ashwin Nedungadi, Laura Londoño, Asya S. Caroei, Berthine N., Borachhun You and Mihaela Dimitrova.
- Guardrail | Environment
How can AI-generated answers on environmental topics become more trustworthy throughout the entire process, from input to output?
Team: Erik Voigt, Muskaan Chopra, Steffen Castle and Chamia Hamdi.
- HAI-SecOps | Cybersecurity
How can people and AI work together in security operations to improve organisations' protection against cyberattacks?
Team: Mehryar Majd, Victor Jüttner, Anna Wimbauer and Aicha Beya Boukhari.
- METRICS | Mathematics and Physics
Can an AI system learn decision-making principles that generalise across European electricity transmission systems and adapt to a new system with limited data?
Team: Alex Pierron, Maximilian Roth, Nika Khosravi, Sinh Lê Nhất, Quoc-Duong NGUYEN and Hoang-Duc Le-Vuu.
- NEXUS | Life Sciences
Can structured biomedical knowledge complement neural retrieval methods and make retrieval decisions easier to understand?
Team: Steffen Castle, Mutahira Khalid, Vincent Quast and Divyasha Sunil Naik.
Looking ahead to the AI Grid Summit 2027
The selected projects illustrate the breadth of scientific questions that can benefit from collaboration between AI researchers and experts from other disciplines. Over the coming months, the teams will work to develop their proposals and advance their research.
Their results will be presented at the AI Grid Summit in Berlin in 2027, providing an opportunity to share their progress with the wider research community.
