Researchers pitch at inspiration meeting at Jantina Tammes school

The Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI is one of the four schools with which the UG wants to stimulate innovative and interdisciplinary research and education. The Jantina Tammes School will be officially launched in early 2023, but on June 23, on the 151st birthday of Jantina Tammes, it hosted a networking and inspiration meeting with pitch presentations and drinks afterwards. Over fifty researchers and staff from all eleven faculties attended.

Ming Cao, director of the school, opened the event emphasizing that the school will nurture partnerships across faculties and facilitate multi-disciplinary research, education and outreach impact engagement. Eleven attendees each made three-minute pitches about their plans, visions and identified opportunities for the school followed by discussions.

The intensively discussed topics covered hot research areas of digital innovation, mixed AI-human systems, robots, social identity and public values. Attendees exchanged information on trends of theory and practices on data and AI, and shared different views of integrating public and societal interests into the development of new technologies. The event offered the platform to pitch ideas on new education possibilities, e.g. minors related to data science. New data-centric and AI curriculums and digital teaching methods will enable students to resolve regional and global challenges in the future. Several existing faculty hubs on data science and AI showed enthusiasm in building together a stronger and broader university-wide community around the school.

With the presentation of Arjen Dijkstra from the University Museum, the group spent time reflecting on Tammes’ remarkable personal and professional life as the first female professor in Groningen and first genetics professor in the Netherlands. Some statistical techniques that she pioneered are still important in today’s data science. A sense of legacy thus became even stronger in this birthday celebration. Attendees enjoyed birthdays and drinks afterwards while making new contacts.

The school will further develop its themes, featuring the existing strong presence of digitalization, technology and AI within the university and creating new connections across faculties and societal partners at large.