NRB and ULiège create a Chair in Artificial Intelligence research and application development
NRB and the University of Liège (ULiège) announce their collaboration to develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) for the benefit of companies and the public sector in Belgium and internationally. The collaboration agreement signed today creates a Chair within ULiège's Faculty of Applied Sciences, dedicated to the research and development of AI, and more specifically of LLMs (Large Language Models) for software engineering.
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he aim of this collaboration is not only to accelerate the adoption of AI by Belgian and international organizations, but also to transform their operational efficiency. Indeed, by integrating AI, public and private companies can achieve significant productivity gains, ensure their sustainable development, stimulate innovation at all levels and boost their competitiveness.
Through this strategic partnership with ULiège, NRB will strengthen its AI service offering to its customers by developing advanced technologies such as large-scale language models for and with them. These applications, tailored to the specific needs of businesses, will accelerate the adoption of AI in their processes and support their digital transformation. For researchers at ULiège, this collaboration will provide a framework that will enable them to use concrete industrial problems to test theoretical methods hitherto developed in the academic world, and to guide new scientific developments.
Funding from the Chair will enable a senior researcher to be hired for a four-year PhD thesis.
Laurence Mathieu, CEO of NRB SA: " NRB has a complete and competitive technological ecosystem, and ULiège has a scientific group of top-level AI researchers and engineers, recognized in Belgium and abroad, making our duo a force for scientific and industrial innovation. Collaborating with the University of Liège not only enables us to strengthen our AI capabilities, but also to forge essential links between the academic and economic spheres, with a particular emphasis on training, essential to mastering future technological challenges. "
Pr Éric Delhez, Dean of ULiège's Faculty of Applied Sciences: " The creation of this Chair reflects the dual mission of ULiège and its Faculty of Applied Sciences to help meet the major challenges facing our society today, and to support the socio-economic development of the region. Faced with the major challenges of AI, in terms of both business competitiveness and ethics, it is essential to develop strong local skills in synergy between academia and business. "
Pr Gilles Louppe, Institut Montefiore, Faculté des Sciences Appliquées de l'ULiège: " This partnership is a unique opportunity to challenge our research in generative AI on concrete industrial problems in the software sector. Thanks to NRB, we will be able to test our models and algorithms on real data, and thus accelerate the transfer
from ULiège to industry. This collaboration will also benefit our students, whose training will be enriched by concrete, topical issues. NRB experts will be welcomed into our courses to share their experience and vision of AI.
of AI.
About NRB
With consolidated sales of 577.5 million euros in 2023 and over 3,670 employees, the NRB Group is one of Belgium's leading players in the ICT sector. NRB is positioned as the local ICT partner that supports its customers in their digital transformation. Capitalizing on technological evolution and innovation, NRB aims to offer them the best solutions available, adapted to their environment. In this context, NRB offers a wide range of IT services based on four key areas: consultancy, software, infrastructure & hybrid cloud, and managed staffing.
NRB caters for a wide range of business sectors: the public and social sector, the energy and utilities sector, the financial sector and industry. A team is dedicated to European and international institutions and companies. All NRB Group subsidiaries offer sector-specific solutions while benefiting from the Group's size, ICT infrastructure and other support.
About the ULiège AI Research Group
The Montefiore IA Research Group has been active in the field of AI and machine learning for over 30 years. Research goals range from the development of formal methods for automated reasoning and control, machine learning and statistical inference, to the pioneering application of AI and machine learning to computational biology, the physical sciences, electrical power and energy systems, computer vision and robotics. The group has around ten professors and forty doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. Each year, the ULiège Faculty of Applied Sciences, to which the group is attached, graduates around 50 students in specific master's programs in AI and data science.
