The Machine Learning Lab at the University of Amsterdam (AMLAB) led by Professor Max Welling starts a partnership with the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge. The partnership aims to foster new research talent through a symbiotic relationship that will address skills shortages in industry at the same time as preserving and nurturing the knowledge pool within academia.
Through the partnership, Microsoft will provide the University of Amsterdam’s graduate students with opportunities for work placements and internships that concentrate on unsupervised deep learning and links to causality in machine learning. Facilitated by AMLAB’s Joris Mooij and centred on basic research, work during these placements will focus on areas of societal importance such as healthcare.
Sustainable pipeline of talent
The partnership takes a new approach to educating the next generation of machine learning talent by encouraging a balance between researchers moving into industry and those continuing in academia. Microsoft and AMLAB support the view that educational programmes should not attract students away from their studies prematurely to fill industry knowledge gaps in the short term. Instead they should stimulate a pipeline of talent in a way that is sustainable and mutually beneficial.
Receive the Funding Newswire each Tuesday, our Policy Bulletin each Thursday, and news about bridging Europe’s east-west innovation gap twice a month in The Widening. 
A unique international forum for public research organisations and companies to connect their external engagement with strategic interests around their R&D system.
