While artificial intelligence is a global issue, the Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence (SCAI) is one of the French references in research. The center brings together a strategic range of modern AI disciplines in a single location in the heart of Paris and recently announced the acquisition of a custom computing machine. This acquisition, planned for next January, was supported by the Sorbonne University Foundation and DATA4.

The SCAI is a structure of the Sorbonne Universities Alliance, which brings together the communities of the three faculties of Humanities, Science and Engineering and Medicine of Sorbonne University, as well as the members of the Sorbonne Universities Alliance (UTC, MNHN, INSEAD).

The ambition of this center dedicated to artificial intelligence is to contribute significantly to the excellence of interdisciplinary research and teaching in AI by promoting exchanges between researchers, students and industry. To do so, it welcomes students, researchers and companies in its offices in Paris, located in the Esclangon building on the Pierre and Marie Curie campus of Sorbonne University, but also in Abu Dhabi, on the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi campus. The latter research space is dedicated to industrial research chairs and to initial and continuing education.

Artificial intelligence at the service of all disciplines

Modern AI requires computing power to test deep learning algorithms and deploy them on large amounts of data. Teachers and researchers do not always have the right equipment to meet the scientific challenges of tomorrow.

This new equipment ordered by the SCAI, at the cutting edge of technology, will benefit the entire scientific community of the three faculties of Sorbonne University, both in terms of research and training. In particular, it will be used by the Institut de la mer de Villefranche to analyze marine biodiversity, by the Faculty of Medicine for prediction from patient files, and by the Faculty of Letters for automatic analysis of places in 18th century French literature.

The SCAI plans to use this additional computing power to develop its programming education platform on a larger scale, a project that will be launched in early 2022.

The center is able to acquire this AI-dedicated computing machine thanks to the support of the company DATA4 through the Sorbonne University Foundation and via internal co-financing. DATA4, a French specialist in data center campuses in Europe, is thus making a commitment to the university, enabling it to strengthen its capacity for innovation. Dr Xavier Fresquet, Deputy Director of SCAI, states:

“This machine composed of latest generation graphics processors will allow SCAI to provide resources to researchers and laboratories of Sorbonne University and the Alliance to test and validate their machine learning models. This is an essential tool that DATA4 is now enabling us to acquire and will not only advance the work of colleagues in all disciplines, but will also support our Lifelong Learning activities.”

The custom-built equipment (GPU, processor, RAM, SSD) will be installed on the Pierre & Marie Curie campus.

Translated from Le Sorbonne Center for Artificial Intelligence se dote d’une machine de calcul sur mesure dédiée à l’IA