The TOPML project ("Trading off Non-Functional Properties of Machine Learning") officially started on the 1st of July, as agreed upon by the Carl-Zeiss Foundation and JGU [maybe: the TOPML committee?]. An online kick-off meeting has taken place on the 6th of July, hosted by the principal investigator Prof. Stefan Kramer who was joined by the academic and administrative personnel involved in the project.
Prof. Stefan Kramer gave an informal presentation which touched upon the various themes of TOPML (fairness, interpretability, resource-efficiency, privacy, law and ethics) and described opportunities for collaboration. In particular, a series of lunch meetings is currently being planned. As the project members have different backgrounds, information sharing and regular informal meetings will help foster collaboration and multi-disciplinarity.
New PhD. Students and researchers are currently being hired, with the first ones starting in the month of July. More hirings are currently planned for early Fall.
The findings from the various themes are to be used at JGU itself, but also transferred to industrial practice. The KI Lab itself is to be located at Mainz University of Applied Sciences due to its proximity to regional and national industry. The developed methods in the planned research project will be implemented as software applications in an AI laboratory. They will serve to test and validate the developed methods. In addition, the implementation of the results as executable software applications ensures a successful transfer to science and industry
The University of Medicine Mainz also participated in the meeting as a way to further explore their interest in joining the TOPML project.