Workshops

Workshop leaders

• Per-Ola Quist, Senior Principal Scientist, AstraZeneca Operations PT&D
• Joachim Wallberg, Senior Enterprise Architect, AstraZeneca Operations IT

Description

AstraZeneca’s AI-Powered Drug Development program aims to enhance drug development by integrating digital tools such as Large Language Models and digital twins. The vision is a system, see illustration below, with a capability to provide recommendations – like a Google map for development activities. We believe the approach is beneficial for other businesses as well.

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Workshop leaders

• Emma Jonsson, WARA-PS Co-project manager, Combitech
• Katarina Iversen, UX/PhD Contact, Combitech
• Jesper Tordenlid, WARA-PS Project manager, Combitech
• Bo Granbom, SAAB Technology Area Manager Autonomy
• Petter Bedoire, SAAB CTO and WASP Member of the Board

Description

This workshop highlights AI’s crucial role in key infrastructures like healthcare, transportation, and energy. As society confronts disasters, pandemics, and conflicts, AI enhances safety and reliability but adds complexity and reduces resilience in unexpected events. The event fosters collaboration between academia and industry to address these challenges and advance resilient AI-integrated systems. Join us to help shape safer infrastructures that effectively handle non-normal situations and ensure public safety.

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Workshop leaders

• Jörgen Gustafsson, Research Director AI, Ericsson
• Aneta Vulgarakis Feljan, Head of Machine Reasoning & Hybrid AI and Senior Research Manager in Artificial Intelligence, Ericsson

Description

Generative AI has made a significant impact on the society via its ability of creating largely accurate and believable content (such as text, images and music). Generative AI presents significant opportunities for the industry, but also poses challenges, related to: accuracy and transparency, security, privacy and ethical/legal challenges, efficiency in training and scalability, and reasoning and planning. In this workshop, we would like to discuss the acceleration of research and development in the generative AI area in Sweden, and how we can address together the research and infrastructure gaps.  

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Workshop leaders

• Anastasia Varava, Research Lead, SEBx
• Nicolas Moch, Head of SEBx and member of the WASP Board of Directors

Description

As the rapid progress in AI research brings it closer and closer to impactful applications, the question of bringing state-of-the-art methods to industrial problems is becoming more acute. However, conducting applied research in AI, especially in industrial setups, poses several challenges, such as a general shortage of ready to use, clean datasets, and standard benchmarks. Other challenges include identifying business-relevant research problems and engineering support that can help researchers bring their results into industrial environments. This is especially relevant for companies that do not have large research and R&D departments. In this workshop, we would like to share our experience and propose some ways to address these challenges. 

Workshop leaders

• Claes Lundström, Research Director, Sectra
• Karin Stacke, WASP alumni and Research Scientist, Sectra

Description

A key part of taking scientific advances to reach societal impact is that some scientists make the career switch to industry. Natural switching points are right after the PhD or a postdoc. However, this step is often difficult for both employers and scientists, despite supporting measures such as the WASP program offers today. Unless the company has dedicated scientist roles, the mismatch between high expertise and little “industrial production” experience can be too large. And for the scientist, not knowing the industrial playing field can make the leap seem too risky. In this workshop, we’ll drill down in these challenges and potential solutions, with the goal of dramatically increasing how many WASP scientists stay longterm in Sweden. 

Workshop leaders

• Christoffer Morén, Program Manager for Data Product & Strategy, H&M
• Lini Jose, Engineering Manager for ML Engineering & Data Science, H&M

Description

In an AI-driven retail environment, using customer data ethically is essential to maintaining trust and staying competitive. This workshop will explore how large retail enterprises can responsibly leverage AI while addressing key ethical challenges like data privacy, transparency, algorithmic fairness, and staying compliant with evolving regulations. We will also explore how increased collaboration between academia and companies can drive ethical AI innovation in this space. 

Workshop leaders

• Per Roos, Vice President Global Research and Development Surface and Exploration, Epiroc
• Villem Raudsepp, Data & Process Foundation Office Manager, Epiroc

Description

In a fast-changing world, industrial challenges create new opportunities. Success relies on being faster and better than competitors, ensuring customers achieve more with your solutions than alternatives. The focus is Time to Market, requiring the ability to anticipate customer needs and balance partnerships with internal development. Data and knowledge drive better decisions. Key topics in this workshop include sustainability, technology trends, and AI-readiness, emphasizing data availability and structuring to fuel innovation and predictive analytics.

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Workshop leaders

• Mark Hammarstedt, Regional Sales Lead Sweden & Norway, Nvidia
• Adam Czelakowski, Development Relations Manager, Nvidia
• Linda Malm, Regional Manager, Nvidia

Description

In a time where most companies are looking to leverage Gen AI through Open AI and the likes, we want to discuss Why LLM services and global open source models are important to drive AI in the mainstream, but Academia, Industry and Governments need to create their own LLMs to protect their language, culture and the IP of their innovations as well as leveraging their specific business and local advantages. There are multiple challenges here, with competing fractions and technology  choices to be made, and we think this needs to be openly discussed in collaboration between Industry/Academia.

Workshop leaders

• Azra Habibovic, Technology Leader for Automation & Human Factors, Scania CV
• Henric Rhedin, Director External Research & Exploration Coordination, Volvo Cars AB
• Jonas Ekmark, Head of Technology and Collaboration, Zenseact

Description

Vehicle automation is recognized as a key solution to societal challenges, offering improvements in road safety and transportation efficiency. However, unlocking these benefits requires progress in several key areas, including the development of reliable AI-driven software, advanced sensor technologies, robust verification and validation, and the creation of supportive policies and regulations. Addressing these areas requires a wide collaboration among stakeholders from industry, academia and authorities, as well as interdisciplinary research arenas that foster the development of cutting-edge solutions and expertise.  

Join Scania, Volvo Cars and Zenseact for an interactive workshop on vehicle automation, where we will define the most important research areas and explore how they could be addressed through a WASP Autonomous Research Arena (WARA). 

Key discussions will cover: 

• Identifying key research areas for enabling safe and efficient vehicle automation. 

• Determining which stakeholders are crucial for the addressing these research areas. 

• Exploring how a WARA could be designed to foster innovation, testing, and real-world deployment of vehicle automation. 

Workshop leader

• Daniel Keyvanpour, Customer Success Account Manager, Microsoft

Description

In June, Microsoft announced a significant investment of 33 billion SEK in Sweden, alongside a commitment to educating 250,000 individuals on AI over the next three years. This workshop will explore the evolving needs for AI competencies and how we can align education and industry more effectively to meet future demands. 

We will dive into key questions such as: 

• What critical AI skills are currently missing in both academic programs and industry settings? 

• How can targeted investments in these competencies help reduce the disconnect between academia and industry? Are there specific gaps in knowledge, practical experience, or application of AI that need to be addressed? 

• How can we ensure a seamless flow of AI talent from academic institutions to industries, ensuring that graduates possess both the theoretical knowledge and the practical skills necessary to excel in the workforce? 

The input from this workshop will be summarized and presented to the newly formed “AI Advisory Council,” which will guide the large-scale AI training and skilling initiative. 

Workshop leaders

• Staffan Truvé, CTO & Co-founder, Recorded Future
• Aron Lagerberg, Principle AI Scientist, Recorded Future
• Daniel Gillblad, Chief of AI, Recorded Future
• David Olgart, Strategy & Partnerships, Parsd
• Alexandra Kafka Larsson, Founder & CEO, Parsd
• Håkan Ståby, Co-founder & Architect and Infrastructure, Parsd

Description

Reliably identifying threats and gaining insights from vast amounts of data remain challenging. This workshop explores the fusion of Agentic AI, Large Language Models and Retrieval-Augmented Generation to develop autonomous AI systems capable of assessing emerging threats, identifying entirely new threats, and multi-perspective analysis. What architectures and models are needed for this are open problems. We will discussions the current state of the art, challenges, and future opportunities. 

Workshop leaders

• Peter Wallin, Research Leader Automation and Electricifcation, Boliden
• Rasmus Tammia, Program Leader AI, Boliden
• Frida Norlund, WASP Industrial PhD Student, Boliden

Description

Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, involves integrating digital technologies like AI, IoT, cloud computing, and big data into operations. To keep up with rapid advancements, companies must adopt new working methods and technologies despite uncertainties. Boliden Edge Lab is Boliden’s initiative to drive AI/ML projects in collaboration with academia, in-house, and external partners. The workshop will explore how such solutions can foster collaboration, generate value, and support research, addressing relevant challenges.

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Workshop leaders

• Shiva Sander Tavallaey, Senior Principal Scientist – Applied Analytics, AI- Lead, ABB Sweden
• Mikael Norrlöf, Corporate Executive Engineer, ABB (RA)

Description

This workshop addresses four key challenges at the intersection of AI research and industry implementation: AI literacy, trustworthiness, interpretability/explainability, and AI-Human interaction. This workshop focuses on academia-industry collaboration on how to accelerate AI development translating research into practical, reliable, and ethical applications. Through interactive discussions and exercises, participants will gain insights, form connections, and explore strategies for responsible AI advancement.