Swedish AI Society | SAIS

In order to stimulate work in the area of artificial intelligence at the undergraduate level of education, SAIS has created a special yearly award for the best Master’s thesis (examensarbete) in the area of artificial intelligence. The winner will be awarded travel funds of 10 000 SEK, and is expected to present the winning contribution in connection with the SCAI symposium 2024 in June.

Deadline for nomination is February 25th 2024.

To nominate a Master’s Thesis for the award, the following rules apply:

• The thesis is in one of the main areas of artificial intelligence research.
• The thesis has been presented officially during the period of January 1, 2023 – January 31, 2024.
• An electronic copy of the thesis (PDF) and a short written motivation by the nominator should be submitted through the following EasyChair submission area. The nomination should include a short motivation why the thesis should be selected as the winner, and state its contributions to AI. Please note that the “author” of the nomination is the person nominating the thesis, i.e. NOT the authors of the thesis, and in the “abstract” field please enter the motivation letter.
• The nominating person must be a member of SAIS, but does not have to be the official examiner or primary supervisor.
• Only one thesis nomination per nominating person is permitted.
• The master thesis project has to be conducted by a student registered at a Swedish university or other higher education establishment in Sweden, and/or present work mainly conducted at an organisation within Sweden, and/or represent a thesis where the official presentation was done in Sweden.

The SAIS board will review the nominated Master’s theses and determine a winner based on factors such as novelty, thoroughness, readability, scientific value and relevance to artificial intelligence, both with respect to research and to potential applications. The decision by the SAIS board will be final. The SCAI symposium is planned for June 10-11 2024, at JTH in Jönköping.

Fredrik Heintz – President of SAIS
Eva Blomqvist – Secretary of SAIS

This year we received 6 nominations, which were all reviewed by several SAIS board members. Although we received many high-quality nominations, after the review process the highest ranked thesis by the reviewers, at the same time the one considered most interesting for a presentation at the SAIS workshop, was selected by the board as this years winner.

The SAIS Best AI Master’s Thesis Award 2023 goes to:
Leila Methnani for the thesis entitled “Embracing AWKWARD! A Hybrid Architecture for Adjustable Socially-Aware Agents“, conducted at Umeå University under the supervision of Andreas Theodorou.

Motivation:
The thesis is very well written and the topic is highly timely, since it combines both reasoning and machine learning into a hybrid AI system. The thesis presents promising results and contribute towards important long-term goals, such as transparency of AI. The work has already been published in scientific venues, which is another clear indication of its substantial contribution.

The thesis will be presented at the SAIS workshop 2023 (see: https://www.bth.se/forskning/forskningsomraden/datavetenskap/sais-23/), at BTH on June 12-13 2023.

Congratulations to the winner, and a big thanks to everyone who nominated a thesis!

The SAIS board,
through Eva Blomqvist, SAIS secretary

In order to stimulate work in the area of artificial intelligence at the undergraduate level of education, SAIS has created a special yearly award for the best Master’s thesis (examensarbete) in the area of artificial intelligence. The winner will be awarded travel funds of 10 000 SEK, and is expected to present the winning contribution in connection with the SAIS workshop 2023 in June.

Deadline for nomination is February 24th 2023.

To nominate a Master’s Thesis for the award, the following rules apply:

• The thesis is in one of the main areas of artificial intelligence research.
• The thesis has been presented officially during the period of January 1, 2022 – January 31, 2023.
• An electronic copy of the thesis (PDF) and a short written motivation by the nominator should be submitted through the following EasyChair submission area. The nomination should include a short motivation why the thesis should be selected as the winner, and state its contributions to AI. Please note that the “author” of the nomination is the person nominating the thesis, i.e. NOT the authors of the thesis, and in the “abstract” field please enter the motivation letter.
• The nominating person must be a member of SAIS, but does not have to be the official examiner or primary supervisor.
• Only one thesis nomination per nominating person is permitted.
• The master thesis project has to be conducted by a student registered at a Swedish university or other higher education establishment in Sweden, and/or present work mainly conducted at an organisation within Sweden, and/or represent a thesis where the official presentation was done in Sweden.

The SAIS board will review the nominated Master’s theses and determine a winner based on factors such as novelty, thoroughness, readability, scientific value and relevance to artificial intelligence, both with respect to research and to potential applications. The decision by the SAIS board will be final. The SAIS workshop is planned for June 12-13 2023, at BTH in Karlskrona.

Fredrik Heintz – President of SAIS
Eva Blomqvist – Secretary of SAIS

The SAIS workshop has since its first edition been a forum for building the Swedish AI research community and nurture networks across academia and industry. We invite researchers and practitioners in AI and related disciplines, in Sweden and the rest of the world, to join us in exchanging knowledge, news and results on AI related theory and applications.

SAIS 2022 will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 13-14, 2022. The event is planned to be hybrid, combining in-person and virtual participation. This year, the SAIS workshop is hosted by RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden.

More information can be found here:
ri.se/en/sais-2022
There you can also sign up on the events mailing list for further updates.

This year we received 4 nominations, which were all reviewed by several SAIS board members. After the review process, one thesis stood out, receiving the highest ranking by the reviewers:

The SAIS Best AI Master’s Thesis Award 2021 goes to Fredrik Svanström, Högskolan i Halmstad, for the thesis entitled “Drone Detection and Classification using Machine Learning and Sensor Fusion”.

The thesis is in the areas of machine learning and presents a system for multi-sensor-based drone detection and classification as well as a drone detection dataset. The thesis is well written, comprehensive and technically sound, with interesting results, not least in terms of the practical feasibility of multi-sensor-based drone detection. The thesis also offers an interesting outlook and constitutes a good starting point for future work.

The thesis will be presented at the SAIS workshop 2021 (Luleå/online), in June.

Congratulations to the winner, and a big thanks to everyone who nominated a thesis!

The SAIS board,
through Eva Blomqvist, SAIS secretary