We are pleased to announce the winners of this year's ESHCC Societal Engagement Award, João Gonçalves and Tessa Oomen, for their outstanding contributions to advancing AI research with a societal impact.
This award recognizes the faculty's commitment to fostering positive societal change through innovative initiatives. It aims to showcase projects that demonstrate our commitment to making a positive impact on the world.
João developed the Erasmian Language Model (ELM), a generative AI model. ELM differs from other AI models and has been impactful at three distinct but complementary levels: policy, awareness, and sustainability. It helps with privacy concerns, is open source and shows how AI solutions can be easily accessible, it raised awareness about the limitations and dangers of commercial language models and it is a non-server-based model, which results in less CO2 emissions.
Tessa has helped advocate and educate for the responsible use of technology and AI. Through her involvement with the SPATIAL project, her work is invaluable for helping create more safe, explainable, and fair systems of AI. Trustworthy AI is fundamentally about societal engagement as it is essential for social justice, data governance, sustainability, and well-being.
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