Jantina Tammes School celebrates birthday with award for early-career researchers

The Jantina Tammes School of Digital Society, Technology and AI celebrated its birthday at the House of Connections on Wednesday afternoon, 28 May 2025. The event featured the Early Career Researcher Prize awarded to five UG researchers. In the afternoon, we enjoyed presentations, an inspiring keynote, and a panel discussion.

The birthday celebration began with an inspiring keynote by Martijn Verwegen, Director of Research and Impact at the University of Groningen. His talk on Innovation Collaboration highlighted the transformative power of partnerships between academia, industry, and society, setting an engaging tone for the event.

Pitches

The event continued with presentations from this year’s four JTS Early Career Researcher Prize winners: Andreea Ioana Sburlea, Khalid Al-Khatib, Taís Fernanda Blauth, and Jasper Verstappen, whose research covered different topics, including responsible AI design, the safe deployment of artificial intelligence, the impact of generative AI on academic originality, and the ethical development of AI-driven neurotechnologies.

Previous winners

After the pitches from this year’s winners, four previous recipients of the Early Career Researcher Prize shared how the award has advanced their work. Evegeni Moyakine and Marília Gehrke presented videos highlighting their research on cyber-attacks and data feminism, Esther Metting showcased a poster on the acceptance of digital health, and Catherine Sibert concluded with a presentation on applying machine learning to Tetris.

Panel discussion

Joëlle Swart moderated a panel discussion on the impact of AI: Education, Research, and Society - the three pillars of JTS. The discussion featured George Azzopardi, Theme Coordinator for Applied AI, Tommaso Caselli, Theme Coordinator for Language and AI, and Noha El-Baz, who focuses on the intersection of AI and healthcare.

Award ceremony

After the Panel Discussion, a ceremony was held for the official awarding of the Early Career Researcher Prize, worth 2,500 euros. On top of that, one of the winners received a bonus of 1,000 euros.