2025

"Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration!"​ - that's the echo of the opening words from last year's Christmas greeting, and they are just as relevant this year. It's easy to get a bit of AI-FOMO, but sometimes it's better to be left at the station if the train is going in the wrong direction. We can still influence the direction of the AI technology to reflect the values we want, and that is why coordinated, national collaboration is important. In 2026, NORA will continue to strengthen Norwegian research, education and innovation within AI, among other things through national research schools, arenas for knowledge sharing and a strong Nordic collaboration through the Nordic AI Partnership.

In March 2025, NORA received funding for the Research School for Humanities and Society (NORA-HS). The Research School aims to unite PhD students across Norway who study how Artificial Intelligence impacts people, culture and society, while raising the quality of PhD education in this field to a leading European standard. We are proud to annouce that the Research School is now operational!

In a drive to bring academia and industry closer, NORA Research School and NORA Startup hosted the knowledge‑sharing event Innovate Together: Academia Meets Industry in collaboration with UiB AI at the UiB Learning Arena in Bergen. The event — attended by more than 40 researchers and PhD candidates — focused on equipping early‑career researchers with the skills and perspectives needed to transform research into practical applications and to explore careers in industry.

Good vibes within the Nordic AI Partnership! Last week we had a joint booth at the EurIPS conference in Copenhagen. Thank you to all partners for a great experience and lots of useful exchanges of information and ideas. And thank you to the EurIPS organizers for delivering such a major conference and making it a success in such a short time.

On 26–27 November 2025, over 100 early‑career researchers, faculty and industry representatives from across Scandinavia gathered at the Visualization Center in Norrköping, Sweden for the fifth Nordic AI Meet. The 2025 edition, hosted by WASP and Linköping University, brought together enthusiasts of machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics for two days of presentations, posters and lively discussion.

The WindAI – Forecasting Wind Power Production competition – had one simple, but ambitious goal: to build the best model for forecasting how much electricity Norway’s wind farms will produce two days ahead, hour by hour. The competition was organised by EduWind, Statnett, NORA.ai, NorwAI, Nemonoor, and the Norwegian AI Cloud. EquiWindNerds emerged as the champions, taking home 50 000 NOK in prize money sponsored by Statnett, and the opportunity to showcase their solution to Statnett. The Award ceremony will take place at Nordic AI Meet Conference, a conference for young researchers in the field AI, in Norrköping, Sweden in November 2025.

Former PhD student Anastasiia Grishina at Simula participated in a research stay program at The Alan Turing Institute (ATI) funded by the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium (NORA). One of the results from the stay was that she contributed to and co-authored the paper Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and language, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Langsikt - Center for Long-Term Policy's expert committe har prepared 10 commandments for AI - accompanied by specific policy suggestions in separate chapters.

The fourth PRESIMAL Autumn Research School took place at the historical Oscarsborg Hotel from the 15th to the 17th of October 2025. 

Over 40 young researchers (MSc, PhDs, post-docs), medical doctors, and senior scientists met to discuss and learn about the latest developments in AI and medical imaging. Participants hailed from a diverse array of institutions, including Haukeland University Hospital, Oslo University Hospital, Vestfold Hospital Trust, Akershus University Hospital, University College Cork, HVL, Østfold University College, NMBU, NTNU, SIMULA, SINTEF, UiB, UiO, UiT, UNN and NORA.ai. 

This fall, three students from NORA's Research School took part in the Data Study Groups at the Alan Turing Institute in the UK: intensive 'collaborative hackathons' that paired industry, government and third sector organisations with talented multi-disciplinary researchers from academia.

On 10th and 11th September 2025, NORA proudly hosted the second Nordic-Turing AI Workshop in Oslo, in collaboration with The Alan Turing Institute and the British Embassy in Norway. Building upon the success of last year's Digital Twin-focused gathering in the UK, the two-day workshop brought together senior researchers from across the Nordic region and the United Kingdom, exploring applications of Artificial Intelligence in Arctic, maritime and security domains.

In collaboration with Astar Consulting, NORA arranged the first ever Norwegian AI Championship – NMiKI! From August 1-8, over 160 bachelor- and master students from all over the country - more than 85 teams - competed for the title Norwegian AI Champion, in addition to 50 000 NOK in prize money. Attention Heads became the winning team, followed by Cogito and Agent as first and second runner-up, respectively.

Arendal, August 11 – 15, 2025 — NORA, The Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium, hosted and brought together the Norwegian AI research community in the AI tent (KI-teltet). Arendalsuka is the largest political gathering in Norway, held annually since 2012. There was strong interest in the AI Tent and the events organised by NORA’s partners, with the tent enjoying consistently good attendance throughout the week. The AI tent placed AI at the center stage and gave it a strong and visible presence at Arendalsuka, contributing to the ongoing public debate on AI.

Dear NORA partners, strategic collaborators, and friends, 

It is a pleasure to introduce myself. My name is Michael Solvang, and as of August 1st, I have taken over from Klas Pettersen as the new CEO of NORA. In this message, I would like to introduce myself, briefly reflect on NORA’s development and growth over the years, and highlight some exciting activities ahead. 

Almost seven years ago I read an opinion in Khrono with the title saying that six universities and Simula had launched a collaboration they called NORA. I strongly believed that the field of AI would become immensely important and benefit from national collaborations, and I applied for the CEO position in NORA. For the last 6+ years I’ve had the pleasure of working with the fantastic NORA partners (now 17 partners) and my colleagues in the NORA secretariat, all with the common goal of building NORA into what it is today: a national AI research consortium focusing on AI research, education and innovation.

This year’s regional FENS (the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies) meeting was held at the University of Oslo and drew many prominent neuroscientists to town. In wake of the event, NORA organized a special CuttingEdgeAI, guested by the well-renowned researchers Ken Harris (University College London) Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute for Biological Studies) and Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Edinburgh).  

Halden, June 2, 2025 — Each year, NORA Awards are handed out. These awards are an annual recognition and tribute to the Norwegian AI Community and are given to recognise exceptional efforts of individuals and actors in the Norwegian AI community throughout the year. 

The NORA awards are handed out in six different categories:

• Lifetime achievement
• Early Career Investigator
• Community Building and Education
• Diversity in AI
• Publication of the decade
• Startup

Halden, June 2 – 3, 2025 — NORA - The Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Research Consortium - hosted its flagship event, the NORA Annual Conference 2025, at Byparken in Halden. The two-day gathering brought together leading voices in AI research, policy, and innovation, offering a vibrant platform for knowledge exchange, networking, and collaboration. 

The NORA Annual Conference 2025 will be gathering the Norwegian AI-community in the beautiful and historical city of Halden for a two-day conference. This year, like the past years, the program is packed with an exciting program and leading speakers in the field of AI who will contribute to sharing research, ideas, theories, models and new perspectives. The conference is just not a professional event, but also a networking opportunity.  

At NORA, we work to strengthen Norwegian research, education and innovation within artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics. We have achived a lot in a short time, but a lot of opportunities remain. We are seeking a new leader who believes that artificial intelligence - within an ethical and sustainable framework - can change society for the better, and who wants to contribute to Norway taking a leading role in this development. 

NORA's owners have requested a report that assesses whether the current organizational structure optimally serves NORA or if a future reorganization should be considered.

On Friday 28th March, we received some very good news from Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland, who visited UiO and NORA to announce that grants have been awarded for new reseach schools. Our research school NORA-HS; Norwegian Graduate School for How AI Impacts Humanities and Society, was awarded 15.5 million NOK!

In celebration of International Women's Day, NORA hosted its annual Women in AI: From Research to Innovation event on 7th March, bringing together female leaders from across the artificial intelligence ecosystem in Norway. The gathering showcased groundbreaking AI projects led by women and addressed the persistent gender imbalance in the field. 

The national academic AI centers in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and Norway have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their collaboration and amplify the role of academia in shaping the future of artificial intelligence. The leaders of the partners met in Stockholm on February 26, 2025, to sign the MoU.

NORA is happy to announce that we've been allocated a tent space at Arendalsuka 2025, 11th - 15th August. We're now inviting all our partners to join us this week, and will be in touch soon to start the program planning!