Our "Systems Meet AI" initiative has been funded by 4TU.NIRICT!
I am very pleased to share that our proposal “Systems Meet AI: Driving Innovation in the Dutch Society” has been awarded €40,000 by 4TU.NIRICT — a collaborative effort that I co-led with colleagues across several dutch universities. The project website can be found here.
🌱 Why Systems Meet AI?
As outlined in our proposal, modern AI applications increasingly rely on efficient and resilient computing systems, while system design itself increasingly depends on AI-driven insights. Achieving breakthroughs in Dutch societal domains—healthcare, smart industry, mobility, agriculture, sustainable ICT—requires co-design across AI, systems, and networking communities.
🧩 What we will build
Our funded activities will cultivate a national community around AI × Systems co-design, including:
- Workshops & seminars (bi-monthly seminars, mid-term event, a Lorentz Center workshop with industrial panel)
- Integration of results into 4TU education
- An ASCI PhD course module on “AI-in-Systems”
- A 4TU-wide student hackathon focusing on real-world domains
🧪 A federated 4TU “Sys+AI Lab”
The grant will also support the creation of a distributed yet interconnected experimental platform, consisting of:
- Edge AI devices
- Networking & cloud backbones for distributed AI
- Shared software infrastructure for experiment orchestration
This testbed will operate as a single federated national platform for evaluating Systems-for-AI and AI-for-Systems solutions across institutions.
🤝 Strengthening the Dutch ecosystem
The initiative reinforces the mission of 4TU.NIRICT by:
• Bringing together complementary strengths from TUD, TU/e, UT, WUR
• Connecting to Dutch industry (e.g., Philips, ASML, NXP, SenTech AI)
• Creating a recognizable Dutch hub for Systems × AI research and education
• Building leverage for upcoming national and European funding
🚀 Looking forward
This project gives us an exciting opportunity to accelerate collaboration across the Netherlands and develop truly robust and efficient AI-powered systems. I look forward to working closely with all partners and to growing this community.
Special thanks to the 4TU.NIRICT Board for supporting this initiative.
More updates will follow as the activities begin!
