The agreement for the Italian National PhD Program in Artificial Intelligence has been extended for three more cycles: 39th (2023/2024), 40th (2024/2025) and 41st (2025/2026).

Calls for admissions to the National PhD in Artificial Intelligence (PhD-AI.it) are now open!

The Italian National PhD Program in Artificial Intelligence is made of 5 federated PhD courses that bring together 61 universities and research institutions. The 5 PhD courses share a common basis in the foundations and developments of AI, and each one has an area of specialisation in a strategic sector of AI application. Each PhD course is organized by a lead university, in collaboration with the National Research Council CNR:

Suddivisione Aree salute-scienze-vita industria sicurezza-cybersecurity agricoltura società

The PhD program has a “horizontal component”, the blue area, common to all 5 PhD courses, which provides shared training opportunities on the foundational aspects of AI. Fundamental courses will be provided on consolidated topics that can be used by all PhD students, such as:

  • Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems
  • Computational Intelligence
  • Constraints and Satisfiability
  • Human Aspects in AI
  • Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
  • Machine Learning
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Planning
  • AI in Robotics
  • Semantic Technologies
  • Vision

as well as courses on emerging topics related to the Trustworthy, Human-centric AI focus that characterises the EU strategy for AI, such as, for example, courses on methods for Explainable AI, Ethics and Law of AI, Safety and Robustness, Fairness, Equity, and Justice of AI systems, Distributed AI, Sustainable AI (in the double meaning of sustainable AI technologies and AI systems that help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030), Social acceptability and adoption of AI.

The national PhD program in AI will train researchers, innovators and professionals, both with specialisations in the cutting-edge topics of Artificial Intelligence and in important application sectors, but ensuring an integrated and “complex” vision of the ecosystem of AI technologies and solutions, able to address problems with a systemic and multi-disciplinary approach.

PhD students in AI will participate in common training experiences and activities, both foundational and specialised, offered by the 5 PhD courses. The program covers costs for PhD student’s mobility at national and international level

The objectives of PhD-AI.it

– Build a community of young and diverse AI researchers and innovators, able to boost research as well as industrial and social innovation

– Promote the exchange of multi-disciplinary competences among the nodes of the network through the educational and research mobility of PhD students

– Integrate and strengthen the Italian network of AI research centres, also in relation to the European initiatives of the ICT-48-H2020 programme “Towards a vibrant European network of AI excellence centres”, in which several PhD-AI.it centres participate: Humane-AI, TAILOR, AI4MEDIA, ELISE, AI4EU.