At the end of May, EMILDAI students will attend the annual summer school, which will last one week and will be organised each year by a different partner university.
Attendance at the summer school is compulsory for EMILDAI students and open to EMILDAI alumni.
The first EMILDAI Summer School took place from 8 to 11 May 2023 in Dublin, Ireland, held at Dublin City University (DCU) and organised by the EMILDAI Consortium. The week-long Summer School was titled: Digital Sovereignty and Green Transition: EU Challenges in Times of War and Energy Crisis.
Day one took place at ADAPT Centre, Trinity College Dublin, with part one of the Student Research Symposium, followed by an evening networking event.
Day two began with a EMILDAI Student Feedback Session, followed by a DCU Institutional Welcome from Prof Derek Hand, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Prof Jennifer Bruton, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing.
The hybrid symposium that followed was devoted to the topic: Understanding Digital Sovereignty, with sessions on Ambitions and Challenges and Transnational Effects.
Two students announced the name of their cohort: the Mouton Dijkstra Cohort. Named after two inspiring figures from Europe and the US: Melba Roy Mouton, Head Mathematician at NASA, and Edsgar W Dijkstra, programmer and Turing Award winner.
Day three featured a symposium on Reconciling Digital Sovereignty and Green Transition, with sessions on Civil Society Demands and Public Actors’ Responsibility and Towards a Sustainable and Sovereign Digital Economy? Each symposium was followed by engaging, positive and productive questions and debate, and online interaction was encouraged with the Twitter hashtag #EMILDAIsummerschool23.
The evening event was a Walking Tour of Dublin’s Internet Infrastructure, led by Dr Paul O’Neill of the ADAPT Centre. The group met at Grand Canal Dock and visited dockland sites related to the tech sector in Ireland.
Day four featured part two of the Student Research Symposium, and concluded with the Student Prize Award Ceremony. Prizes were won by Alba Perez Victorio for her talk on “A product or an agent? A merits-based critique of the proposal for the AI Liability Directive”; Larissa de Lima e Campos for her talk on “Can Brazilians forget the right to be forgotten”; Emiliano Vitaliani with his talk on “Community” in the digital realm”.
DCU President, Prof Daire Keogh, spoke about how EMILDAI students are showing leadership in the field of data, AI, and law.
