29 Sep 2026
ERC will introduce evaluation panel on the fundamentals of AI
The European Research Council will set up a new thematic evaluation panel on Fundamentals of Artificial intelligence (AI). This decision was announced on 29 September 2026. AI has developed into a major and rapidly expanding area of computer science, with AI-related ERC project proposals representing a significant share of submissions to the current Computer Science evaluation panel (PE6).
To reflect this evolution and ensure that the growing volume of AI research proposals is evaluated in a dedicated scientific context, the new thematic evaluation panel on Fundamentals of AI (PE12) will be established, starting from the 2028 ERC calls under the next Research Framework Programme.
The new panel will cover fundamental and basic research aimed at advancing the foundations, methods, and theories of Artificial Intelligence - rather than applications of AI in specific domains, which can be submitted to other panels.
The new PE12 scope will include machine learning, reasoning, intelligent and autonomous systems, computer vision, natural language processing, generative and multimodal AI, and its mathematical and statistical foundations.
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