ERC to create panel for fundamental AI research

The European Research Council will establish a new thematic evaluation panel, Fundamentals of AI (PE12), starting from the 2028 ERC calls under the EU’s future R&I framework programme. The move responds to the rapid growth of AI as a computer science field and the significant share of AI-related ERC project proposals now submitted to the current Computer Science evaluation panel (PE6).

The dedicated panel is intended to place fundamental AI proposals in a more focused scientific evaluation context. Its scope will cover basic research that advances AI foundations, methods, and theories, rather than applications of AI in specific domains, which can continue to be submitted to other panels.

Areas covered by PE12 will include machine learning, reasoning, intelligent and autonomous systems, computer vision, natural language processing, generative and multimodal AI, and mathematical and statistical foundations.